UMS Concert Program, May 2, 3, 4, 5, 1957: The Sixty-fourth Annual May Festival -- The Philadelphia Orchestra

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

The Sixty-Fourth Annual
MAY FESTIVAL
1957
presented by
The University Musical Society
of the
University of Michigan
ANN ARBOR, MICHIGAN
UNIVERSITY MUSICAL SOCIETY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
Seventy-Eighth Season Program of the Sixty-Fourth Annual
MAY FESTIVAL
May 2, 3, 4, 5, 1957 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
Gail W. Rector, Executive Director Elect
Deanne S. Robertson, Bookkeeper and Cashier
Carole M. Robinson, Typist-Clerk
Harold E. Warner, Supervisor of Ushers
THE SIXTY-FOURTH ANNUAL ANN ARBOR MAY FESTIVAL
CONDUCTORS
Eugene Ormandy, Orchestral Conductor
William R. Smith, Assistant Orchestral Conductor
Thor Johnson, Guest Conductor
Lester McCoy, Choral Conductor
Geneva Nelson, Youth Chorus Conductor
SOLOISTS
Rise Stevens............Mezzo-Soprano
Leontyne Price.............Soprano
Martha Lipton.............Contralto
Kurt Baum...............Tenor
Robert Merrill.............Baritone
Robert McFerrin............Baritone
Donald Gramm...........Bass-Baritone
Nicola Moscona..............Bass
Joseph Szigeti.............Violinist
John Krell...............Piccolo
Gina Bachauer..............Pianist
Alexander Brailowsky...........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 Geneva Nelson 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 Manager Donald Engle and his administrative staff.
The Author of the annotations expresses his appreciation to Robert Jobe for his assistance in collecting materials; to Ferol Brinkman for her editorial serv?ices; and to Edwin H. Schloss, 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 2, at 8:30
THE PHILADELPHIA ORCHESTRA EUGENE ORMANDY, Conductor
SOLOIST
ALEXANDER BRAILOWSKY, Pianist
PROGRAM Compositions of LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN
"Leonore" Overture, No. 3, Op. 72
Symphony No. 8 in F major, Op. 93 Allegro vivace e con brio Allegretto scherzando Menuetto e trio
Finale: allegro vivace
INTERMISSION
Concerto No. 3 in C minor for Piano and Orchestra, Op. 37 Allegro con brio Largo
Rondo: allegro
Alexander Brailowsky
Mr. Brailowsky uses the Steinway piano
SECOND MAY FESTIVAL CONCERT
Friday Evening, May 3, at 8:30
THE PHILADELPHIA ORCHESTRA
THE UNIVERSITY CHORAL UNION
THOR JOHNSON, Guest Conductor
SOLOISTS
Leontyne Price, Soprano Martha Lipton, Contralto
Kurt Baum, Tenor
Robert McFerrin, Baritone
Nicola Moscona, Bass
PROGRAM
AIDA (in concert form)................Verdi
An opera in four acts, for soloists, chorus, and orchestra.
A'ida..............Leontyne Price
Amneris.............Martha Lipton
Radames..............Kurt Baum
Amonasro ...........Robert McFerrin
Ramphis XT _.
The King] ...........NlC0LA Moscona
Messenger...........Jerry Langenkamp
Priestesses, Soldiers, Ministers,
Captains, The People, and Slave
Prisoners......University Choral Union
THIRD MAY FESTIVAL CONCERT
Saturday Afternoon, May 4, at 2:30
THE PHILADELPHIA ORCHESTRA EUGENE ORMANDY, Conductor
THE FESTIVAL YOUTH CHORUS GENEVA NELSON, Conductor
SOLOIST
JOSEPH SZIGETI, Violinist
PROGRAM
Overture to La Scala di seta..............Rossini
Concerto in D minor, for Violin and Orchestra........Tartini
Allegro Grave Presto
Joseph Szigeti
"The Walrus and the Carpenter," a cantata
for children...............Fletcher
Festival Youth Chorus
intermission
Portrait No. 1, Op. S................Bartok
La Folia, Variations for Violin
and Orchestra...............Corelli
Mr. Szigeti
Symphony No. 4 in A major. Op. 90 ("Italian").....Mendelssohn
Allegro vivace
Andante con moto
Con moto moderato Saltarello: presto
7
FOURTH MAY FESTIVAL CONCERT
Saturday Evening, May 4, at 8:30
THE PHILADELPHIA ORCHESTRA EUGENE ORMANDY, Conductor
SOLOIST
ROBERT MERRILL, Baritone PROGRAM
Overture to Die Meistersinger von Niirnberg........Wagner
?Symphony No. 88 in G major.............Haydn
Adagio; allegro Largo
Menuetto: allegretto Allegro con spirito
"Adamastro, Roi des vagues profondes," from L'Africaine . . . Meyerbeer Farewell and Death of Roderigo, from Don Carlo.......Verdi
"Per me giunto"
"O Carlo ascolta"
Robert Merrill
intermission
Adagio for Strings, Op. 11...............Barber
"Deh vieni alia finestra," from Don Giovanni........Mozart
"Nemico della patria" from Andrea Chenier........Giordano
"Eri tu" from Un Ballo in maschera............Verdi
Mr. Merrill
"?"Russian Easter" Overture..........Rimsky-Korsakov
Columbia Records.
FIFTH MAY FESTIVAL CONCERT
Sunday Afternoon, May 5, at 2:30
THE PHILADELPHIA ORCHESTRA
THE UNIVERSITY CHORAL UNION
THOR JOHNSON, Guest Conductor
SOLOISTS
MARTHA LIPTON, Contralto
DONALD GRAMM, Bass-baritone
GINA BACHAUER, Pianist
JOHN KRELL, Piccolo
PROGRAM
Concerto in A minor for Piccolo and Orchestra........Vivaldi
Allegro
Larghetto Allegro
John Krell, Piccolo
Five Tudor Portraits--a choral suite in five move?ments, for contralto, baritone, and orches?tra (founded on poems by John Skelton) . R. Vaughan Williams
Ballad--The Tunning of Elinor Rumming
Intermezzo--My Pretty Bess
Burlesca--Epitaph on John Jayberd. of Diss
Romanza--Jane Scroop (Her Lament for Philip Sparrow)
Scherzo--Jolly Rutterkin
University Choral Union and Soloists intermission
Concerto No. 2 in B-flat major, Op. 83, for piano and orchestra . . Brahms
Allegro non troppo
Allegro appassionato Andante
Allegretto grazioso
Gina Bachauer
Mme Bachauer uses the Steinway piano Orchestration and vocal scores by arrangement with Oxford University Press, New York City.
SIXTH MAY FESTIVAL CONCERT
Sunday Evening, May 5, at 8:30
THE PHILADELPHIA ORCHESTRA EUGENE ORMANDY, Conductor
SOLOIST
RISE STEVENS, Mezzo-Soprano
PROGRAM
"Academic Festival" Overture, Op. 80...........Brahms
Symphony No. 3, in one movement............Harris
Lieder eines jahrenden Gesellen............Mahler
Rise Stevens
intermission ?Prelude to "Afternoon of a Faun"...........Debussy
"Connais-tu le pays" from Mignon...........Thomas
Air de Lia, from L'Enfant prodigue...........Debussy
"Amour, viens aider" from Samson et Dalila.......Saint-Saens
Miss Stevens
Choreographic Poem, "La Valse".............Ravel
Columbia Records.
10
ANNOTATIONS
by GLENN D. McGEOCH
FIRST CONCERT
Thursday Evening, May 2
"Leonore" Overture, No. 3, Op. 72......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 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 "Bee-thovenism" as well. On the other hand, there is no more decided proof to be found in music history of the fact that the age produces the man than the case of Beethoven. Certainly in his life and in his works, he is the embodiment of his period. Born at the end of the eighteenth century, he witnessed, during the formative period of his life, the drastic changes that were occurring throughout central Europe; changes which affected not only the political but the intellectual and artistic life of the world as well. The French Revolution had announced the breaking up of an old civilization and the dawn of a new social regime. The spirit of freedom that animated the poetic thought of Goethe, Schiller, 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 grasp the two centuries in which he lived. In his person he embodied the ideas of both the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, became the sage and prophet of his period, and the center of the classic and romantic spirit.
These two elements were mutually helpful in making him the outstanding representative of each. His romantic tendencies helped him to infuse Promethean fire into the old, worn-out forms and to endow them with new passion. His re?spect for classic forms made him the greatest of the early Romanticists, for it aided him in tempering the fantastic excesses and extremes of his radical con?temporaries. Thus, this harmonious embodiment of opposing forces, controlled by an architectonic intelligence that molded and fused them together into one passionate, creative impulse, resulted in the production of epoch-making master-
MAY FESTIVAL PROGRAM
pieces, built upon firm foundations but emancipated from all confining elements of tradition, and set free to discover new regions of unimagined beauty.
As a master of absolute music Beethoven undeniably exerted a powerful in?fluence upon succeeding opera composers. But Fidelio, his own single attempt in the field of opera, has had far less emancipating force than most of his instru?mental compositions or the operas of his lesser contemporary, von Weber. The supreme service of Fidelio to aesthetic history, on the other hand, was accom?plished when it turned Beethoven's attention to the dramatic overture. There is more real dramatic art in the four overtures Beethoven wrote for his Fidelio than exists in the entire bulky score of the opera, for which they were designed as preludes.
The four overtures are known as the "Leonore" Nos. 1, 2, and 3 in C major, and the "Fidelio," in E major. We know that the overture numbered by the publishers as No. 2, was used for the premiere of the opera on November 20, 1805. The incomparable No. 3 on this evening's program is a remodeled form and was written for a reconstructed version of the opera which had its hearing March 29, 1806. For the revival of the opera in Vienna in 1814, Beethoven, obviously dissatisfied with his previous efforts, wrote an entirely new overture in E major on a much smaller scale. Why he should have rejected the supreme product of his genius, No. 3, is still an enigma.
For years it was a question as to what place No. 1 really occupied in the sequence of composition. Schindler had stated that it had been tried out before a few friends of Beethoven and discarded as inadequate for the premiere of the opera, implying that it was the first written. The subsequent researches of Nottebohm, now proved false, declared Schindler's information incorrect, and stated, as positive fact, the actual succession of the "Leonore" overtures to be No. 2 (1805), No. 3 (1806), No. 1 (Opus 138, written in 1807 but not published until 1832), with the "Fidelio" overture the last to be composed. This order was accepted by such authorities as Alexander Wheelock Thayer and H. E. Krehbiel, the editor of Thayer's definitive biography of Beethoven. In this work we find the following statement:
Schindler's story that it (Leonore No. 1) was tried at Prince Lichnowsky's and laid aside as inadequate to the subject, was based on misinformation; but that it was played either at Lichnowsky's or Lobkowitz's is very probable, and if so, may well have made but a feeble impression on auditors who had heard the glorious "Leonore" Overture of the year before (No. 3 in 1806).
According to more recent research by the musicologist, Dr. Joseph Braun-stein, Nottebohm's conclusions as restated by Thayer, also are incorrect, and the established order of composition is now considered to be the natural sequence of No. 1 before 1805, No. 2 in 1805, No. 3 in 1806, and the "Fidelio" overture in 1814. Schindler and others, such as Czerny and Schumann who supported him against Nottebohm, were right in their contention that as Schumann put it, "the 'Leonore' No. 1 represents the roots from which sprang the grand trunk
Alexander Wheelock Thayer, The Life of Lud-diig van Beethoven, trans, and ed. by H. E. Krehbiel (New York: Novello Co. Ltd., 1921), 3 vols.
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FIRST CONCERT
(No. 3); No. 2, with widespreading branches to the right and left of No. 3, ended in delicate blossoms of the 'Fidelio' overture."
The action of Fidelio occurs in a fortress near Seville. Don Florestan, a Spanish nobleman, has been imprisoned for life, and to make his fate certain, his mortal enemy, Don Pizarro, governor of the prison, has announced his death, meanwhile putting the unfortunate man in the lowest dungeon, where he is expected to die by gradual starvation.
Don Florestan, however, has a devoted wife who refuses to believe the report of his death. Disguising herself as a servant, and assuming the name of Fidelio, she secures employment with Rocco, the head jailer. Rocco's daughter falls in love with the supposed handsome youth, and he is soon in such high favor that he is permitted to accompany Rocco on his visits to the prisoner.
Hearing that the minister of the interior is coming to the prison to investi?gate the supposed death of Florestan, the governor decides to murder him, and asks Rocco's aid. Fidelio overhears the conversation and gets Rocco to allow her to assist him in digging the grave. Just as Don Pizarro is about to strike the fatal blow, Fidelio rushes forward, proclaims herself the wife of the prisoner, and shields him. The governor is about to sacrifice both when a flourish of trumpets announces the arrival of the minister just in time to prevent the murder of Florestan.
Richard Wagner in his essay "On the Overture" paid a remarkable tribute to Beethoven and to this great overture, when he wrote:
Far from giving us a mere musical introduction to the drama, it [the "Leonore" No. 3] sets that drama more completely and more movingly before us than ever happens in the broken action which ensues. This work is no longer an overture, but the greatest of dramas in itself. . ..
In this mighty tone-piece, Beethoven has given us a musical drama, a drama founded on a playwright's piece, and not the mere sketch of one of its main ideas, or even a purely pre?paratory introduction to the acted play; but a drama, be it said, in the most ideal meaning of the term. . . . His object was to condense to its noblest unity the one sublime action which the dramatist had weakened and delayed by paltry details in order to spin out the tale; to give a new, an ideal motion, fed solely by its inmost springs.
This action is the deed of a staunch and loving heart, fired by the one sublime desire to descend as an angel of salvation into the very pit of death. One sole idea pervades the work: the freedom brought by a jubilant angel of light to suffering manhood. We are plunged into a gloomy dungeon; no beam of day strikes through to us; night's awful silence breaks only to the moans, the sighs, of a soul that longs from its deepest depths for freedom, freedom.
As through a cranny letting in the sun's last ray, a yearning glance peers down; 'tis the glance of an angel that feels the pure air of heavenly freedom a crushing load the while its breath cannot be shared by the one who is pent beneath the prison's walls. Then a swift resolve inspires it, to tear down all the barriers hedging the prisoner from heaven's light: higher, higher, and ever fuller swells the soul, its might redoubled by the blest resolve; 'tis the angel of redemption to the world. Yet this angel is but a loving woman, its strength the puny strength of suffering humanity itself; it battles alike with hostile hindrances and its own weakness, and threatens to succumb. But the superhuman idea, which ever lights its soul anew, lends finally the superhuman force; one last prodigious strain of every fibre, and, at the moment of supremest need, the final barrier falls.
Richard Wagner, "On the Overture," Gazette Musicale, January 10, 14, and 17, 1841, trans, by William Ashton Ellis, Wagner's Prose Works (London: Kegan Paul, French, Trubner & Co., 1892-99), VII.
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MAY FESTIVAL PROGRAM
ANALYSIS
After a long and solemn introduction, relating to Florestan's hopeless situa?tion (adagio, C major, 3-4 time), the main movement (allegro, 2-2 time) presents a short figured principal theme in the cellos and violins, which is de?veloped to unusual length in a grimly passionate manner. The second subject, entering rather abruptly in an extended upward flight in violins and flutes, con?tinues in short fragmentary phrases to a climax of vigorous syncopated string and woodwind passages. The development section continues with these short phrases, occasionally joined by the figures of the principal theme. Sudden and unexpected outbursts in the whole orchestra lend an inarticulate expressiveness to the climax of the work, dramatically interrupted by the trumpet call which, in the opera, announces the arrival of Don Fernando. A quiet and brief interlude follows, creating an air of expectancy and heightening the dramatic effect of the second and closer announcement of the trumpet call. Wagner objected to the altered, yet formal, recapitulation of the first part of the overture as undramatic, and in truth he is artistically justified in wishing that Beethoven had, after the trumpet fanfare, rushed on to the conclusion. But Beethoven paid this respect to the conventional form, and then, in a passage of syncopated octaves (presto), created an overwhelming and novel effect in this section. The coda, based on a vigorous working of the principal subject, brings this mighty overture to a thrilling finale.
Symphony No. 8 in F major........Beethoven
The Eighth Symphony was composed in 1812, only four months after the completion of the Seventh. Beethoven had gone to Teplitz in July of 1811 to find relief from his ever-increasing deafness. It was here that he began the first sketches for the work. Early in October he left for Linz in lower Austria to visit his younger brother Johann, with the symphony still unfinished.
An artist can often belie his feelings and emotions or contradict the events of his life in his art. No better example can be found than in the creation of this work. The lighthearted Eighth Symphony, which contains some of Beethoven's most joyous and exuberant music, was composed during a period of discord, personal conflict, and confusion. In a state of ill health and worry he had left Teplitz for Linz with the deliberate purpose of interfering in the personal affairs of his brother, for whom, from all accounts, he had little affection and occasionally unconcealed contempt. The visit, therefore, was not prompted by fraternal love; it was a journey of remonstrance and reproof, for rumors had reached him that Johann intended to marry his servant and mistress, one Fraulein Theresa Obermeyer. Intent upon demolishing this ro?mance and saving the family name from dishonor, Beethoven interrupted the composition of his symphony to undertake an arduous journey. For all his high moral purpose, he failed in his mission. After many violent scenes and altercations, and even attempts at physical persuasion, Beethoven at last ap?pealed to police and church authorities, but to no avail. Johann and Fraulein
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FIRST CONCERT
Obermeyer were married in spite of everything he could do to prevent it. It was during these turbulent days that Beethoven finished the Eighth Symphony. Upon the gaiety of this delectable "Sinfonia giocosa," these chaotic events seemed to have had little effect.
To the critics and audiences of its day, however, the symphony was, for all its good humor and lightheartedness, a daring and audacious departure from tradition. Beethoven's critics had been persistent in referring to the first move?ments of his previous symphonies as "incomprehensible, diffuse, and over com?plicated"; the second movements as "too drawn out"; and the third as usually "mad and capricious." In a mood of tantalizing good humor, he flouted the tenets of the pedants in every movement of this work.
Alternating with unpredictable suddenness between deference to and irrever?ence for the academicians he created, within the conventional framework of each . movement, moments of shocking heterodoxy. With rebellious spirit he would threaten with unorthodox keys and then suddenly restore expected ones. In place of the traditional slow second movement, he substituted an elfish scherzando which was "destined to be the progenitor of the entire race of music devoted to elves, fays, nixes, trolls, and fairies from Weber and Mendelssohn to Ravel's Mother Goose." Having long since dispensed with the classical minuet, through the substitution of his epoch-making scherzi, he solemnly, and with conscious parody, restored in the third movement a minuet (one of the few he ever wrote) that for regularity of structure and outdated style, one would have to seek a comparable expression in the early classicists.
For all its gaiety, spontaneity, and careless abandon, however, no work of Beethoven shows greater constructive superiority or conscious craftsmanship; no casual analysis could begin to reveal the infinite facets of its inner structure. Robert Haven Schauffler presents a detailed and revealing analysis of this miracle of musical construction in his book on Beethoven. Briefly, the whole work grows out of fragments found in the "swarm of little germ motives" that form the first seven bars of the first movement. Not only do the other themes of the movement take their shape from one or the other of them, but they are scattered like seeds throughout the other three movements, con?tinuously fertilized by Beethoven's creative mind, to spring into new life, new energies, and to beget a whole progeny of new and contrasting ideas. According to Schauffler, this symphony reveals "one of the most consummately deft strokes of camouflage among all the brilliant feats which Beethoven performed with germ motives, "f
In this instance, Beethoven's own words that describe the general method by which he composed, seem more appropriate than any attempt to analyze the obvious structural details of this symphony:
I carry my thoughts about with me long, often very long, before I write them down. In doing this my memory stands me in such good stead that even years afterwards I am sure not to forget a theme that I have once grasped. I alter some things, eliminate and try again
Robert Haven Schauffler, Beethoven, the Man Who Freed Music (New York: Doubleday, Doran and Co., 1929), I, 326. Ubid II, 551.
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MAY FESTIVAL PROGRAM
until I am satisfied. Then begins the mental working out of this stuff in its breadth, its nar?rowness, its height and depth. And as I know what I want, the fundamental idea never deserts me. It mounts, it grows in stature, I hear, see the picture in its whole extent standing all of a piece before my spirit, and there remains for me only the labour of writing it down which goes quickly whenever I have time for it. For I sometimes have several pieces in hand at once, but am perfectly sure not to confuse them. You will ask me where I get my ideas. I am not able to answer that question positively. They come directly, indirectly; I can grasp them with my hands. Out amid the freedom of nature, in the woods, on walks, in the silence of night, early in the morning, called forth by such moods as in the minds of poets translate themselves into words, but in mine into tones which ring, roar, storm until at last they stand before me as notes.
Concerto No. 3 in C minor for Piano and Orchestra, Op. 37...............Beethoven
Beethoven always approached a new form with caution, leaning heavily at first upon traditions established by his predecessors, Haydn and Mozart. Whatever the form--the symphony, the sonata, the quartet, or the concerto-he entered the untried field with deliberation. Once he found himself the master, he subjected the form to merciless scrutiny and went about deliberately to free it from the fetters of the past that were binding it.
His piano compositions were always in the vanguard of his maturing style. Whenever the piano was the medium he showed greater originality and freedom from the restrictions of tradition. Before 1800, he had composed eleven piano sonatas, among them the "Pathetique" (C minor, Op. 31), a cornerstone for nineteenth century romantic piano music. Isolated movements from the others began to show feverish exploration, such as that detected in the slow movement of Op. 10, No. 3, one of the most powerful utterances to be found in his early music.
Although the third piano concerto comes from the same period as the first and second concertos, it shows considerable advance over these conservative works, disclosing a more conscious liberation of creative energy. The occasional heroic gesture, such as the abrupt commanding opening subject of the first movement and the broad phrasing and luxurious solemnity of the largo, mark this work as the most mature and highly developed of all the compositions which Beethoven brought to fruition in the first year of the new century. It is richer in tonal texture than the first symphony, and only isolated movements of the Op. 18 quartets, such as the slow movement of No. 1 and the first movement of No. 4, are in any way comparable to it in emotional fervor. In grandeur of conception, the third piano concerto is an imposing landmark on the way to the epoch-making "Eroica" symphony, composed four years later, again proving that through the medium of the piano Beethoven first released the vast innovating force that was to recondition every musical form it touched.
Ibid., pp. 5S3-S4.
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SECOND CONCERT Friday Evening, May 3
Aida..................Verdi
(Fortunio) Giuseppe (Francesco) Verdi was born in Le Roncole, October 10, 1813; died in Milan, January 27, 1901.
The year 1813 was of tremendous importance in the political world, but no less so in the domain of music, for it brought to earth two epoch-making geniuses, Richard Wagner and Giuseppe Verdi. In these two masters, the greatest artistic forces of the entire nineteenth century climaxed. In them, the German and Italian opera set up models that seemed to exhaust all the conceivable pos?sibilities of the two cultures. Representing two great musical nations, influenced alike by strong national tendencies, each assumed, in his own way, a novel and significant artistic attitude toward the lyric theater. Wagner, the German, full of the Teutonic spirit, revolutionized the musico-dramatic art by approximating it to the symphony; Verdi, the Italian, no less national in spirit and without losing either his individuality or nationality, developed a style in which the orchestra increased its potency of expression but without sacrificing in any way the beauty of the human voice.
Verdi was not a man of culture as was Wagner. Born a peasant, he remained rooted to the soil, and his art reflects a like primitive quality. He created music astonishingly frank and fierce for his time, turning the over-sophisticated style of Donizetti and Bellini, with its siren warblings, into passionate utterances, infusing into his melody a new intensity through strong contrasts of violent and tender feeling. In his characters he achieved an emotional emancipation through a new sweep and breadth of musical discourse. His genius carried him by fits and starts from the depths of triviality and vulgarity to majestic dignity and impressive elegance. But it always reflected large resources of imagina?tion and an amazing vitality. His vitality, in fact, is exceptional among com?posers. So enduring and resourceful was he that his greatest and most elaborate works were produced after he was fifty-seven years of age, and when verging on sixty, he composed Aida, an opera abounding in the strength, vigor, and freedom of youth. He was sixty-one when he wrote the Requiem, and certainly in it there is no hint of any diminution of his creative powers. His last opera, Falstaff, by many considered his masterpiece, was written when he was eighty! The consistent and continuous growth of his style over sixty years of his life is evidence of an incomparable capacity for artistic development and a trium?phant vitality and thrilling fortitude of spirit. But these he had in abundance, and they sustained him through a life of sadness and misfortune. As the child of a poor innkeeper, he had slight opportunities for a musical education. He spent his early youth in deep suffering occasioned by an unusually sensitive nature; he was constantly being wounded in his deepest affections. Misfortune marked him at the very threshold of his career; he was refused admittance to
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MAY FESTIVAL PROGRAM
the conservatory at Milan because of an arbitrary age limit. Married at twenty-three years of age, he lost his wife and two children within a period of two and a half years, and at the end of a long and eventful life, he experienced the bitter loneliness of old age. But his misfortunes mellowed rather than hardened him. His magnanimity, his many charitable acts, the broad humanity of his art endeared him to his people, who idolized him both as a man and as an artist. Throughout his life and his works, there ran a virility and a verve, a nobility and valor that challenges the greatest admiration.
An erroneous impression concerning A'ida persists today in spite of every?thing that has been written to disprove it; namely that the opera was written at the request of Ismail Pasha, Khedive of Egypt, to celebrate the opening of the Suez Canal. It is a fact that the Khedive had approached Verdi for an opera on several occasions, but the suggestion for A'ida came not from him, but from Verdi's friend, the French librettist, Camille Du Locle, who had previously written the text for his Don Carlo. Du Locle, aspiring to become the director of the Opera Comique in Paris, had persistently urged Verdi to write an opera for that theater and had submitted several subjects for his consideration. With one of them, he included an anonymous "Egyptian sketch" of four printed pages which immediately caught Verdi's fancy. This sketch, in scenario form, had in truth been written by Du Locle himself. He had based it upon a story by the French Egyptologist, Auguste fidouard Mariette, noted discoverer of the ruins of the Serapeum and the tombs of the Apis bulls. The tale of A'ida in its original form had been found by him among some ancient papyri. Verdi at first assumed that the sketch had come directly from the Khedive himself, and not until he had become inextricably involved in the composition of the score did he learn otherwise. A French prose version of the story was made by Du Locle, who worked out the scenario in great detail under Verdi's direction. Antonio Ghislanzoni, the Italian librettist, was then selected for the task of transmitting the French prose version into Italian verse, in which Verdi's share was again very large.
If with A'ida we date the advent of the greater, more mature Verdi, we may accredit, in a measure, the tremendous growth in its style to the fact that in its preparation he had the assistance not only of a poet of dramatic perception but of a self-effacing writer, acquiescent to his every demand. Verdi himself entered into the preparation of this libretto with the greatest ardor and enthu?siasm, dictating to Ghislanzoni at every turn the mood, the meter, the accents and even the specific words he desired.
An illuminating article by Dr. Edgar Istel (Musical Quarterly, January, 1917, p. 34) shows that Verdi deserves to be ranked with Gluck and Wagner, for he displays the same fearlessness, initiative, and appreciation of dramatic values as those geniuses to whom the musical world has hitherto accorded a monopoly of these virtues. Referring to changes in a certain scene, Verdi wrote to Ghislan?zoni, his librettist: "I know very well what you will say to me, 'And the verse, the rhythm, the stanza' I have no answer, but I will immediately abandon
18
SECOND CONCERT
rhyme, rhythm, and strophic form if the action requires." He had an eye, above all else, to the actual life-giving stage effect, and poetic or musical finesse was a secondary consideration with him. "Develop the situation," he wrote, "and let the characters say what they must say without the slightest regard for the musical form."f
At other times, there is evidence that he wrote music without a text. Often he became so absorbed in the musical realization of a scene, that he composed ahead of his librettist, who often was merely called up to fit well-turned verses into the meter of the melodic line already established. "You can hardly imagine," he once wrote, "what a lovely melody can be made of this unusual form and with what grace the five-syllable line coming after three of seven syllables will give it, and what variety will result from the hendodecasyl-labic lines that follow. See if you can turn this into poetry and keep the words Tu si bella which makes such a good cadence in the music."i As Verdi, with A'ida, enters his greatest creative period, he is indeed, like Wagner, for all purposes well on the way to being his own librettist.
In a letter to the conductor Vincenzo Torelli in Naples (August 22, 1892) Verdi furthermore indicated his kinship with Gluck and Wagner in upholding the Gesamtkunstwerke or "collective art work" in which music, poetry, and scenic art support and complement one another:
By good elements of performance, I understand not only the solo singers, but also the orchestra and chorus, the costumes, the scenery, the machinery, the scenic movement, and finesse of color scheme. You southerners have no idea of what I mean by movemento scenico and finezza di colerito. I repeat once more, it does not suffice to have two or three good singers. Furthermore, one hundred people in the chorus are not enough for "Aida," and they must be good,--money alone will not do it. there must be good will also. If the elements are good, I shall look after everything; if not, I shall withdraw the score even after the dress rehearsal. No one will persuade me to produce "Aida" as you are accustomed to do all your operas.!
Without imitating Wagner in the slightest way or consciously using him as a model, Verdi attacked both the dramatic and musical problems presented by the A'ida sketch with an impetuosity and fierce kind of energy that trans?formed it, in the course of only four months, into the incandescent score we know today.
The opera was given its first performance in Cairo, December 24, 1S71, two years after the opening of the Suez Canal; in Milan, February 8, 1872; and in New York in 1873, three years before its first performance in Paris.
Contemporary writers gave conflicting accounts of the general effect of the first performance, but of the character of the music, its dramatic power, its gorgeous instrumentation, its captivating melodies, sonorous harmonies, there was no jarring note in the chorus of criticism. Nor has there been since, for even those who are not worshipers at the shrine of opera cannot help but feel its originality and force. It is the one opera of Verdi which has the most sustained
Edgar Istel, "A Genetic Study of the Aida Libretto," Musical Quarterly, Vol. 3, 1917, p. 42. t Carlo Gatti, Verdi, the Man and His Music, trans, by Elizabeth Abbot (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1955) p. 231.
t Dyneley Hussey, Verdi (New York: Pellegrini and Cudahy, Inc., 1949), p. 182. S Istel, op. cit., pp. 51-52.
19
MAY FESTIVAL PROGRAM
quality of inspiration and the best proportions. It has a most dramatic plot, full of action, giving opportunities for display of Oriental pomp and ceremony, for dancing, and for all the apparatus of the grand opera, while the deeper ele?ments of dramatic power, as shown in the characters of Aida, Amneris, Radames, and Amonasro, come to the front with a truthfulness and regard for dramatic consistency unknown to most of the operas of his countrymen. It is a story of love, war, and loyalty, contrasted with hatred, revenge, and intrigue, dominated by the influence of the cruel and arrogant Egyptian priesthood. It abounds in grand chorus effects, notably in Acts I and II; while from begin?ning to end there is not a moment when one feels that there is any uncertainty in the mind of the composer as to the effect he desires to produce, nor any lapse from the sustained power of portrayal. There are certain Oriental characteristics displayed in some of the melodies and harmonies, as in the scene in which the High Priestess appears, together with the Priestesses and the Priests, and some of the dances have a barbaric quality in rhythm and color, but Aida, never?theless, is a thoroughly Italian opera.
In the first act we are at Memphis, where Ramphis, the High Priest, tells Radames that the Ethiopians are in revolt and marching to the capital, and that the goddess Isis has decided who shall lead the Egyptian army against them. Radames secretly hopes it may be he, so that he may win the Ethiopian slave Aida, with whom he is in love. Amneris, the king's daughter, now ap?pears. She secretly loves Radames and suspects that the slave Aida loves him also and vows vengeance should this prove to be true. The king's messen?ger announces that Amonasro, the Ethiopian king and Ai'da's father, is near, and that Radames has been chosen to conquer the enemy. Radames enters the temple to pray for the favor of the goddess and is given the sacred arms.
The second act opens with a scene in which Amneris tries to discover Aida's love for Radames by telling her that he has fallen in battle, and sees her suspicion confirmed by Ai'da's grief. The soldiers are heard returning, and both hasten to meet them. Radames has been victorious, and among the captive Ethiopians Aida recognizes her father Amonasro in the garb of a simple officer, who tells the victor that the Ethiopian king has fallen, and entreats his clemency. Radames, seeing Ai'da in tears, adds his entreaties and all the captives are set free but Amonasro. The Egyptian king then gives his daughter Amneris to Radames as reward for his victory.
In the third act Amneris proceeds at night to the temple to pray that she may win the heart of Radames. Meanwhile Amonasro, who has discovered that his daughter and Radames love each other, prevails on her to obtain the Egyptian war plans from Radames. He overhears them from a hiding place, from which he emerges after Aida has persuaded her lover to fly with her. Amonasro con?fesses that he is the Ethiopian king. Amneris, coming from the temple, divines the situation and denounces the three. Amonasro and Aida escape, while Radames is held.
In the fourth act Amneris visits Radames in his cell and promises to save him from the punishment of being buried alive if he will renounce Aida, telling
20
SECOND CONCERT
him that she has escaped to her country and that Amonasro has been killed on the way. As he refuses she leaves him to his fate. When the vault which covers his living grave is locked, she repents, too late, cursing the priests and praying for Radames on her knees over his tomb. There, while Radames is preparing for death, Aida joins him, having found her way through the subterranean passages, and dies with him.
ACT I--INTRODUCTION
Scene I--Hall in the palace of the King at Memphis. To the right and left a colonnade with statues and flowering shrubs. At the back a grand gate, from which may be seen the temples and palaces of Memphis and the Pyramids.
(Radames and Ramphis in consul?tation.) Ramphis--Yes, it is rumored that the Ethiop
dares
Once again our power, and the valley Of Nilus threatens, and Thebes as well. The truth from messengers I soon shall
learn. Radames--Hast thou consulted the will of
Isis Ramphis--She had declared who of Egypt's
renowned armies Shall be the leader. Radames--Oh, happy mortal! Rampuis--Young in years is he, and
dauntless.
The dread commandment I to the King shall take.
(Exit.) Radames--What if 'tis I am chosen, and
my dream Be now accomplished! Of a glorious army
I the chosen leader, Mine glorious vict'ry by Memphis received
in triumph! To thee returned, Aida, my brow entwin'd
with laurel: Tell thee, for thee I battled, for thee I
conquer'd! Heavn'ly Aida, beauty resplendent,
Radiant flower, blooming and bright; Queenly thou reignest o'er me transcendent,
Bathing my spirit in beauty's light. Would that, thy bright skies once more
beholding,
Breathing the air of thy native land, Round thy fair brow a diadem folding, Thine were a throne by the sun to stand. (Enter AmnerisJ
Amneris--In thy visage I trace a joy
unwonted! What martial ardor is beaming in thy
noble glances! Ah me! how worthy were of all envy
the woman
Whose dearly wish'd for presence Could have power to kindle in thee such
rapture! Radames--A dream of proud ambition in
my heart I was nursing: Isis this day has declar'd by name the
warrior chief
Appointed to lead to battle Egypt's hosts! Ah! for this honor, say, what if I were
chosen Amneris--Has not another vision, one more
sweet, More enchanting, found favor in your
heart Hast thou in Memphis no attraction more
charming
Radames (aside)--I! Has she the secret yearning Divin'd within me burning Amneris (aside)--Ah, me! my love if
spurning
His heart to another were turning! Radames--Have then mine eyes betray'd me,
And told Ai'da's name! Amneris--Woe, if hope should false have
play'd me, And all in vain my flame.
(Enter AidaJ
Radames (seeing Aida)--She here! Amneris (aside)--He is troubled. Ah! what a gaze doth he turn on her! Aida! Have I a rival Can it be she herself
(Turning to Aida.) Come hither, thou I dearly prize. Slave art thou none, nor menial; Here have I made by fondest ties Sister a name more genial. Weep'st thou Oh, tell me wherefore thou ever art
mourning, Wherefore thy tears now flow.
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MAY FESTIVAL PROGRAM
Aida--Alas! the cry of war I hear,
Vast hosts I see assemble; Therefore the country's fate I hear,
For me, for all I tremble. Amneris--And art thou sure no deeper woe
now bids thy tears to flow! Tremble! oh, thou base vassal! Radames (aside, regarding Amneris) -Her glance with anger flashing Proclaims our love suspected. Amneris--Yes, tremble, base vassal, tremble,
Lest thy secret stain be detected. Radames--Woe! if my hopes all dashing,
She mars the plans I've laid! Amneris--All in vain thou wouldst dis?semble,
By tear and blush betrayed! Aida (aside)--No! fate o'er Egypt looming, Weighs down on my heart dejected, I wept that love thus was dooming To woe a hapless maid!
(Enter the King, preceded by his guards and followed by Ramphis, his Minis?ters, Priests, Captains, an officer o) the Palace, and afterwards a Messenger.) The King--Mighty the cause that summons Round their King the faithful sons of
Egypt. From the Ethiop's land a messenger this
moment has reached us. Tidings of import brings he. Be pleased
to hear him. Now let the man come forward!
(To an officer.) Messenger--The sacred limits of Egyptian
soil are by Ethiops invaded. Our fertile fields lie all devastated, de-
stroy'd our harvest. Embolden'd by so easy a conquest, the
plund'ring horde On the Capital are marching. All--Presumptuous daring! Messenger--They are led by a warrior, un?daunted, never conquered: Amonasro. All--The King! Aida--My father! Messenger--All Thebes has arisen, and from
her hundred portals
Has pour'd on the invader a torrent fierce, Fraught with relentless carnage. The King--Ay, death and battle be our
rallying cry!
Radames, Ramphis, Chorus of Priests, Chorus of Ministers and Captains --Battle and carnage! war unrelenting!
22
The King (addressing Radames)--Isis, re?vered Goddess, already has appointed The warrior chief with pow'r supreme
invested: Radames! Aida, Amneris, Chorus of Ministers and
Captains--Radames! Radames--Ah! ye Gods, I thank you!
My dearest wish is crown'd! Amneris--Our leader! Aida--I tremble! The King--Now unto Vulcan's temple,
Chieftain, proceed, There to gird thee to vic'try, donning
sacred armor. On! of Nilus' sacred river Guard the shores, Egyptians brave, Unto death the foe deliver, Egypt they never, never shall enslave! Rampitis--Glory render, glory abiding, To our Gods, the warrior guiding; In their pow'r alone confiding, Their protection let us crave. Aida (aside)--Whom to weep for Whom
to pray for
Ah! what pow'r to him now binds me! Yet I love, tho' all reminds me That I love my country's foe! Radames--Glory's sacred thirst now claims
me,
Now 'tis war alone inflames me; On to vict'ry! Naught we stay for! Forward, and death to every foe! Amneris--From my hand, thou warrior
glorious,
Take thy stand, aye victorious; Let it ever lead thee onward To the foeman's overthrow! All--Battle! No quarter to any foe!
May laurels crown thy brow! Aida--May laurels crown thy brow! What! can my lips pronounce language so
impious!
Wish him victor o'er my father-O'er him who wages war but that I may
be restored to my country, To my kingdom, to the high station I now
perforce dissemble!
Wish him conqu'ror o'er my brothers! E'en now I see him stain'd with their
blood so cherished, 'Mid the clam'rous triumph of Egyptian
battalions!
Behind his chariot a King, my father, as a fetter'd captive!
SECOND CONCERT
Ye Gods watching o'er me, Those words deem unspoken! A father restore me, his daughter heart?broken ! Oh, scatter their armies, forever crush our
foe!
Ah! what wild words do I utter Of my affection have I no recollection That sweet love that consol'd me, a captive
pining, Like some bright, sunny ray n my sad lot
shining Shall I invoke destruction on the man for
whom in Love I languish Ah! never yet on earth liv'd one whose
heart
Was torn by wilder anguish! Those names so holy, of father, of lover, No more dare I now utter or e'en recall; Abashed and trembling, to heav'n fain
would hover My prayers for both, for both my tears
would fall. Ah! all my prayers seem transformed to
blaspheming!
To suffer is a crime, dark sin to sigh; Thro' darkest night I do wander as
dreaming,
And so cruel my woe, I fain would die, Merciful Gods! look from on high! Pity these tears hopelessly shed. Love, fatal pow'r, mystic and dread, Break thou my heart, now let me die!
ACT II
Scene I--A hall in the apartments of Amneris.
Trypods emit perfumed vapors. Young
Moorish slaves wave feather fans. Amneris
is being attired for the triumphal feast. (To Aida, with feigned affection.)
'Neath the chances of battle succumb thy people,
Hapless Aida! The sorrows that afflict thee
Be sure I feel as keenly.
My heart tow'rds thee yearns fondly;
In vain naught shalt thou ask of me:
Thou shalt be happy! Vida--Ah! how can I be happy,
Far from my native country, where I can never know
What fate may befall my father, brothers Amneris--Deeply you move me! yet no human sorrow
Is lasting here below. Time will comfort
And heal your present anguish.
Greater than time is e'en the healing power
of love.
Aida--Oh, love, sweet power! oh, joy tor?menting ! Rapturous madness, bliss fraught with
woes,
Thy pangs most cruel a life contenting, Thy smiles enchanting bright heaven
disclose! Amneris--Yon deadly pallor, her bosom
panting,
Tell of love's passion, tell of love's woes. Her heart to question, courage is wanting. My bosom feels of her torture the throes. (Looking at her fixedly.) Now say, what new emotion so doth sway
my fair Aida
Thy secret thought reveal to me: Come, trust securely, come, Trust in my affection, Among the warriors brave who Fought fatally 'gainst thy country, It may be that one has waken'd In thee gentle thoughts of love Aida--What mean'st thou Amneris--The cruel fate of war not all
alike embraces,
And then the dauntless warrior who Leads the host may perish. Yes; Radames by thine is slaughter'd; And canst thou mourn him The gods have wrought thee vengence. Aida--What does thou tell me! wretched
fate!
Forever my tears shall flow! Celestial favor to me was ne'er extended. Amneris (breaking out with violence)-Tremble! thou are discovered! Thou lov'st him! Ne'er deny it! Nay, to confound thee I need but a word. Gaze on my visage; I told tbee falsely: Radames liveth! Aida (with rapture)--Liveth! Gods, I thank
ye!
Amneris--Dost hope still now deceive me Yes, thou lov'st him! But so do I; dost hear my words Behold thy rival! Here is a Pharaoh's
daughter!
Aida (drawing herself up with pride)-Thou my rival! What tho' it were so! For I--I, too!
(Falling at Amneris' feet.) Ah! heed not my words! Oh, spare! forgive
me!
MAY FESTIVAL PROGRAM
Ah! on all my anguish sweet pity take. 'Tis true, for his love I all else forsake. While thou are mighty, all joys thy dower, Naught save my love now is left for me! Amneris--Tremble, vile bond-maid! Dying
heart-broken, Soon shalt thou rue the love thou hast
spoken.
Do I not hold thee fast in my power, Hatred and vengeance my heart owes for
thee! Chorus of People--On! Of Nilus' sacred
river
Guard the shores, Egyptians brave! Unto death the foe deliver. Egypt they never shall enslave. Amneris--In the pageant now preparing Shall a part by thee be taken: While before me thou in dust art prone, I shall share the royal throne! Aida--Pray thee, spare a heart despairing! Life to me a void forsaken; Live and reign, thy anger blighting I shall no longer brave; Soon this love, thy hate inviting, Shall be buried in the grave. Ah! then spare! Amneris--Come now, follow, I will show
thee
Whether thou canst vie with me. Aida--Powers above, pity my woe! Hope have I none now here below. Deign ye, Immortals, mercy to show! Ye gods, ah spare! ah spare! ah spare! Scene II--An avenue to the City of Thebes. In front, a clump of palms. Right hand, a temple dedicated to Ammon. Left hand, a throne with a purple canopy. At back, a triumphal arch. The stage is crowded with people.
(Enter the King, followed by Officials, Priests, Captains, Fan-bearers, Stand?ard-bearers. Afterwards Amneris, with Aida and slaves. The King takes his seat on the throne. Amneris places herself at his left hand.) Chorus of People--Glory to Isis, who from
all
Wardeth away disaster! To Egypt's royal master Raise we our festal song! Glory! Glory! Glory, O King!
Chorus of Women--The laurel with the lotus bound
24
The victor's brows enwreathing! Let flow'rs sweet perfume breathing Veil warlike arms from sight! Ye sons of Egypt, dance around, And sing your mystic praises! As round the sun in mazes Dance all the stars in delight.
(The Egyptian troops, preceded by trumpeters, defile before the King-the chariots of war follow the ensigns --the sacred vases and statues of the gods--troops of Dancing Girls, who carry the treasures of the defeated-and lastly Radames, under a canopy borne by twelve officers.) (The King descends from the throne to
embrace RadamesJ Chorus of People--Hither advance, O
glorious band! Mingle your joy with ours; Green bays and fragrant flowers Scatter their path along. Thank we our gods and praise we, On this triumphant day! Tire King--Savior brave of thy country,
Egypt salutes thee! Hither now advance and on thy head My daughter will place the crown of
triumph. (Radames bends before Amneris, who
hands him the crown.) What boon thou askest, freely I'll grant it. Naught can be denied thee on such a day! I swear it by the crown I am wearing, by
heav'n above us! Radames--First deign to order that the
captives
Be before you brought. (Enter Ethiopian prisoners surrounded by guards, Amonasro last in the dress of an officer.)
Ramphis and Priests--Thank we our gods! Aida--What see I He here My father! All--Her father!
Aida--(embracing her father)--Thou! cap?tive made! Amonasro (whispering to A'i'daJ--Tell not
my rank! The King (to Amonasro,)--Come forward--
So then, thou art
Amonasro--Her father. I, too, have fought, And we are conquer'd; death I vainly
sought.
(Pointing to the uniform he is wearing.) This my garment has told you already
SECOND CONCERT
That I fought to defend King and country; Adverse fortune against us ran steady, Vainly sought we the fates to defy. At my feet in the dust lay extended Our King; countless wounds had trans-
pierc'd him;
If to fight for the country that nurs'd him Make one guilty, we're ready to die! But, O King, in thy power transcendent, Spare the lives on thy mercy dependent; By fates though today overtaken, Ah ! say who can tomorrow's event descry! Aida--But, O King, in thy power tran?scendent . . . Slave-Prisoners--We, on whom heaven's
anger is falling,
Thee implore, on thy clemency calling: May ye ne'er be by fortune forsaken, Nor thus in captivity lie! Ramphis and Priests--Death, O King, be
their just destination, Close thy heart to all vain supplication. By the heavens they doom'd are to perish, We the heavens are bound to obey. People--Holy priests, calm your anger
exceeding;
Lend an ear to the conquer'd foe, pleading. Mighty King, thou whose power we cherish, In thy bosom let mercy have sway. Radames (fixing his eyes on Aida)--
See her cheek wan with weeping and
sorrow, From affliction new charm seems to
borrow;
In my bosom flame seems new lighted By each teardrop that flows from her eyes. Amneris--With what glances on her he is
gazing!
Glowing passion within them is blazing! She is lov'd and my passion is slighted Stern revenge in my breast loudly cries! The King--High in triumph since our ban?ners now are soaring, Let us spare those our mercy imploring: By the gods mercy, aye, is required, And of princes it strengthens the sway. Radames--O King! by heav'n above us, And by the crown on thy brow, thou
sworest, Whate'er I asked thee thou wouldst grant
it.
The King--Say on. Radames--Vouchsafe then, I pray, freedom
and life to freely grant Unto these Ethiop captives here.
Amneris--Free all, then!
Priests--Death be the doom of Egypt's
enemies!
People--Compassion to the wretched! Ramphis--Hear me, O King! and thou too, Dauntless young hero, lost to the voice of
prudence! They are foes, to battle hardened.
Vengeance ne'er in them will die; Growing bolder if now pardoned, They to arms once more will fly! Radames--With Amonasro, their warrior
King,
All hopes of revenge have perish'd. Ramphis--At least, as earnest of safety and
of peace,
Keep we back then Ai'da's father. The King--I yield me to thy counsel; Of safety now and peace a bond more
certain will I give you. Radames, to thee our debt is unbounded. Amneris, my daughter, shall be thy
guerdon. Thou shalt hereafter o'er Egypt with her
hold conjoint sway. Amneris (aside)--Now let yon bondmaid,
now let her
Rob me of my love; she dare not! The Kino--Glory to Egypt's gracious land. Isis hath aye protected; With laurel and with lotus Entwine proudly the victor's head. Ramphis and Priests--Praise be to Isis,
goddess bland,
Who hath our land protected, And pray that the favors granted us, Ever be o'er us shed. Slave-Prisoners--Glory to Egypt's gracious
land!
She hath revenge rejected, And liberty hath granted us Once more our soil to tread. A'ida--Alas! to me what hope is left He weds a throne ascending; I left my loss to measure, To mourn a hopeless love. Radames--Now heaven's bolt the clouds has
cleft,
Upon my head descending; Ah! no, all Egypt's treasure Weighs not Aida's love. Amneris--Almost of every sense bereft, By joy my hopes transcending; Scarce I the triumph can measure Now crowning all my love.
25
MAY FESTIVAL PROGRAM
Amonasro (to Aida)--Take heart, there yet some hope is left,
Thy country's fate amending;
Soon shalt thou see with pleasure
Revenge light from above. People--Glory to Egypt's goddess bland,
Who hath our land protected!
With laurel and with lotus
Entwine proudly the victor's head.
ACT III
Scene I--Shores of the Nile. Granite rocks overgrown with palm-trees. On the summit of the rocks a temple dedicated to Isis, half hidden in foliage. Night; stars and a bright moon. Aida--He will ere long be here! What would
he tell me
I tremble! Ah! if thou comest to bid me, Harsh man, farewell forever, Then, Nilus, thy dark and rushing stream Shall soon o'erwhelm me; peace shall I find
there,
And a long oblivion. My native land no more, no more shall
I behold! Yes, fragrant valleys, your sheltering
bowers, Once 'twas my dream, should love's abode
hang o'er;
Perish'd those dreams now like winter-blighted flowers: Land of my fathers, ne'er shall I see thee
more!
(Enter Amonasro.) Heav'n! my father! Amonasro--Grave cause leads me to seek
thee here, Aida. Naught escapes my attention. For Radames thou'rt dying of love; He loves thee: thou await'st him. A daughter of the Pharaohs is thy rival. Race accursed, race detested, to us aye
fatal! Aida--And I am in her grasp!
I, Amonasro's daughter! Amonasro--In her power thou! No! If thou
wishest,
Thy all-powerful rival thou shall vanquish; Thy country, thy scepter, thy love, shall
all be thine.
Once again shalt thou on our balmy forests, Our verdant valleys, our golden temples
gaze!
26
Aida--Once again I shall on our balmy
forests, Our verdant valleys, our golden temples
gaze! Amonasro--The happy bride of thy heart's
dearest treasure,
Delight unbounded there shalt thou enjoy. Aida (with transport)--One day alone of
such enchanting pleasure, Nay, but an hour of bliss so sweet, then
let me die! Amonasro--Yet recall how Egyptian hordes
descended On our homes, our temples, our altars dar'd
profane!
Cast in bonds sisters, daughters, unde?fended, Mothers, graybeards, and helpless childen
slain. Aida--Too well remembered are those days
of mourning! All the keen anguish my poor heart that
pierc'd! Gods! grant in mercy, peace once more
returning, Once more the dawn soon of glad days may
burst.
Amonasro--Remember! Lose not a moment. Our people arm'd are panting For the signal when to strike the blow. Success is sure; only one thing is wanting: That we know by what path will march
the foe. Aida--Who that path will discover Canst
tell
Amonasro--Thyself will! Aida--I
Amonasro--Radames knows thou art wait?ing.
He loves thee, he commands the Egyptions. Dost hear me Aida--O horror! What wilt thou that I do
No! Nevermore! Amoxasro--(with savage fury)--Up, Egypt,
fierce nation Our cities devoting To flames, and denoting With ruins your path. Spread wide devastation, Your fury unbridle, Resistance is idle, Give rein to your wrath! Aida--Ah! Father!
Amonasro--(repulsing her)--Dost call thee my daughter
SECOND CONCERT
A'i'da--Nay, hold! have mercy! Amonasro--Torrents of blood shall crimson
flow,
Grimly the foe stands gloating. Seest thou! from darkling gulfs below Shades of the dead upfloating! Crying, as thee in scorn they show: "Thy country thou hast slain!" Aida--Nay, hold! ah, hold! have mercy,
pray!
Amonasro--One among those phantoms dark E'en now it stands before thee: Tremble! now stretching o'er thee Its bony hand I mark! Thy mother's hands see there again Stretch'd out to curse thee! ?A'ida (with the utmost terror)--Ah! no! my
father, spare thy child! Amonasro--(repulsing her)--Thou'rt my
daughter!
No! of the Pharaohs thou are a bondmaid! Aida--O spare thy child! Father! no, their slave am I no longer. Ah! with thy curse do not appall me; Still thine own daughter thou mayest call
me;
Ne'er shall my country her child disdain. Amonasro--Think that thy race down-trampled by the conqu'ror, Thro' thee alone can their freedom gain! Aida--O then my country has proved the
stronger!
My country's cause than love is stronger! Amonasro--Have courage! he comes! there!
I'll remain.
(Conceals himself among the palms.) Radames (with transport)--Again I see thee,
my own Aida! A'ida--Advance not! Hence! What hopes are
thine Radames--Love led me hither in hope to
meet thee. Aida--Thou to another must thy hand resign.
The Princess weds thee. Radames--What sayest thou Thee only, Aida, e'er can I love. Be witness, heaven, thou are not forsaken! Aida--Invoke not falsely the gods above! True, thou wert lov'd; let not untruth de?grade thee! Radames--Can of my love no more I
persuade thee
A'ida--And how then hop'st thou to baffle the love of the Princess.
The King's high command, the desire of the people,
The certain wrath of the priesthood Radames--Hear me, Aida !
Once more of deadly strife, with hope unfading,
The Ethiop has again lighted the brand.
Already they our borders have invaded.
All Egypt's armies I shall command.
While shouts of triumph greet me vic?torious,
To our kind monarch my love disclosing,
I thee will claim as my guerdon glorious,
With thee live evermore in love reposing. Aida--Nay, but dost thou not fear then Amneris' fell revenge
Her dreadful vengeance, like the lightning of heaven,
On me will fall, upon my father, my
nation!
Radames--I will defend thee! Aida--In vain wouldst thou attempt it.
Yet if thou lov'st me,
There still offers a path for escape. Radames--Name it! Aida--To flee! Radames--To flee hence Aida--Ah! flee from where these burning skies
Are all beneath them blighting;
Toward regions now we'll turn our eyes,
Our faithful love inviting.
There, where the virgin forests rise,
'Mid fragrance softly stealing,
Our loving bliss concealing,
The world we'll quite forget. Radames--To distant countries ranging,
With thee thou bid'st me fly!
For other lands exchanging
All 'neath my native sky!
The land these armies have guarded,
That first fame's crown awarded,
Where first I thee regarded,
How can I e'er forget Aida--There, where the virgin forests rise,
'Mid fragrance softly stealing,
The world we'll quite forget. Radames--Where first I thee regarded
How can I e'er forget Aida--Beneath our skies more freely
To our hearts will love be yielded;
The gods thy youth that shielded
Will not our love forget;
Ah! let us fly! Radames (hesitating).--Aida!
2 7
MAY FESTIVAL PROGRAM
Aida--Me thou lov'st not! Go! Radames--Not love thee
Ne'er yet in mortal bosom love's flame did burn
With ardor so devouring! Aida--Go! go! Yon awaits for thee Amneris! Radames--All in vain! Aida--In vain, thou sayest
Then fall the axe upon me,
And on my wretched father! Radames (with impassioned resolution).
Ah, no! we'll fly then!
Yes, we'll fly these walls now hated,
In the desert hide our treasure;
Here the land to love seems fated,
There all seems to smile on me. Aida--'Mid the valleys where nature greets thee,
We our bridal couch soon spreading,
Starry skies, their lustre shedding,
Be our lucid canopy.
Follow me, together flying,
Where all love doth still abide!
Thou art lov'd with love undying!
Come, and love our steps shall guide. (They are hastening away when sud?denly Aida pauses.)
But tell me: by what path shall we avoid
Alighting on the soldiers Radames--By the path that we have chosen
To fall on the Ethiops:
'Twill be free until tomorrow. Aida--Say, which is that Radames--The gorges of Napata. Amonasro--Of Napata the gorges!
There will I post my men! Radames--Who has overheard us Amonasro--Aida's father, Ethiopia's king! Radames-(overcome with surprise)--
Thou! Amonasro! thou! the King!
Heaven! what say'st thou
No! it is false
Surely this can be but dreaming! Aida--Ah, no! be calm, and list to me;
Trust! love thy footsteps guiding. Amonasro--In her fond love confiding,
A throne thy prize shall be! Radames--My name forever branded!
For thee I've played the traitor! Aida--Ah, calm thee!
Amonasro--No; blame can never fall on thee!
It was by fate commanded.
Come where, beyond the Nile arrayed,
Warriors brave are waiting;
28
There love each fond wish sating, Thou shalt be happy made. Come then! (Dragging Radames.)
Amneris (from the temple)--Traitor vile! Aida--My rival here! Amonasro--Dost thou come to mar my
projects! (Advancing with dagger towards
Amneris.) Radames (rushing between them).--Desist,
thou madman! Amonasro--Oh, fury! Ramphis--Soldiers, advance! Radames (to Aida and Amonasro) --
Fly quick! delay not! Amonasro (dragging Aida).--Come then,
my daughter!
Ramphis (to the guards)--Follow after! Radames (to Ramphis)--Priest of Isis, I yield to thee!
ACT IV
Scene I--A hall in the King's palace. On the left a large portal leading to the subter?ranean hall of justice. A passage on the right leading to the prison of Radames.
Amneris--She, my rival detested, has
escaped me;
And from the priesthood Radames Awaits the sentence on a traitor. Yet a traitor he is not; tho' he disclosed The weighty secrets of warfare, flight was His true intention, and flight with her, too! They are traitors all, then! deserving to
perish! What am I saying I love him, still I
love him!
Yes, insane and desp'rate is the love My wretched life destroying! Ah! could he only love me! I fain would save him. Yet can I One effort! Soldiers, Radames bring hither.
(Enter Radames, led by guards.) Now to the hall the priests proceed, Whose judgment thou are waiting; Yet there is hope from this foul deed Thyself of exculpating; Once clear to gain thy pardon I at the throne's foot kneeling, For mercy appealing, Life will I render thee.
Radames--From me my judges ne'er will
hear One word of exculpation;
SECOND CONCERT
In sight of heaven I am clear,
Nor fear its reprobation.
My lips I kept no guard on.
The secret I imparted;
But guiltless and pure-hearted,
From stain my honor's free. Amneris--Then save thy life, and clear
thyself!
Radames--No! Amneris--Wouldst thou die Radames--My life is hateful! Of all pleasure
Forever 'tis divested,
Without hope's priceless treasure
'Tis better far to die!
Amneris--Wouldst die, then Ah! thou for me shalt live!
Live, of all my love assured;
The keenest pangs that death can give
For thee have I endured!
By love condemn'd to languish,
Long vigils I've spent in anguish;
My country, my power, existence,
All I'd surrender for thee! Radames--For her I, too, my country,
Honor and life surrendered! Amneris--No more of her! Radames--Dishonor awaits me,
Yet thou wilt save me
Thou all my hope has shaken,
Aida thou has taken;
Haply thou hast slain her,
And yet offerest life to me Amneris--I on her life lay guilty hands
No! She is living! Radames--Living!
Amneris--When routed fled the savage bands,
To fate war's chances giving,
Perish'd her father. Radames--And she then Amneris--Vanish'd, nor aught heard we then
further. Radames--The gods her path guide, then,
Safe to her home returning!
Guard her, too, e'er from learning
That I for her sake die! Amneris--But if I save thee, wilt thou swear
Her sight e'er to resign Radames--I cannot! Amneris--Swear to renounce her forever,
Life shall be thine! Radames--I cannot! Amneris--Once more thy answer:
Wilt thou renounce her
Radames--No, never!
Amneris--Life's thread wouldst thou then
sever
Radames--I am prepared to die. Amneris--From the fate now hanging o'er
thee
Who will save thee, wretched being She whose heart could once adore thee Now is made thy mortal foe! Heaven, all my anguish seeing, Will revenge this cruel blow! Radames--Void of terror death now ap-
peareth,
In the hour when I perish, Since I die for her I cherish! With delight my heart will glow; Wrath no more this bosom feareth; Scorn for thee alone I know! (Exit Radames, attended by guards. Amneris, overcome, sinks on a chair.) Ramphis and Priests--He is condemned!
He dies! Amneris (to Ramphis)--Priest of Isis, this
man whom you murder, Well ye know, in my heart I have
cherish'd: May the curse of a heart whose hope has
perish'd
Fall on him who mercy denies! Ramphis and Priests--He is condemned! He dies!
(Exeunt Ramphis and Priests) Amneris--Impious priesthood! curses light
on ye all! On your heads heaven's vengeance will
fall!
Scene II--The scene is divided into two floors. The upper floor represents the inter?ior of the Temple of Vulcan, resplendent with gold and glittering light. The lower floor is a crypt. Long arcades vanishing in the gloom. Colossal statues of Osiris with crossed hands support the pillars of the vault. Radames is discovered in the crypt, on the steps of the stairs leading into the vault. Above, two Priests are in the act of letting down the stone which closes the subterranean apartment. Radames--The fatal stone upon me now is
closing!
Now has the tomb engulf'd me; I never more shall light behold! Ne'er shall I see Ai'da! Ai'da, where now art thou Whate'er befall me, may'st thou be happy;
29
MAY FESTIVAL PROGRAM
Ne'er may my frightful doom reach thy
ear.
What groan was that! 'Tis a phantom, Some vision dread! No! sure that form is
human! Heav'n! A'ida! Aida-Tis I, love! Radames (in the utmost despair)--
Thou with me here buried Aida--My heart foreboded this thy dreadful
sentence, And to this tomb, that shuts on thee its
portal,
I crept unseen by mortal. Here, far from all, where none can more
behold us, Clasp'd in thy arms, I am resolved to
perish!
Radames--To die! so pure and lovely! For me thyself so dooming, In all thy beauty blooming. Fade thus forever! Thou whom the heav'ns alone for love
created, But to destroy thee was my love then
fated!
Ah! no! those eyes so clear I prize, For death too lovely are!
30
Aida (as in a trance)--Seest thou, where
death, in angel guise, In heav'nly radiance beaming, Would waft us to eternal joys, On golden wings above See, heaven's gates are open wide, Where tears are never streaming, Where only joy and bliss abide, And never fading love. Priestesses and Priests--Almighty Phtha,
that wakest
In all things breathing life, Lo! we invoke thee! Aida and Radames--Farewell, O earth!
Farewell, thou vale of sorrow! Brief dream of joy condemn'd to end in
woe! To us now opens the sky, an endless
morrow
Unshadow'd there eternally shall glow. Ah! now opens the sky!
CAmneris appears habited in mourn?ing, and throws herself on the stone closing the vault.)
Amneris (suffocating with emotion)-Peace everlasting! Oh, my beloved! Isis, relenting, greet thee on high! Priests--Almighty Phtha!
THIRD CONCERT
Saturday Afternoon, May 4 Overture to La Scala di seta..........Rossini
Gioacchino Antonio Rossini was born in Pesaro, February 29, 1792; died in Paris, November 13, 1868.
It has become a truism among musicians and critics in our time that much of the art of Rossini was incredibly hasty in execution and shallow in artistic purpose, and that its great popularity with a thoughtless public turned opera away from the reform ideas of Gluck and the dramatic veracity of Mozart. Every biographical dictionary mentions the fact that Rossini's appreciation of the higher values of the music drama was slight; that he was undisciplined in his early musical training and that his one ideal and dominating artistic impulse was merely to captivate audiences with the unquestioned lyrical charm of his melodies. The fact that he ceased composing operas at the age of thirty-seven, and for the next forty years of his life led the idle existence of "a genial, frivolous and quixotic retired celebrity" has led to the conclusion that he was by nature indolent and artistically insincere.
The facts are that Rossini was the industrious composer of thirty-eight operas in the nineteen-year period between his first, in 1810, and his last, in 1829; that he was a conscientious student of all styles of music and so devoted an admirer and emulator of Haydn and Mozart that his contemporaries often referred to him as II Tedcschino ("The Little German"). His retirement from the field of opera at such an early period in his career was not the result of laziness and indifference, but the expression of a serious artist's disgust with the cheap commercialism and artistic poverty he found in the pompous, blatant, but increasingly popular French "Grand Opera" of Meyerbeer and his asso?ciates. The truth is that Rossini's artistic roots went deep into the classicism of the eighteenth century, and as he witnessed with dismay and frustration the disintegration of its ideal and the forsaking of its purely musical values, he finally laid down his pen to write no more for a public whose taste had de?scended to the level of the mundane and the sensational.
Contemporary criticism has begun to re-evaluate the art of this truly great man of the theater. According to an outstanding musical scholar of our day, Paul Henry Lang:
... he lived in it as a youth and for it as a man. His was a totally unselfconscious musicianship, securely anchored in the great tradition of eighteenth-century Italian opera. This world of the opera buffa was not slapstick comedy, but a natural union of life and the theatre. True, weighty esthetic or moral problems of conscience are not conspicuously present in it, but the atmosphere, tone, and quality of Cenerentola or The Barber oj Seville are always on a very high artistic level. . . . Though born for opera buffa, as he himself said, Rossini was entirely capable of the monumental. Every dramatic question interested him, but only through music, in music, indeed, through musical bravura. For make no mistake, he liked serious drama, otherwise he would not have set librettos based on Schiller, Shakespeare, and Walter Scott.
Paul Henry Lang, "The Story of a Broken Career," New York Herald-Tribune, January 13, 1957.
31
MAY FESTIVAL PROGRAM
La Scala di seta (The Silken Ladder), a one act farce, was composed by Rossini and produced in Venice in 1812. It was not successful and had only one performance outside of Italy. Its overture, however, has survived and has delighted audiences all over the world with its rollicking good humor and esprit.
Concerto in D minor for Violin and Orchestra . . . Tartini
Giuseppe Tartini was born in Pirano, Istria, April 8, 1692; died in Padua, February 26, 1770.
Tartini was the last of the great trio of seventeenthand eighteenth-century Italian masters represented on these programs who, as performers and com?posers, elevated the violin to its reigning position as the "King of Instruments." His immediate predecessors were Arcangelo Corelli (1653--1713) and Antonio Vivaldi (1675 ()--1741), both of whom are represented on this and tomorrow night's programs.
Tartini composed during a transitional period between the late Baroque and the Classic era of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven (Beethoven was born in 1770, the year of Tartini's death). His fame as a violinist was equalled by his reputation for improving the construction of the violin bow and for increas?ing the facility of its use. Contemporary with the great musical theorists, Padre Martini in Italy and Jean Philippe Rameau in France, Tartini, too, made inves?tigations into the science of acoustics and harmony. He was a renowned teacher of violin, attracting pupils from all parts of Europe; so international was his reputation in this field, that he was often referred to as Maestro della nazioni.
Shortly after the establishment of the violin as a unique and individual instrument around 1600, its expressive potentialities were discovered and ex?ploited. The first known composer of violin music was Giovanni Battista Fontana of Brescia (d. 1630), but it was in the works of two masters from Mantua, Biagio Marini (d. 1665) and Carlo Farino who flourished around 1635, that such virtuoso devices as the trill, the double stop, the tremolo, the pizzicato, and the use of harmonics were supposed to have appeared. After the middle of the century, Italian composers became more interested in a purely lyrical style, and the instruments ability to imitate the "singing" quality of the human voice. Giovanni Legrenzi (1620-90), Giovanni Battista Vitali (1644-92), and Giuseppe Torelli (c. 1650-1708) led directly to the first of the three really eminent masters of violin performance and composition, Arcangelo Corelli whose famous La Folia will be heard after the intermission, and to the more spectacular and animated style of Antonio Vivaldi whose Concerto for Piccolo and Orchestra will open tomorrow night's performance.")"
Tartini was born approximately a decade before, and died twenty-nine years
The first makers of violins were Gasparo Bertolatti (1590-1609) and Giovanni Paolo Maggini (1581-1628) of Brescia, Italy. More famous names to follow were those of the Amati brothers, Antonio (1555-1640) and Hieronymous (c. 1556-1630) of Cremona, and his son Nicolo Amati (1596-1684). The most famous of all was Antonio Stradivari (1644-1737), a pupil of Nicolo Amati.
t See pages 53-55.
32
THIRD CONCERT
after Vivaldi. Their careers were practically simultaneous, and the musical problems they met and attempted to solve were quite similar.
The Concerto in D minor is an early eighteenth century example of the solo concerto. By Tartini's time it had already been codified into the three move?ment plan (fast-slow-fast). Just as the human voice became the model for the cantabile style of string instruments, so the opera aria of the day became the standard of structure for the movements of the 500 concerto. In the aria, solo passages were introduced by, alternated with, and concluded by instrumental interludes or ritornelli, in which repetitions of the opening theme or parts thereof might reappear. In the D-minor Concerto of Tartini, purely orchestral sections are contrasted with accompanied solo passages, in which the solo effects are completely emancipated and focused upon. Although the nucleus of the later concerto form is detected throughout, the idiom remains, in most instances, that of the late Baroque period, i.e., the themes are dancelike in character, the harmonies occasionally modal (second movement), and the structure held together by a recurring motive--in this case a reiterated note figure that, in slightly disguised and modified form, unifies the three movements.
The Tartini Concerto shows considerable advance over the Vivaldi Piccolo Concerto to be heard on tomorrow night's program. Not only is it a work of intrinsic charm and beauty, but historically it points to the early nineteenth century Romantic concerto which was to reach its climax a century after Tartini's death.
"The Walrus and the Carpenter," A Cantata for Children.......Percy Fletcher
Percy Fletcher was born December 12, 1879, in Derby, England; died September 10, 1932, in London.
It is not so easy a task as it appears to set to music a text as unusual as Lewis Carroll's "The Walrus and the Carpenter," without destroying the parti?cular charm that comes to us through the utterly delightful nonsense of the words. To retain a sufficient amount of musical sanity and pure musical interest, and yet not evaporate the topsy-turvy mood created by the text, needs the most sensitive kind of manipulation. Mr. Fletcher has succeeded in retaining not only the atmosphere of the poem, but in actually emphasizing some of its most curious and fantastic moments.
Throughout, delightfully foolish verse is matched with the whimsical charm of a music, simple to the point of naivete, but particularly adapted to the voices of children:
PROLOGUE
We have a story to relate
Which may be rather long, And so as not to worry you
We'll tell it you in song. Twas told to gentle Alice,
(Who reads the book will see), By Tweedledum's twin brother,
Whose name was Tweedledee.
The Walrus and the Carpenter
Is what the tale is called, And by its quaint philosophy
You soon will be enthralled. The moral of the story
We leave for you to guess; But though you may not do so,
You'll like it none the less.
33
MAY FESTIVAL PROGRAM THE STORY
The sun was shining on the sea,
Shining with all his might; He did his very best to make
The billows smooth and bright, And this was odd, because it was
The middle of the night.
The moon was shining sulkily,
Because she thought the sun Had got no business to be there
After the day was done:-"It's very rude of him," she said,
"To come and spoil the fun!"
The sea was wet as wet could be,
The sands were dry as dry; You could not see a cloud, because
No cloud was in the sky: No birds were flying overhead,
There were no birds to fly.
The Walrus and the Carpenter
Were walking close at hand; They wept like anything to see
Such quantities of sand: "If this were only cleared away,"
They said, "it would be grand!"
"If seven maids, with seven mops,
Swept it for half a year, Do you suppose," the Walrus said,
"That they could get it clear" "I doubt it," said the Carpenter,
And shed a bitter tear.
"Oh, Oysters, come and walk with us!"
The Walrus did beseech-"A pleasant walk, a pleasant talk,
Along the briny beach; We cannot do with more than four
To give a hand to each."
The eldest Oyster looked at him,
But never a word he said; The eldest Oyster winked his eye,
And shook his heavy head-Meaning to say he did not choose
To leave the oyster-bed.
But four young Oysters hurried up,
All eager for the treat; Their coats were brushed, their faces washed,
Their shoes were clean and neat-And this was odd, because, you know,
They hadn't any feet.
34
Four other Oysters followed them,
And yet another four; And thick and fast they came at last,
And more, and more, and more-All hopping through the frothy waves,
And scrambling to the shore.
The Walrus and the Carpenter
Walked on a mile or so, And then they rested on a rock
Conveniently low: And all the little Oysters stood
And waited in a row.
"The time has come," the Walrus said,
"To talk of many things: Of shoes--and ships--and sealing wax
--Of cabbages--and kings-And why the sea is boiling hot--
And whether pigs have wings!"
"But wait a bit," the Oysters cried, "Before we have our chat;
For some of us are out of breath, And all of us are fat I"
"No hurry!" said the Carpenter: They thanked him much for that.
"A loaf of bread," the Walrus said, "Is what we chiefly need:
Pepper and vinegar besides Are very good indeed--
Now, if you're ready, Oysters, dear, We can begin to feed."
"But not on us," the Oysters cried,
Turning a little blue, "After such kindness, that would be
A dismal thing to do!" "The night is fine," the Walrus said,
"Do you admire the view"
"It was so kind of you to come,
And you are very nice!" The Carpenter said nothing, but
"Cut us another slice: I wish you were not quite so deaf--
I've had to ask you twice!"
"It seems a shame," the Walrus said, "To play them such a trick,
After we've brought them out so far, And made them trot so quick!"
The Carpenter said nothing, but "The butter's spread too thick!"
THIRD CONCERT
"I weep for you," the Walrus said,
"I deeply sympathize!" With sobs and tears he sorted out
Those of the largest size, Holding his pocket-handkerchief
Before his streaming eyes.
"Oh, Oysters," said the Carpenter, "You've had a pleasant run!
Shall we be trotting home again" But answer came there none--
And this was scarcely odd, because They'd eaten every one.
EPILOGUE
Our story now is ended,
Our fairy-tale is told; You've listened to it patiently
As Alice did of old. No doubt you like the Walrus best
Because he was so grieved; Or do you think he ate the most,
As Tweedledee believed
Then should you like the Carpenter
Because he ate the least, You must agree with Tweedledum,
He had a monstrous feast; But if you dream of them to-night,
We hope you will not end By thinking you were gobbled up
By the Walrus and his friend.
Portrait No. 1 from Two Portraits for Orchestra; One
Idealistic, One Distorted, Op. 5.......Bartok
Bela Bartok was born in Nagyszentmiklos in Hungary, March 25, 1881; died in New York, September 26, 1945.
Bela Bartok was distinguished in every sphere of the music 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 contemplate; to even begin to recount his manifold achievements would quickly consume the space allotted to this whole program.
His music retains, more than a decade 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 pre?vailing 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 harsh?ness 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 observed, 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 investigated the music of his native Hungary, of Romania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, 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
35
MAY FESTIVAL PROGRAM
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 musicians as to the true nature of real Hungarian folk music. A nationalistic or racial artist like Bartok has to do more than merely tran?scribe literally the music of his people. It is not the task or the aim of a 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, a personal style becomes so blended with the racial or national ideas that to distinguish between the two is impossible; with Bartok, it became the very substance of his musical thought and the substratum of every score he created.
The work on this afternoon's program, written in 1907, when Bartok was twenty-six years of age, may not be the quintessence of his art, but it was, in the first decade of this century, a work of prophetic utterance. In it could be heard a new stream of lean, direct, uncomplicated, subtly-etched sound, cutting through a welter of lush, bombastic, pseudo-Wagnerism.
The Two Portraits, the first of which is heard on this program, may not be as intriguing, evocative, or challenging a music as we later identify with Bartok's name, but it is, in a way, a portrait of its composer when he was about to enter into the full maturity of his art--an art that was to become the product of a mind fully disciplined, yet fiercely free.
La Folia, Op. 5, No. 12...........Corelli
Arcangelo Corelli was born near Milan, February 17, 1653; died in Rome, January 8, 1713.
As Tartini was the king of Italian violinists in the eighteenth century, so had Corelli been the reigning monarch of the late seventeenth century. He, too, can claim a double distinction in the history of musical art. As a great violinist he laid a firm foundation for the future development of the technique of violin playing; and, as a composer, he materially advanced the progress of composition by codifying, in a period of rapid change, several of the forms and idioms that were developing in his day. Being a thorough master of the art of playing the violin, everything he wrote for the instrument grew quite naturally out of its inherent nature. He recognized all the expressive possibili?ties of the violin as a solo instrument, but more important than this, he re?vealed to the next generation of composers the use that could be made of it in the orchestra. In his chamber sonatas and concerti grossi, he was the founder of the style on which the future development of solo and orchestral writing for this instrument was to be based.
His great reputation as a composer and performer made him especially de?sirable to princes and cardinals, and he soon became a favorite in the highest Roman society. As the chief musician of Cardinal Ottoboni, he conducted the famous weekly concerts in the Cardinal's palace, where the musical elect, not only of Rome but of all Europe, congregated. Amsterdam, Antwerp, Paris, and London, as well as Rome, published his works, and his fame as a teacher
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drew talent from all countries to benefit from his instruction. At his death, he left to Cardinal Ottoboni, under whose patronage he had remained for the greater part of his life, a quarter of a million dollars and a valuable collection of paintings. The possession of the paintings one can understand, for Corelli was on intimate terms of friendship with such eminent painters as Cignani and Maratti, but for a composer to end a Croesus is another claim to historical significance.
Just as Corelli had lifted the string instruments to a position of absolute eminence in his famous set of Twelve Concerti Grossi, so he pursued the same task with even greater emphasis in his six books of sonatas or solo pieces for the violin. In Opus 5, published in 1700 in Rome, the last solo piece is the familiar La Folia, a set of twenty-three variations on a famous melody of the seventeenth century. As originally treated by Corelli, these variations exemplified the dignity and nobility of his style in writing for the solo violin. Among the sundry modern editions, much of the original intention of its composer has been ignored or deliberately destroyed by distortions of style. Modified harmonies, shifted, omitted, or added variations, melodic embellishments for the sake of virtuoso effect, and inserted cadenzas are only a few of the corruptions that have dis?figured a work of rare and noble beauty. In discussing the various modern editions of La Folia, Gilbert Ross has written:
The original edition of Corelli's Op. 5 is obviously not available over the counter . . . but those who have the initiative to hunt up a copy, at the Library of Congress or else?where, will be well rewarded for their pains. Two hundred and fifty-one years will miraculously slip away, and there, behold--pristine, fresh, beautiful, restored, but for a fleeting moment--will be the Folia variations the master created, suddenly free of the accumulated corruptions of editorial hatchetmen.
Symphony No. 4 in A major, Op. 90 ("Italian") . Mendelssohn
Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy was born in Hamburg, February 3, 1809; died in Leipzig, November 4, 1847.
It is well in these chaotic days to turn to a perfectly balanced nature such as Mendelssohn, in whose life and art all was order and refinement. There are few instances in the history of art of a man so abundantly gifted with the good qualities of mind and spirit. He had the love as well as the respect of his con?temporaries, for aside from his outstanding musical and intellectual gifts, he possessed a genial yet pious nature. Moses Mendelssohn, the famous philos?opher, was his grandfather and, in an atmosphere of culture and learning, every educational advantage was his. Throughout his life he was spared the economic insecurity felt so keenly by many composers; he never knew poverty or privation, never experienced any great soul-stirring disappointments, never suffered neglect, nor any of the other ill fortunes that seemed to beset Beetho?ven, Mozart, Schubert, or Verdi. His essentially happy spirit and healthy mind were never clouded by melancholy; no morbidity ever colored his thinking. His genius was of the highest order, but it was never tried and tempered in fire,
Gilbert Ross, "Which Edition of La Folia," Repertoire, Vol. 1, No. 1, October 1951, p. 38.
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nor strengthened by forces of opposition. It produced, therefore, an art that was, like his life, delightful, well ordered, and serene, but in general bore no relation whatever to the contemporary music in France, nor to the overpowering romanticism of his own country. His habitual forms were those of the classical school, yet his idiom was often fresh and ingenious. Innovation was foreign to Mendelssohn's habit of mind and he rarely attempted it. He must be thought of as a preserver of continuity with the past, rather than as a breaker of new paths. His instinctively clear and normal mind, however, produced a music that should refresh us today with its inner logic, its order, and its tranquility.
In 1830 and 1831, Mendelssohn traveled in Italy, and in a series of letters he has recorded a wealth of vivid impressions. Here and there are references also to his composing activity. To his sister Fanny he wrote from Rome about Christmas time in 1830 of "two symphonies which have been haunting my brain." (The reference is to the "Italian" and "Scotch" symphonies.) Two months later (February 22, 1831) he again wrote that "the 'Italian' symphony makes rapid progress; it will be the gayest piece I have ever composed, especially the last movement. I have not yet decided upon the adagio and I think I must put it off for Naples." And again in March--"If only I could compass one of my two symphonies ... I must and will reserve the 'Italian' one until I have seen Naples which must play a part in it." When he finally reached Naples, he again wrote with enthusiasm about finishing the "Italian" symphony, "to have something to show for my winter's work." At this period his "Reformation" symphony was also incomplete as was the "Scotch" symphony which he had begun in Edinburgh in 1829. "Who can wonder that I find it impossible to re?turn to my misty Scotch mood," he wrote from sunny Italy. The fact was that these works were put aside while he completed "Hebrides" or the "FingaFs Cave" concert overture and his setting to Goethe's Walpurgisnacht. To his friend Wilhelm Taubert he wrote from Lucerne on August 27, 1831:
Formerly the bare idea of a symphony was so exciting that I could think of nothing else when one was in my head; the sound of instruments has such a solemn and glorious effect. And yet for some time past I have laid aside a symphony that I have commenced, to com?pose a cantata of Goethe's merely because it included besides the orchestra, voices and a chorus.
The "Italian" symphony was finally completed, not in Italy but in Berlin, on March 13, 1833. "My work," he wrote to Pastor Bauer, "about which I so recently had so many misgivings, is completed, and now that I look it over I find, contrary to my expectations, that it satisfies me. I believe it has become a good piece; and be that as it may, I feel that it shows progress, and that is the main point."
It might not have come to completion even at this time had it not been for an invitation addressed to Mendelssohn from the Philharmonic Society of Lon?don "to compose a symphony, an overture and a vocal piece for the society, for
Reise Briefe . . . aus den Jahren 1830 bis 1832 (Leipzig, 1861), translated by Lady Wallace and pub?lished with the title Letters from Italy (1862).
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which he be offered the sum of one hundred guineas." Honored by this request, Mendelssohn replied to the Society on November 28:
... I feel highly honored by the offer the Society has made, and I shall compose, according to the request, a symphony, an overture and a vocal piece. When they are finished, I hope to bring them over myself, and to express in person my thanks to the Society .... and I need not say how happy I shall be in thinking that I write for the Philharmonic Society.
The completed "Italian" symphony was presented to the Society and was performed from manuscript under Mendelssohn's direction on May 13, 1833. It was received with tremendous acclaim, the second movement being encored. Mendelssohn, however, withheld it from publication. Not satisfied with it, he hoped to make revisions. In a letter to his friends Ignatz and Charlotte Moscheles, he wrote on June 26, 1834:
The other day, Dr. Frank, whom you know, came to Dusseldorf, and I wished to show him something of my A-major Symphony. Not having it here, I began writing out the Andante again, and in so doing I came across so many errata that I got in?terested and wrote out the Minuet and Finale too, but with many necessary alterations; and whenever such occurred I thought of you, and of how you never said a word of blame, although you must have seen it all much better and plainer than I do now. The first movement I have not written down, because if once I begin with that, I am afraid I shall have to alter the entire subject, beginning with the fourth bar--and that means pretty nearly the whole first part--and I have no time for that just now.
In February of 1835 he was still working on the first movement and even after completing the revision he was still trying to bring greater perfection to the last movement. It was performed two years after Mendelssohn's death and did not reach publication until 1851.
In the "Italian" symphony all of Mendelssohn's best qualities are on dis?play--exquisite craftsmanship, refinement of style, spontaneity, and charm. In it also Mendelssohn treated the symphonic forms with the greatest freedom and originality. Any detailed formal explanation of the movements beyond the spontaneous expression that the sound alone conveys, would contribute little to the listener's enjoyment. For sheer beauty and for "habitual cheerfulness," this symphony surpasses anything he ever wrote.
FOURTH CONCERT Saturday Evening, May 4
Overture to Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg .... Wagner
Richard Wagner was born in Leipzig, May 22, 1813; died in Venice, February 13, 1883.
In Nazi Germany, Wagner's ideas, like a hundred aspects of German history during the last century and a half, were perverted to evil ends. Hitler's diabolical genius seized upon them for a purpose never intended, nor even dreamed of by their creator, and interpreted them as the embodiment of a political philosophy of force and Teutonic superiority. In his hands they became a postulation of both aristocratic racialism and plebeian socialism. In the minds of many, even today, Wagner is still the symbol of these ideas.
Program notes are not the medium for discussions of this nature; but it will not be amiss in our time to emphasize the true and moving spirit of humanity that is to be found in Wagner's art--a spirit that must not be overshadowed or lost by the superimposition of false doctrines of power, brute force, and hate. Wagner's art is still accepted and reverently attended to by the civilized world, as one of the most profound and searching expressions of the deepest sources of the human spirit. For Wagner, racial and national-socialist goals were to be achieved through art and music, and the invisible Volk-soul, not by means of any material institution or through coercion.
In the words of the great contemporary German humanitarian, Thomas Mann, Wagner's aim was:
To purify art and hold it sacred for the sake of a corrupt society ... He was all for catharsis and purification and dreamed of consecrating society by means of aesthetic elevation and cleansing it from its greed for gold, luxury, and all unloveliness ... it is thoroughly inadmissible to ascribe to Wagner's nationalistic attitudes and speeches the meaning they would have today. That would be to falsify and misuse them, to besmirch their romantic purity.
The national idea, when Wagner introduced it as a familiar and workable theme into his works--that is to say, before it was realized--was in its historically legitimate heroic epoch. It had its good, living, and genuine period; it was poetry and intellect--a future value. But when the basses thunder out at the stalls the verse about the "German Sword," or that kernel and finale of the "Meistersinger": "Though Holy Roman Empire sink to dust, There still survives our sacred German art," in order to arouse an ulterior patriotic emotion--that is demagogy. It is precisely these lines . . . that attest the intellectuality of Wagner's national?ism and its remoteness from the political sphere; they betray a complete anarchistic indiffer?ence to the state, so long as the spiritually German, the "Deutsche Kunst," survives.
Not since Bach has a composer so overwhelmingly dominated his period, so completely overtopped his contemporaries and followers with a sovereignty of imagination and potency of expression. But Bach and Wagner share little else, actually, aesthetically, or spiritually. Bach's music is transcendent, ab-
Thomas Mann, Freud, Goethe and Wagner (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1933).
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solute, and controlled; that of Wagner is most individual, emanating directly and unmistakably from his personality; it is movingly sensuous, excitingly emotional, and highly descriptive. His life, unlike that of Bach, was thrilling, superbly vital and colorful. While Bach worked oblivious of posterity, Wagner, sustained by a prophetic vision and knowledge that he was writing for distant generations, worked consciously for fame. It gave to his music a self-consciousness, an excessiveness, and at times an overeffectiveness. Bach died in obscurity, while Wagner lived to see every one of his major works performed on the stages of the world. He died with universal recognition and the realization that in the short space of his life he had changed the whole current of the tonal art, and that his mind and will had influenced the entire music of his age.
The synthetic and constructive power of Wagner's mind enabled him to assimilate the varied tendencies of his period to such a degree that he became the fulfillment of nineteenth-century romanticism in music. He conditioned the future style of opera, infusing into it a new emotional significance; he empha?sized the marvelous dramatic possibilities that lay in the orchestra, thereby realizing the further expressive potentialities of instrumentation. He created not a "school" of music, as many lesser minds than his have done, but a school of thought. His grandiose ideas, sweeping years away as though they were minutes, have ever since found fertilization in the imaginations of those creators of music who have felt that their world has become too small. He sensed Beethoven's striving for new spheres of emotional experience; and in a music that was new and glamorous, incandescent, unfettered, and charged with passion, he entered a world of strange ecstasies to which music had never before had wings to soar.
To the opera-going public, particularly in Germany, Wagner's single comedy Die Meistersinger is the most beloved of all his works. The gaiety and charming tunefulness of the score, and the intermingling of humor, satire, and romance in the text, are reasons enough for its universal popularity.
As a reconstruction of the social life in the quaint medieval city of Nurn-berg, its truthfulness and vividness are beyond all praise. In its harmless satire, aimed in kindly humor at the manners, vices, and follies of the "tradesmen-musicians" and their attempt to keep the spirit of minstrelsy alive by dint of pedantic formulas, the plot is worthy to stand beside the best comedies of the world. Certainly it has no equal in operatic literature.
Among the great instrumental works whose fundamental principle is that of polyphony (plural melody), the Prelude to Die Meistersinger stands alone. Polyphonic music, formerly the expression of corporate religious worship, now becomes the medium for the expression of the many-sidedness of individual character and the complexity of modern life. What a triumph for the man who was derided for his lack of scholarship because he had no desire to bury himself alive in dust, but who constructed, with a surety of control of all the resources of the most abstruse counterpoint, a monument of polyphonic writing such as had not seen the light since the days of Palestrina and Bach, yet with no sacrifice of naturalness, simplicity, and truthfulness.
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Like Beethoven in the "Leonore" overtures written for his opera Fidelio, Wagner constructed the symphonic introduction to his comedy so as to indicate the elements of the dramatic story, their progress in the development of the play, and finally the outcome.
The overture begins with the theme of the Meistersingers in heavy pompous chords which carry with them all the nobility and dignity indicative of the char?acter of the members of the guild, with their steadfast convictions and adherence to traditional rules. The theme is an embodiment of all that was sturdy, upright, and kindly in the medieval burgher.
The second theme, only fourteen measures in length, heard alternating in flute, oboe, and clarinet, expresses the tender love of Eva and Walther. With a flourish in the violins flaunted by brass, another characteristic meistersinger theme appears in the woodwinds, indicating the pompous corporate consciousness of the guild, symbolized in their banner whereon is emblazoned King David playing his harp.
In an interlude the violins sing the famous "prize song" in which, in the last act, the whole work finds its highest expression. This section is abruptly ended with a restatement of the meistersinger theme, now in the form of a short scherzo in humorous staccati notes. A stirring climax is reached with the simultaneous sounding of the three main themes: the "prize song" in the first violins and first horns and cellos; the banner theme in woodwinds, lower horns, and second violins; the meistersinger theme in basses of all choirs. There is little music so intricate, yet so human. In the words of Lawrence Gilman, it is "a wondrous score, with its Shakespearean abundance, its Shakespearean blend of humor and loveliness, the warmth and depth of its humanity, the sweet mellowness of its spirit, its incredible recapturing of the hue and fragrance of a vanished day, its perfect veracity and its transcendent art."
Symphony No. 88 in G major.........Haydn
Joseph Haydn was born March 31, 1732, in Rohrau; died May 31, 1809, in Vienna.
Five years before the birth of Haydn in 1732, Alexander Pope had written the first version of the Dunciad. When Haydn died in 1809, Walter Scott had just finished Marmion, while William Wordsworth was thirty-nine years of age and eleven years before had published his Romantic Manifesto in the Lyrical Ballads. Haydn saw the birth and death of Mozart and lived until Beethoven was thirty-nine years of age.
In the seventy-seven years of his life, Haydn had witnessed and helped to shape the great classic tradition in musical composition, and had lived to see his formal and serene classic world sink under the surging tide of Romanticism. He himself, however, played no part in nor reflected in his art that period of deep unrest at the end of the eighteenth century that resulted in the literary and philosophical insurrection of which Goethe in Germany and Rousseau in France were representative. Rousseau and the Sturm und Drang period in Ger-
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many had announced that an old civilization had broken up and a new one was about to appear. Swift progression was seething all over Europe; Beethoven had caught this spirit in his "Eroica" symphony (1805) and the "Appassionata" sonata (1806). But Haydn, living with his memories and gath?ering the few last laurels thrown at his feet, heard only the faintest echoes of these great works which tore at the very roots of musical expression and rent the whole fabric of musical forms.
The bombshells of Napoleon's army could be heard by Haydn as he lay dying near Vienna, and, with his death, disappeared the even tenor and calm serenity of existence so beautifully symbolized by his own life and so confidently expressed in his music. With Haydn died the classical tradition in music.
Music was late in responding to the violent note of revolt against tradition for the sake of emotion, chiefly because music in the eighteenth century was in a transitional state of technical development and was attempting to gain articulation and freedom through the cultivation of forms and designs unique to it. For this reason the opposition between classic and romantic prin?ciples in the second half of the eighteenth century was not as clearly denned in music as in literature. Haydn represents this period in music history; he systematized musical forms and secularized expression. Not only did he realize the unique powers of music as an art in itself and evolve and codify new forms, but he achieved the glorification of the natural music which exists in the hearts of the people, by elevating its essentially healthy and vigorous qualities into the realm of art. It is beyond controversy that, of the great masters of the German genius epoch, Haydn was the first to make himself intelligible to the masses. He spoke a musical language that appealed with the same directness to the skilled artist as to the merest layman. He disseminated his art among all. He was its true secularizer; he brought it to earth.
In his music, every thought takes on a grace of form. With a unity of the whole, there is a lucidity in detail, a neatness and elegance, and a perfect ease and clearness in the exposition of his ideas. For all who enjoy clear writing, who rejoice to see expression achieved with graceful directness and charming cer?tainty, Haydn composed. He is never too introspective, and his music is never too subjective. He never, in the Ossianic phrase, indulges in the "luxury of grief"; there is no passionate striving for the unobtainable here. Haydn's one theme in art is the joy and beauty of the moment; he saw things simply, and he recorded his impressions with honesty, frankness, and great economy of means.
In 1761. Haydn was appointed Vice-Kapellmeister at the court of Prince Paul Anton Esterhazy at Eisenstadt. The Prince maintained a small band of musicians under the direction of one Gregorius Joseph Werner, a composer of sorts whose chief interest lay in vocal and ecclesiastical music. Haydn's appoint?ment was made simply to augment the musical activity and not to compete in any way with the older musician. About a year after Haydn was established, however, Prince Paul died and was succeeded by his even more musically dedi?cated brother, Nicolaus, who encouraged Haydn's desire to reorganize the existing small orchestra into a more disciplined and professional group. He
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immediately saw to it that the orchestra was, from the physical side, as thoroughly equipped as possible with new or repaired instruments, modern music desks, and an increased library of musical literature. Ultimately, the orchestra consisted of fourteen musicians: five violins, one violoncello, one con?trabass, one flute, two oboes, two bassoons, and two horns. He also disciplined its members, who had previously taken a rather indifferent attitude toward their duties, by instituting numerous and required rehearsals and by insisting upon meticulous performance. "My Prince," wrote Haydn to his friend Griesinger, "was satisfied with my labors; I received applause; as director of the orchestra, I could make experiments, observe the results of them, perceive that which was weak, then rectify it, add, or take away. I was cut off from the world; no one in my vicinity knew me, or could make me go wrong, or annoy me; so I was forced to become original."
In this Utopian situation, with constant encouragement from his patron, Haydn continued for almost a half century to produce that great body of compositions which brought not only immortality to him, but also everlasting glory and respect to the name of Esterhazy.
The G-major Symphony on tonight's program was written about 1786, seven years before the composition of the twelve mature "Salomon" symphonies. Although it is a short and naive work among Haydn's great symphonies, it is by no means an early or immature one. Haydn had been in the services of his patron, Prince Esterhazy, for twenty-five years, and was fifty-four years of age at the time of its composition. Nowhere does he reveal more ingenious invention, more economy of means, and greater effect than he does in this delightful little work.
Only five years before this symphony was written, Haydn met the young Mozart for the first time; he was then twenty-four years his senior. For ten years there remained an unbroken friendship between the two, during which time their mutual respect and affection grew. It is more than a coincidence that the finest works of both were written after the beginning of their acquaintance in 1781. But it was the younger musician who exerted the stronger influence. Mozart's superior treatment of instruments, especially of the woodwind group, his more subtle harmonies, and especially his brilliant solutions of the problems of form, made a marked impression on the older master, whose works in time began to reveal a richer harmonization, a fuller orchestration, and a more mature treatment of correlative design.
The late Donald Francis Tovey, distinguished English musical scholar, no doubt influenced by Haydn's infectious humor, wrote the following diverting analysis:
Very clever persons, who take in music by the eye, have pointed out the extra?ordinary resemblance between the opening theme and that of the Finale of Beethoven's Eighth Symphony. The resemblance is equivalent to the scriptural warrant of the minister who, wishing to inveigh against a prevalent frivolity in head-gear, preached upon the text,
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"Top-knot, come down!"--which he had found in Matt. XXIV, 17 ("Let him which is on the housetop not come down").
The Top-knot school of exegesis still flourishes in music. This theme of Haydn's is as pregnant as that in Beethoven's Eighth Symphony, but it means something totally different both in harmony and in rhythm; nor did Beethoven's theme, in all the trans?formations it went through in his sketch-books, resemble it more in the earliest stages than in its final form. But the strangest thing about Beethoven's originality was that he was quite capable of amusing himself by noting discoveries in the best Top-knot manner. There is a coincidence of no less than nine notes between the theme of the Finale of Mozart's G-minor Symphony and that of the Scherzo of Beethoven's C-minor Sym?phony, and he noted it in his sketch-book! The point of noting it is precisely the utter contrast and absence of any significance common to the two ideas.
Of the glorious theme of the slow movement I was told by John Farmer that he once heard Brahms play it with walloping enthusiasm, exclaiming, "I want my Ninth Symphony to be like this!"
Here is a clear case of a movement that is to be measured by its theme. From that theme Haydn tries in vain to stray. He modulates to the dominant. That is treated as an incident in the course of the melody, which promptly repeats itself in full. The modulation is tried again with a new continuation. But the new continuation wistfully returns in four bars through the minor mode. Let us, then, have a variation. But not too varied; only a little decoration in counterpoint to our melody. But perhaps the full orchestra, with trumpets and drums, which were not used in the first movement, can effect a diversion. What it does effect is that a sequel shows enough energy to lead fully into the key of the dominant, instead of merely on to its threshold, so that the whole great tune now follows in that key.
The old sequel then returns to the tonic, and to the tune. Another tutti introduces the minor mode, and leads to a key, F major, related only to the tonic minor. This is definitely a remote modulation, and in F major the tune enters but has to exert itself with new rhetoric before it can return to its own key. There we hear it yet again, with a short coda in which Brahms's Ninth Symphony retires into a heaven where Brahms, accom?panied by his faithful red hedgehog, can discuss it with Haydn, Beethoven and Schubert over a dinner cooked by Maitre du clavecta Couperin, and washed down by the best Bach. Der Rote Igel was Brahms's favorite Vienna restaurant, and when the manager told him, "Sir, this is the Brahms of wines," he replied, "Take it away and bring me some Bach"; scilicet: brook, or water.
The Minuet is cheerful, with a quiet "joke on the drums. The Trio is one of Haydn's finest pieces of rustic dance music, with hurdy-gurdy drones which shift in disregard of the rule forbidding consecutive fifths. The disregard is justified by the fact that the essential objection to consecutive fifths is that they produce the effect of shifting hurdy-gurdy drones.
Haydn never produced a more exquisitely bred kitten than the main theme of the finale .... The movement is in rondo form, which is by no means so common as might be expected in Haydn's symphonies and larger quartets. Haydn has a way of beginning an important finale like a big rondo and then, after one episode, running away into some sort of fugue that gives an impression of spacious development which suffices without further formal sections. The completeness of rondo form in the present finale thus rather reduces its scale in comparison with many finales that are actually shorter. This is a melodic quality, not a formal or dramatic defect.
Donald F. Tovey, Essays in Musical Analysis (London: Oxford Univ. Press, 1935), I, 141.
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"Adamastro, Roi des vagues profondes," from
L'Ajricaine............Meyerbeer
Giacomo Meyerbeer was born September 5, 1791, in Berlin; died May 2, 1864, in Paris.
During the second quarter of the nineteenth century the operatic reign of Meyerbeer reached its apogee, not only in Paris and Berlin, but indirectly throughout the provincial theaters. Although he was not a composer of the first rank, he possessed a keen understanding of the taste of the public which he served and a peculiar gift for exaggeration and effective contrast in his music for the stage. Some beautiful cantilena passages set in the bizarre and trivial framework of his operas create, through concert performances, a higher evaluation of his work than the dramatic productions in their entirety justify.
The aria on tonight's program is taken from the last of his dramatic works, The African, text by Scribe, which was produced in Paris, April 28, 1865. The story deals with the period and experiences of Vasco da Gama, the explorer, and hence is quasi-historical in its appeal. The aria occurs at the beginning of Act III. It is sung by Nelusco, who is secretly plotting to destroy his ship. As he deliberately directs the vessel into an approaching storm, he calls upon Adamastro, King of the Ocean, and in this impressive invocation, warns all on board to beware the sound of the fierce winds, the lightning flashes, and the "dark waves that seek the storm-laden sky." In them he prophesies doom.
Farewell and Death of Roderigo, from Don Carlo . . . Verdi
Guiseppe Verdi was born in Roncole, Octo?ber 9, 1813; died in Milan, January 17, 1901.
Don Carlo, a great and relatively unappreciated opera, had its premiere in Paris, March 11, 1867. It was written by Verdi for the Paris Opera and con?formed to the French demand for a spectacular and grandiose style after the manner of Meyerbeer. It was Verdi's twenty-third opera and belongs to an intermediate period in his career, coming after the ever-popular Rigoletto (1851), II Trovatore (1853), and La Traviata (1853). In it Verdi was conscientiously reaching out toward the fuller, richer style with which he was later to astonish the world in A'ida Never satisfied with the original five-act version, he revamped it with the aid of Ghislanzoni, the librettist of A'ida, almost two decades later, when he had reached the zenith of his powers. He shortened the lengthy, rambling five acts to four, thus tightening the drama considerably. Much of the music was rewritten in a freer Italian manner than the French version permitted. As a result Don Carlo emerged with many of its faults still intact but with a fierce and incandescent power.
The opera, however, has never won enthusiastic acceptance; its success with the public, both in Italy and America, has always been moderate. In spite of the brilliant direction of Margaret Webster and the smartly tailored re?vivals it received recently at the Metropolitan (November 6, 1950, March
See pages 17-21.
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29, 1957) it still fails to reach the tremendous public always available for Rigoletto, La Traviata, and A'ida. Whether this continued failure to attract is due to a lack of perception on the part of the public, or the absence of qualities compelling success, we may not know, but the infrequency with which it is given throughout the world seems to indicate that it does not possess the ele?ments of popularity found in the other operas mentioned. Recognizing that it is not a consistent work, and in spite of its acknowledged unevenness, it still remains, in the words of Paul Henry Lang, "one of the most profoundly moving musical dramatic creations ever written" (New York Herald-Tribune, March 17, 1957).
The libretto of Don Carlo was based upon Schiller's famous drama of the same name. It tells the story of the erratic and morbid son of Phillip of Spain, who was engaged to Elizabeth of France, but subsequently became her step-son, Elizabeth having for reason of state been forced to marry his father. Unable to conceal his love for Elizabeth, Don Carlo is thrown into prison to be executed.
Roderigo, a friend of the unhappy lovers, who had become involved in their amorous intrigue, is shot to death by followers of Phillip when he visits Don Carlo in prison. The Farewell and Death of Roderigo comes from the last act of the opera. A condensation of the text follows:
Ah, Carlo, listen! Elizabeth waits for you tomorrow at San Giusto. She knows all. The earth trembles beneath me, Carlo, give me your hand! I shall die content in spirit, knowing that I was able to give to Spain a savior. Ah, do not forget me.
Adagio for Strings, Op. 11..........Barber
Samuel Barber was born March 9, 1910, in West Chester, Pennsylvania.
Samuel Barber received his early musical training at Curtis Institute, Phila?delphia, where he studied piano, voice, and composition. In 1935, three years after graduating, he won both the Pulitzer Prize in music (which was conferred upon him again the following year) and the Prix de Rome, which provided him with two years study in Italy.
The Adagio for Strings was composed in 1936 as the slow movement of a String Quartet in B minor. It exemplifies some of Barber's finest writing, con?taining the essence of the most individual and expressive qualities of his work. Barber has not forgotten that music must be communicative, and the sincerity and directness of his art establishes at once a rapport between the composer and his audience. His lucid and poised writing comes as a refreshing relief from much of the robust, nervous, and erratic music produced by so many of our young American composers today. His is an art that does not surprise, explode, or perspire; it has no conscious stylistic purpose, it shows no compulsion to direct American music along new or indigenous paths. In its large coherence, its simple logic, and its economy of means, Barber has given America a music that is aristocratic in style, yet warmly articulate.
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MAY FESTIVAL PROGRAM "Deh vieni alia finestra," from Don Giovanni . . . Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born in Salzburg, Janu?ary 27, 1756; died in Vienna, December S, 1791.
In the Wiener Zeitung (No. 91), 1778, after the first performance of Mozart's Don Giovanni in Prague there appeared the following criticism:
On Monday, October 29th, Kapellmeister Mozart's long expected opera "Don Giovanni" was performed by the Italian opera company of Prague. Musicians and connoisseurs are agreed in declaring that such a performance has never before been witnessed in Prague. Here Mozart himself conducted and his appearance in the orchestra was a signal for cheers which were renewed at his exit. The opera is exceedingly difficult of execution and the excellence of the representation, in spite of the short time allowed for studying the work, was the subject of general remark. The whole powers of both action and orchestra were put forward to do honor to Mozart. Considerable expense was incurred for additional chorus and scenery. The enormous audience was a sufficient guarantee of public favor.
The work was then given in Vienna, May 7, 1788, by command of Emperor Joseph II. It was a failure, however, in spite of the fact that it was given fifteen performances that year. A contemporary writer, Schink, indignant at the cold reception given the work in Vienna, wrote, "How can this music, so full of force, majesty, and grandeur be expected to please the lovers of ordi?nary opera The grand and noble qualities of the music in 'Don Giovanni' will appeal only to the small minority of the elect. It is not such as to tickle the ear of the crowd and leave the heart unsatisfied. Mozart is no ordinary composer."
Goethe, after a performance in Weimar in 1797, writes to Schiller, "Your hopes for opera are richly fulfilled in 'Don Giovanni' but the work stands absolutely alone and Mozart's death prevents any prospect of its example being followed."
In the second act of the opera, Don Giovanni, pursuing his course of frivolity and dissipation, turns his attentions to the waiting maid of his former mistress, Donna Elvira. To clear the way, he persuades his valet, Leporello, to exchange cloaks and hats with him and to station himself beneath her balcony window, while he, the Don, utters words of tenderness and feigned repentance. Elvira descends to the garden where Leporello receives her with mock protestations of love. As they leave the scene, Don Giovanni is free to woo the servant maid which he does with this charming serenade. Accompanying himself on the mandolin, he sings:
From out your window smile down at me, while I with sighs of love sing this ditty. I would move your heart, for you have quite undone me. Grant me your love and pity, you who are fairer than the rose, sweeter than honey and whose voice is more subtle than a zephyr. Descend my love, I entreat you before death ends my torments.
"Nemico della patria" from Andrea Chenier . . . Giordano
Umberto Giordano was born in Foggia, Italy, August 26, 1867; died in Milan, November 12, 1948.
Like a true Italian opera composer, Giordano displayed an exuberant gift
Walter James Turner, Mozart, The Man and His Works (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1938) p. 348.
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for melody and a natural instinct for theatrical effect. In spite of the fact that his scores in general lacked dramatic solidity and structural firmness, Andrea Chinier reveals a strong individual style and maintains a dramatic unity not often found in his other works; it won for him, therefore, the first and greatest success of his career. The opera is not cast in the traditional mold (recitative, arias, duets, chorus, etc.), but follows, rather, the style of Verdi's later works, where the music flows uninterrupted throughout the score, reaching pivotal points of high tension wherever the text indicates or justifies it, as the aria on tonight's program attests.
Andre Chenier, a poet, patriot, and dreamer, born in Constantinople, came to Paris for his education. He believed in the early ideals of the revolutionists and their cry for individual freedom from want and oppression. But as the Revolution turned into a reign of bloody terror, he expressed misgivings, was arrested, imprisoned, and finally guillotined on July 25, 1794. The opera plot arranged from these historical facts by Luigi Illica (co-author with Giocosa of Puccini's La Boheme, Tosca, and Madama Butterfly) drew more from the imagination of the librettist than from the known incidents of Chenier's life.
The aria "Nemico della patria" from Act III is sung by Gerard, a revolu?tionary leader. He and Andrea Chenier are rivals for the love of Madeleine, daughter of the Countess of Coigny. Presiding over the Revolutionary Tribunal to which Chenier is brought for voicing his opposition to Robespierre, Gerard uses this opportunity to make away with his rival, and signs the fatal document that will send him to the guillotine. Filled with conflicting emotions of respect for and envy of his fellow revolutionist, he sings:
The "enemy of his country"
Ah! that's an old tale;
But one that never fails to touch the mob. (He writes)
"Born at Constantinople, an alien;
Student at St. Cyr; a soldier;
And a traitor; Dumouriez's accomplice;
A poet; a dangerous man;
A sower of sedition." (The pen falls from his hand)
Time was when I rejoiced
That passions vile could never sway me;
Innocent, pure and brave,
I deemed myself a giant;
I'm still a slave!
'Tis a mere change of masters!
I'm now but the bondsman of infamous passion!
Worse than that! A murderer sentimental,
Who while he murders, weeps!
Son of the glorious Revolution,
When first her cry "Be free!" rang through the world,
To her voice my own then made reply:
How have I fallen from my glorious pathway!
Once, like a line of radiant light it lay before me!
To establish the hearts of all my fellow-comrades;
To bid the mourner weep no more,
Console the weary suff'rer,
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Make of this world a paradise,
Where men should be gods, divine;
To bind all comrades in one vast embrace!
The holy task I now abandon.
With hate my heart is filled!
What wrought this change Irony grim! 'Twas love!
I'm a mere voluptuary;
The master I now serve is Passion!
All else is false!
The one real thing is Passion!
"Eri tu," from Un Ballo in maschera.......Verdi
After a lapse of several years, this opera was given a sumptuous revival at the Metropolitan Opera House in 1941. It was first presented in Rome in 1859, with the definite intention of unmasking certain political abuses. Originally the composer had intended to make his scenes and characters Italian, to leave no doubt as to his meaning. But under the existing conditions this would have been too dangerous, so Verdi wisely decided to disguise his opera with a New England setting in Puritan times. What would otherwise be an absurd ana?chronism is thus at least partially justified. "The Masked Ball" contains much good music, and this forceful and dramatic aria is the cry of the husband, Renato, for vengeance on his friend Riccardo who, he thinks, has betrayed him and stolen his wife's affections. It is one of the most famous of baritone arias in all opera. Addressing his wife he sings:
Recitative--Rise! I say! Ere departing, once more thy son thou may'st behold:
In darkness and silence, there thy shame and my dishonor hiding!
Yet not at her, nor at her frail existence be the blow directed. (Turning to the picture of Riccardo!)
Other, far other vengeance to purge the stain,
I am planning: it is thy life blood!
From thy base heart my dagger ere long shall bid it redly flow, retribution de?manding for my woe! Aria-It is thou that hast sullied a soul so pure,
In whose chasteness my spirit delighted.
Thou betray'd me, in whose love I felt all secure!
Of my life thou hast poison'd the stream!
Trait'rous heart! is it thus he's requited,
Who the first in thy friendship did seem
Oh, the pangs of joy are departed;
Lost caresses that made life a heaven;
When Emilia, an angel pure-hearted,
In my arms felt the transports of love!
All is over! and hate's bitter leaven,
And longing for death fill my heart!
"Russian Easter" Overture......Rimsky-Korsakov
Nicholas Rimsky-Korsakov was born in Tichvin, government of Nov?gorod, in 1844; died in St. Petersburg (now Leningrad) June 21, 1908.
A remarkable movement in Russian music took place in the third and fourth quarters of the nineteenth century and was identified with a group of com-
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posers whose ideals, efforts, and influence wrought a new musical literature, true to Russian racial qualities and opposed to the influences of Southern and Western Europe. It was inaugurated by Glinka (1804-57) and Dargomyzhsky (1813-69) with their operas A Life for the Tsar (1836) and Rusalka (1856), respectively. This movement for a nationalistic expression in music gained in?creasing impetus, and under the leadership of Balakirev, it was promoted and nurtured by "The Five," a group comprising Balakirev, Borodin, Cui, Rimsky-Korsakov, and Moussorgsky. These composers are indissolubly bound with what is now known as Russian music. While it is not a simple matter to define specifically the innovations which this group effected, it is possible to point to the fact that this literature is distinguished from that of the Romanticists of Western Europe by its underlying spirit, its freedom from the convention?alities of harmony, rhythm, and design and its emphasis upon realism as a criterion and folk elements as a source of inspiration. While Romanticism in Germany and France was delving into pure, abstract, lyric beauty and into pessimism and human suffering as richer sources of emotional expression, "The Five" tended to opposite goals--an art built on and close to the life of the folk and an absence of all sophistications of formal or academic expression. Whether in the field of opera, symphony, church music, or the ballet, this spirit rose logically and persistently, and, in the hands of composers who were almost zealots for "nationalism," it colored and shaped a vast literature which is perhaps more unique and more indigenous to the race than the musical litera?ture any other single nation has yet produced.
The group life of "The Five" was as free from internal limitation or coercion in certain directions as it was free from non-Russian influence. Though the members of the group met often to discuss theories and practices in detail and to review and criticize the work of each other, there is not the slightest evidence of plagiarism or mutual repression toward a "style" of writing. Each enjoyed absolute freedom in the direction and manner of growth. None began composi?tion with a thorough grounding in the techniques of musical creation, viz., har?mony, counterpoint, and orchestration, and the lack of training is evident in the early efforts of the several men. What is outstanding, however, is a sincerity, a boldness of imagination, and an intuition which carry conviction with the listener in spite of frankly bad grammar and rhetoric, to borrow terms from the written and spoken word. Soon, however, these Russian gentlemen, though all destined for careers other than music, began to apply themselves diligently to the study of composition, although music was for them only an avocation, in order that they might be able to express themselves more adequately and direct?ly. Rimsky-Korsakov was, and remained, not only the most scholarly and technically proficient of the group, but the most refined and discriminating. The folk songs of great Russia, the source from which these composers drew their inspiration, were, in the hands of this fastidious craftsman, transformed into a vigorous and colorful art. Of all his works there were three that, as he himself wrote, exposed, "a considerable degree of virtuosity and bright sonority
Borodin was by profession a chemist; Cui, a military engineer; Rimsky-Korsakov, a naval officer; and Moussorgsky, a civil servant.
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without Wagner's influence, within the limits of the usual make-up of Glinka's orchestra." These were an orchestral composition on the subject of certain episodes from Scheherazade, the "Russian Easter" Overture, and the Caprkcio Espagnole. The first two works were completed in the year 1888. In his book My Musical Life, Rimsky-Korsakov wrote of the overture on tonight's program:
The rather lengthy, slow introduction of the Easter Sunday Overture, on the theme of "Let God Arise!" alternating with the ecclesiastical theme "An angel wailed," appeared to me, in its beginning, as it were, the ancient Isaiah's prophecy concerning the resurrection of Christ. The gloomy colors of the Andante lugubre seemed to depict the Holy Sepulcher that had shone with ineffable light at the moment of the Resurrection--in the transition to the Allegro of the Overture. The beginning of the Allegro, "Let them also that hate Him flee before Him," led to the holiday mood of the Greek Orthodox church service on Christ's matins; the solemn trumpet voice of the Archangel was replaced by a tonal repro?duction of the joyous, almost dancelike bell tolling, alternating now with the sexton's rapid reading and now with the conventional chant of the priest's reading the glad tidings of the Evangel. The "Obikhod" theme "Christ Is Arisen," which forms a sort of subsidiary part of the Overture, appears amid the trumpet blasts and the bell tolling, constituting also a triumphant coda. In this Overture there were thus combined reminiscences of the ancient prophecy, of the Gospel Narrative and also a general picture of the Easter Service with its "pagan merrymaking." The capering and leaping of the Biblical King David before the Ark, do they not give expression to a mood of the same order as the mood of the idol-worshippers' dance Surely the Russian Orthodox "Obikhod" is instrumental dance music of the Church, is it not And do not the waving beards of the priests and sextons clad in white vestments and surplices, and intoning "Beautiful Easter" in the tempo Allegro vivo, etc., transport the imagination to pagan times And all these Easter loaves and twists and the glowing tapers .... How far a cry from the philosophic and socialistic teaching of Christ! This legendary and heathen side of the Holiday, this transition from the gloomy and mysterious evening of Passion Sunday to the unbridled pagan-religious merrymaking on the morn of Easter Sunday is what I was eager to reproduce in my Overture. Accordingly, I requested Count Golyenischeff-Kootoozoff to write a program in verse--which he did for me. But I was not satisfied with his poem and wrote in prose my own program, which same is appended to the published score. Of course in that program I did not explain my views and my conception of the "Bright Holiday" [the popular Russian name for Easter], leaving it to tones to speak for me. Evidently these tones do, within certain limits, speak of my feelings and thoughts, for my Overture raises doubts in the minds of some hearers, despite the considerable clarity of the music. In any event, in order to appreciate my Overture even ever so slightly, it is necessary that the hearer should have attended Easter morning service at least once and, at that, not in a domestic chapel, but in a cathedral thronged with people from every walk of life, with several priests conducting the cathedral service--something that many intellectual Russian hearers, let alone hearers of other confessions, quite lack nowadays. As for myself, I had gained my impressions in my childhood passed near the Tikhvin monastery itself.t
Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Sly Musical Life, trans, by J. A. Joffe (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1942) p. 296.
t Ibid., pp. 294-96.
52
FIFTH CONCERT Sunday Afternoon, May 5
Concerto in A minor............Vivaldi
Antonio Vivaldi was born in Venice be?tween 1675-78; died in Vienna in 1741.
Of the details of Vivaldi's life very little is known; even the exact dates of his birth and death are still in question. He was a cleric we know, although his position in the church has never been satisfactorily revealed. He was born in Venice, the son of a violinist of the Ducal Chapel of St. Mark's and was ordained as a priest, according to the records, on March 23, 1703. Appointed Maestro di violino at the Seminario Musicale del Ospadale della Pieta, the most famous of the four Venetian conservatories, he was later designated as its Maestro dei concerti. He toured Europe after 1725 as a virtuoso performer on the violin and as an opera composer and impressario, for a time officiated in Mantua as the Maestro di capelle di camera of the Landgrave of Hesse-Darmstadt, resumed his position at the Seminario in 1736, and died in poverty in Vienna toward the end of July, 1741. Of these facts there is more or less certainty.f
Although Vivaldi's name has long been known to musicians and historians of music, his reputation has been that of a virtuoso performer, rather than that of a first-rate creator. While he lived, however, he was more famous and re?spected as a composer than his great German contemporary Johann Sebastian Bach. By the end of his life his reputation had begun to wane, and shortly before his death he was totally forgotten. The bulk of his manuscripts, scat?tered throughout Europe, remained unknown to the world for almost two centuries; so did his position as a creative artist. In an article on Vivaldi in Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians we read, "Vivaldi mistook the facility of an expert performer (and as such' he had few rivals among contemporaries) for the creative faculty which he possessed but in a limited degree . . ."
Within the past twenty-five years in Italy, a vigorous campaign has been under way to restore Vivaldi to his rightful place as one of the truly great names and as one of the most prolific composers in the history of the world's music. In the thirties, the National Library of Turin acquired the enormous Mauro Foa and Renzo Giordano Collection of Vivaldi's music, three fourths of which was unpublished. Shortly after, in September, 1939, Alfredo Casella, who has edited a number of his worksx organized a memorable Vivaldi Festival at the Accademia Chigiana in Siena. At the time he wrote: "The prodigious
The others were the Mendicanti, the Incurabile, and the Ospodaletto di San Giovanni. These were original?ly homes or "hospitals" for orphans and foundlings, supported by the rich and aristocratic families of the city. The Pieta was famed for the instruction it provided in instrumental music.
t Mario Rinaldi, Antonio Vivaldi (Milano: Instituto d'alta cultura, 1943).
Casella has edited the Gloria, the Concerto in C minor for solo violin and string orchestra (Op. ?, No. 11 of La Celra), the Concerto Grosso in D minor (No. 11 of L'Estro harmonico), and twelve of Vivaldi's concerti, motets, and arias.
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wealth of Vivaldi's musical invention, the dramatic force which recalls im?peratively the brilliance and fire of the great Venetian painters, the mastery of choral polyphony, the marvelous dynamism of the instrumental parts . . . the high quality of the emotion which animates his work--all put Vivaldi in a wholly new light."
The discovery and reconstruction of Vivaldi's music has been continuous. Barely a decade ago the world really became aware of his tremendous pro?ductivity. In 1948 Marc Pincherlef listed 541 known instrumental works, seventy-three of which were sonatas in two or three parts, 445 concertos, twenty-three symphonies, in addition to forty-nine operas and an immense quantity of miscellaneous dramatic and vocal music uncatalogued, but known to exist in libraries throughout Europe and America. Each year since has brought to light more authenticated compositions. Not since the recovery of the music of Bach in the middle of the nineteenth century has there been such a dramatic discovery of hitherto unknown musical treasure, and from it we can now do more than surmise the major role Vivaldi played in the evolu?tion of instrumental music in general and of the classical symphony, the concerto grosso, and the solo concerto in particular.
The fact that Bach greatly admired Vivaldi's music, learned from it, and transcribed it should have alerted scholars long since to its real significance. The first arrangements or transcriptions which have any real artistic value are those of Bach. At a time when his attention was first strongly attracted to the instrumental music of Italy by the principles of form which Italian composers had originated and developed with such skill, he arranged some of Vivaldi's violin concertos for the clavier and orchestra,! and thereby estab?lished the keyboard concerto. Not only did Bach pay Vivaldi the respect of transcribing his works, but from them he learned early in his creative life the principles of logical construction, continuity of musical thought, and the plas?tic handling of themes. Bach always remained a faithful follower of Vivaldi in his concertos, staying within the limits of the form established by him. But Vivaldi's influence was not confined to the pages of Bach. According to Charles Burney, the eighteenth-century musical historian, Bach was not alone in his admiration for the Italian master, whose violin concertos were immensely popular and constantly studied in Germany.
From a careful examination of the music of Vivaldi, now so copiously available, the incalculable influence of his art upon the music of generations after him becomes more apparent. A daring experimenter in structural form, he not only established the concerto form and style, but he anticipated the methods and divisions of the classical symphony and hinted at the ideas of thematic contrast and elaboration that later characterized the symphonic form.
Notes to Cetra-Soria Records, Collegium Musicum Italicum di Roma (Virtuosi di Roma), Vivaldi concerti.
t Marc Pincherle, Antonio Vivaldi ct la musiquc instrumentale (Paris: Fluory, 1948).
t Of the sixteen "Concertos after Vivaldi for clavier," published in Vol. 42 of the complete edition of Bach's works (Back Gesellschalt), only six are actually by Vivaldi. A complete edition of Vivaldi's works is now being prepared under tire direction of Francesco Malipiero (Instituto Italiano per la pubblicazione t diffusions dellc opere di Antonio Vivaldi, published by Ricordi). Over one hundred and fifty volumes are now available.
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His instincts led him to employ techniques in composition long before they were accepted by other composers. From Italy in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, and from Vivaldi in particular, came the vocal and in?strumental music upon which Bach and Handel, and later Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, ultimately built their enduring art.
Vivaldi wrote about two hundred concertos for the violin, numerous ones for all varieties of instruments from the mandolin to the trumpet, including some for piccolo, oboe, bassoon, and horn. His sixteen concertos for flute and three for piccolo, with string orchestra and harpsichord accompaniment, like many of his concerti per complessi vari (ensemble concertos) were composed for students of La Pieta. Realizing the technical limitations of these perform?ers, he composed works which, although less daring and spectacular than many of his others, still provide the player with plenty of opportunity to display his prowess, and the instrument to reveal its expressive potential in slow movements and its technical bravura in fast ones.
The Concerto in A minor, one of three written for the piccolo, was first published in 1953, as Volume 152 of the complete edition. It is cast in the conventional three movement form (fast-slow-fast). Within the movements themselves are to be found typical Vivaldi solo concerto characteristics. In the first movement (Allegro, 4--4 time) there are five ritornelli or tutti and four solo passages. The opening theme in the introductory tutti appears in the other similar sections--a practice that anticipates the Rondo form as used later by Haydn and Mozart. In general, the tutti sections carry the thematic burden of the movement. The solo passages engage in runs, arpeggios, and melodic figurations. What they may lack in basic melodic interest, they gain in modulatory effects (shifts of harmonic level). Before the final and com?plete restatement of the opening ritorncllo, the last solo section reaches a climax of virtuoso effect.
The second movement (Larghetto, 4-4 time) is introduced by a slow orches?tral prelude, followed by a steady paced, but discreetly decorated, melody for the solo piccolo, and is concluded by a very short postlude.
The third and last movement (Allegro, 2-4 time), like the first, is made up of five tutti and four solo passages in which the writing for the solo instrument exceeds the opening movement in elaboration. The opening tutti is restated in its entirety.
Five Tudor Portraits........Vaughan Williams
Ralph Vaughan Williams was born in Down Arapney, Gloucestershire, England, October 12, 1872.
Though my rime be ragged, Tattered and jagged, Rudely raine-beaten, Rusty and moth-eaten; If ye take well there with, It hath in it some pith.
--John Skelton-
First performed in America at the Peninsula Music Festival, Wisconsin, under the direction of Thot Johnson, with John Krell as soloist.
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It was Sir Edward Elgar who suggested to Vaughan Williams that he look into the poetry of John Skelton as a possible source for a new work. No doubt Elgar sensed that the poetry of this racy and robust early Elizabethan would evoke immediate response from a composer whose idiom was so indigenously English, whose character was so disarmingly naive, and whose talents were so astonishingly versatile.
About the man and his life, the world at large knows little. He has dedicated himself to composing, teaching, and study; he has rarely made public appear?ances, and only in unguarded moments has he revealed anything about his personal feelings or tastes. The world has come to know him almost entirely through his music. "One might say," writes Hubert Foss, his recent biographer, "that he has a great deal of music, and very little biography." Indeed his output has been prodigious. He has written in all forms--for theater, sym?phonic orchestra, chorus, solo voice, chamber ensembles--and never has his high purpose and artistic integrity faltered.
He was born the son of a clergyman and spent his youth in a tradition of comfortable living and quiet poise. He was educated in a public school, attended several large conservatories (pupil of Parry and Stanford in London, Bruch in Berlin, Ravel in Paris), and at Trinity College in Cambridge in 1901 received the Doctor of Music degree. Early in his career he became vitally interested in English folk music and by 1904, at the age of thirty-two, was an ardent and creatively active member of the English Folk Song Society. Later he broadened this interest to include old English art music, particularly that which had issued from the Tudor period, the most glorious of all eras in the history of England's music.
Vaughan Williams has always had faith in the corrective and purifying effect of folk song as a guard against insincerity and oversophistication. This faith has guided him through a long, creative life, and has conditioned an art that is innately English, yet one that speaks to the hearts of men of other lands.
In Three Norjolk Rhapsodies for orchestra (1906-07) and the opera Hugh the Drover (1911-14), the folk music impulse was strongly evident, but in the better known Fantasia on a Theme oj Tallis for strings, the broader, more artful English style that springs from the music of the Tudor period began to show its influence. Ultimately, his expression became highly personalized, often quite bold and uncompromising; but it has never lost its truly nation?alistic traits. He has done much for English music by correcting the Romantic excesses that were still dominating his era. His penchant for folk song expres?sion, with its essentially modal harmony and melody, helped him to escape the chromatic indulgences of his immediate predecessors. He brought a new fresh?ness, a new gusto and humor, a challenging simplicity and honesty to his coun?try's music.
Like Verdi, Vaughan Williams has retained over a long life all of his intel?lectual and creative energies. Today, at the age of eighty-five, he is not only regarded as "The Grand Old Man of English Music" but the fountainhead of
Hubert James Foss, Ralph Vaughan Williams; aSludy (London: Harrap, 1950).
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the generation that has followed him, upon which he continues to exert a tre?mendous influence.
John Skelton (c. 1460-1529), the rakish author of the poems found in the Five Tudor Portraits, was a phenomenal literary figure at the dawn of the Renaissance. He was twenty-five years of age before the War of the Roses ended, and he lived through the reign of Henry VIII. His career was as stormy as his verses were lively. Ordained in 1498, he was imprisoned in 1501 for reasons unknown. In 1504, he became Rector of Diss in Norfolk, but scan?dalized his parishioners by exposing the greed and ignorance of the clergy in the most scathing and brutal attack to appear prior to the Reformation (The Boke of Colyn Cloute, 1519). He made an enemy of his Bishop, Richard Nix, and through his violent indictment of Cardinal Wolsey, the powerful prime minister of Henry VIII (Why Come Ye Not To Cotirte, 1522), he was again imprisoned. Finally, he took sanctuary in Westminister Abbey, where he was protected until his death on June 21, 1529.
In spite of the fame that attended him as tutor to Prince Henry (later Henry VIII) and the reputation he won as a great humanist once praised by Erasmus, this learned grammarian, renowned writer of Latin verse and respected poet laureate of Oxford, chose to write poetry as though he were no more than a tavern poet, ignoring all precepts of classic form and elegant style. During the Tudor period, his name became proverbial for farcical jocularity, raciness, and brutal satire.
Vaughan Williams was sixty-four years of age when he wrote this score, and in it we experience a kind of resurgence of youthful energies. Perhaps he found, as Sir Edward Elgar suggested he might, a new impulse in the full-blooded vitality, tenderness, and cheerful secularity of John Skelton. At any rate, Five Tudor Portraits again reveals his fundamental sympathy with the basic English national character.
I Ballad -The Tunning1 of Elinor Rumming For Chorus and Mezzo-soprano
Elinor Rumming kept an ale-house at Leatherheath. The Inn is still in exis?tence today under the name "The Running Horse"; Elinor's portrait hangs on one of its walls. Skelton has written a picaresque ballad in short lines aver?aging five syllables each, rhyming in groups of twos, threes, fours, and even more, not unlike old alliterative English verse. The chorus describes Elinor the '"comely Jill" whose "youth is far past." The opening direct musical idea (a descending rhythmic figure) which characterizes her throughout, is asserted frequently and forms the opening measures of several sections, acting as a unifying agent. The whole section remains in 3--4 time.
After a short instrumental interlude, interest is shifted to the characters who frequent the tavern ("Come who so will, to Elinor on the hill"). The time changes to 9-8, and the music, by passing through a number of well-defined keys, suggests the hurly-burly created by the drinkers. A bassoon cadenza
1 Brewing
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(andante doloroso) introduces us to the first solo passage ("Then hither came drunken Alice"), accompanied by chattering piccolo, muted trumpet and horn, and ordinary woodwinds. Realistic attempts are made at Alice's stammering speech and frequent hiccups. She rolls off to sleep to two crooning bassoons in the lower register. The whole musical section is as hearty and unsubtle as the text. "Now in cometh another rabble" introduces the chorus. Tuba and bass voices in unison sing a drinking song in which other voices soon join ("With Hey and with Ho!"). The dotted-note rhythm accompanying "Set we down a row" is taken up by the orchestra and worked over to the end of the section. As the chorus in a brief but hilarious presto bellows out its "Tidy Tirlow!" the ballad comes to a raucous close:
Tell you I will,
If that ye will
A-while be still,
Of a comely Jill
That dwelt on a hill:
She is somewhat sage
And well worn in age:
For her visage
It would assuage
A man's courage.
Droopy and drowsy,
Scurvy and lowsy,
Her face all bowsy,
Comely crinkled,
VVondrously wrinkled
Like a roast pig's ear,
Bristled with hair.
Her nose some deal hooked,
and camously-crooked,
Never stopping,
But ever dropping;
Her skin loose and slack,
Grained like a sack;
With a crooked back,
Jawed like a jetty;8
A man would have pity
To see how she is gummed,
Fingered and thumbed,
Gently jointed,
Greased and anointed
Up to the knuckles;
Like as they were with buckles
Together made fast.
Her youth is far past!
And yet she will jet Like a jollivet,
2 Snub nosed 9 Projection 4 Gay young girl 8 Dress " Coquetry
58
In her furred Socket,
And gray russet rocket,5
With simper and cocket."
Her hood of Lincoln green
It has been hers, I ween,
More than forty year;
And so doth it appear,
For the green bare threades
Look like sere weedes,
Withered like hay,
The wool worn away.
And yet, I dare say
She thinketh herself gay
Upon the holiday
When she doth her array
And girdeth on her geets7
Stitched and pranked with pleats;
Her kirtle, Bristol-red,
With clothes upon her head
That weigh a sow of lead,
Writhen in wondrous wise
After the Saracen's guise,
With a whim-wham8
Knit with a trim-tram
Upon her brain-pan;
Like an Egyptian
Capped about,
When she goeth out.
And this comely dame, I understand, her name Is Elinor Rumming, At home in her wonning;1" And as men say She dwelt in Surrey In a certain stead11 Beside Leatherhead.
7 Clothes Trinket Pretty trifle 10 Dwelling " Place
FIFTH CONCERT
She is a tonnish gib,12 The devil and she be sib." But to make up my tale She breweth nappy ale, And maketh thereof pot-sale To travellers, to tinkers, To sweaters, to swinkers, And all good ale-drinkers, That will nothing spare But drink till they stare And bring themselves bare, With 'Now away the marel And let us slay care'. As wise as an hare!
Come who so will To Elinor on the hill With 'Fill the cup, fill!' And sit there by still, Early and late. Thither cometh Kate, Cisly, and Sare, With their legs bare, They run in all haste, Unbraced and unlaced; With their heeles dagged, Their kirtles all jagged, Their smocks all to-ragged, With titters and tatters, Bring dishes and platters, With all their might running To Elinor Rumming To have of her tunning.
She lendeth them on the same,
And thus beginneth the game.
Some wenches come unlaced
Some housewives come unbraced
Some be flybitten,
Some skewed as a kitten;
Some have no hair-lace,
Their locks about their face
Such a rude sort
To Elinor resort
From tide to tide.
Abide, abide!
And to you shall be told
How her ale is sold
To Maud and to Mold.
Some have no money
That thither comi
For their ale to pay.
That is a shrewd array!
"Cat
Akin u Hogwash
Elinor sweared, 'Nay,
Ye shall not bear away
Mine ale for nought,
By him that me bought!'
With 'Hey, dog, hey!
Have these hogs away!'
With 'Get me a staffe
The swine eat my draffe!"
Strike the hogs with a club,
They have drunk up my swilling-tub!'
Then thither came drunken Alice,
And she was full of tales,
Of tidings in Wales,
And of Saint James in Gales,
And of the Portingales,1"
With 'Lo, Gossip, I wis,
Thus and thus it is:
There hath been great war
Between Temple Bar
And the Cross in Cheap,
And there came an heap
Of millstones in a rout'.
She speaketh thus in her snout,
Snivelling in her nose
As though she had the pose."
'Lo, here is an old tippet,
An ye will give me a sippet
Of your stale ale,
God send you good sale!'
'This ale', said she, 'is noppy;
Let us suppe and soppy
And not spill a droppy,
For, so may I hoppy,
It cooleth well my croppy'
Then began she to weep
And forthwith fell asleep.
('With Hey! and with Ho! Sit we down a-row, And drink till we blow.')
Now in cometh another rabble: And there began a fabble,17 A clattering and babble They hold the highway, They care not what men say, Some, loth to be espied, Start in at the back-side Over the hedge and pale, And all for the good ale. (With Hey! and with Ho!
15 Portuguese 10 Catarrh 17 Jabbering
50
MAY FESTIVAL PROGRAM
Sit we down a-row, And drink till we blow.) Their thirst was so great They asked never for meat, But drink, still drink, And 'Let the cat wink, Let us wash our gummes From the dry crummes!' Some brought a wimble, Some brought a thimble, Some brought this and that Some brought I wot ne'er what.
And all this shift they make For the good ale sake. 'With Hey! and with Ho! Sit we down a-row, And drink till we blow, And pipe "Tirly Tirlow!'" But my fingers itch, I have written too much Of this mad mumming Of Elinor Rumming! Thus endeth the geste Of this worthy feast.
II Intermezzo -Pretty Bess For Chorus and Baritone
In this brief purely lyrical section (allegretto grazioso) the chorus echos the love song of the singer throughout. A quiet, lilting phrase in the oboe (hovering between G major and E minor) introduces the solo "My Proper Bess."
My proper Bess, My pretty Bess;
Turn once again to me! For sleepest thou, Bess,
Or wakest thou, Bess, Mine heart it is with thee.
My daisy delectable, My primrose commendable, My violet amiable, My joy inexplicable, Now turn again to me.
Alas! I am disdained,
And as a man half maimed,
My heart is so sore pained!
I pray thee, Bess, unfeigned, Yet come again to me!
By love I am constrained To be with you retained, It will not be refrained: I pray you, be reclaimed And turn again to me.
My proper Bess, My pretty Bess,
Turn once again to me! For sleepest thou, Bess,
Or wakest thou, Bess, Mine heart it is with thee.
Ill Burlesca -Epitaph on John Jayberd of Diss For Men's Chorus
This movement is a scorching epitaph on one John Jayberd, the despised clerk of Diss when Skelton was its Rector. He was a storm center of malice and strife during the two years Skelton knew him. The Rector's vicious dis?like for his clerk stimulated him to write some of his most biting satire. The poem is written as a mock commemorative Mass that rejoices at his death (he died in 1506). It is written in rhyming Monkish Latin, interspersed with Tudor English and a brief reference to French, not only for the sake of his rigid system of rhyming, but suggesting with satirical intention, that in no language can anything good be said of the culprit. A male chorus mutters, jeers, and
60
FIFTH CONCERT
expresses uncontrollable pleasure that John is no more. "Sepultus est among the weeds: God forgive him his misdeeds!"
Sequitur trigintale
Tale quale rationale,
Licet parum curiale,
Tamcn satis est formate,
Joannis Clerc, hominis
Cujusdam mvltinominis,
Joannes Jayberd qui vocatur,
Clerc deribus nuncupatur.
Obiit sanctus iste pater
Anno Domini Millesimo Quingentesimo sexto.
In parochia de Diss
Non erat sibi similis;
In malitia vir insignis,
Duplex corde et bilinguis;
Senio conjectus,
Omnibus suspectus,
Nemini dilectus,
Sepultus est among the weeds:
God forgive him his misdeeds!
Carmina cum cannis
Cantemus jesta Joannis:
Clerk obiit vere,
Jayberd nomenque dedere:
Diss populo natus,
Clerk deribus estque vocatus.
Nunquam sincere
Solitus sua crimina flere:
Cui male lingua loquax--
--Que mendax que, fuere
Et mores tales
Resident in nemine quotes;
Carpens vitales
Auras, turbare sodales
Et cives socios.
Asinus, mulus velut, et bos.
Quid petis, hie sit quis
John Jayberd, incola de Diss;
Cui, dum vixerat is,
Sociantur jurgia, vis, Its.
Jam jacet hie stark dead,
Never a tooth in his head.
Adieu, Jayberd, adieu,
In faith, deacon thou crew!
Fratres, orate
For this knavate,
By the holy rood,
Did never man good:
I pray you all,
And pray shall,
At this trental
On knees to fall
To the football,
With 'Fill the black bowl
For Jayberd's soul'.
Bibite multum:
Ecce sepultum
Sub pede stultum.
Asinum et mulum.
With, 'Hey, ho, rumbelow!'
Rumpopulorum
Per omnia Secula seculorum!
FREE TRANSLATION
Here follows a trental,1 more or less reasonable, hardly fitting for the Church, but formal enough, for John the Clerk, a certain man of many names who was called John Jayberd. He was called clerk by the clergy. This holy father died in the year of our Lord 1506. In the parish of Diss there was not his like; a man renowned for malice, double-hearted and double-tongued, worn out by old age, suspected of all, loved by none. He is buried . . .
Sing we songs in our cups to celebrate John. The clerk truly is dead and was given the name of Jayberd. He was born among the people of Diss and was called clerk by the clergy. Never was he wont truly to bewail his sins. His evil tongue was loquacious and lying. Such morals as his were never before in anyone. When he breathed the vital air he disturbed his companions and his fellow citizens as if he were an ass, a mule, or a bull. Do you ask who this is John Jayberd, inhabitant of Diss with whom while he lived were associated quarrels, violence and strife. Now here he lies . . .
Pray brethren . . .
Drink your fill. See he is buried under your feet, a fool, an ass and a mule . . .
For ever and ever.
1 A commemorative Mass, so called either because there were thirty of them or because the commemoration was observed thirty days after burial.
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MAY FESTIVAL PROGRAM
IV Romanza--Jane Scroop: Her Lament for Philip Sparrow For Mezzo-soprano and Women's Chorus
Jane Scroop, a young girl at school with the Black Nuns1 at the Abbey of Carrow, near Norwich, grieves for her tame sparrow Philip, who has been killed by Gib the cat. The music opens (lento doloroso) with a passage for solo cello. A funeral procession bewails the loss of the pet ("Placebo! Who is there, who"). Jane expresses her personal lament of unconsoled grief in a repetitious minor third interval--G-A-B-flat (Soprano solo: "When I remem?ber again"). She calls for vengeance on all cats ("Vengeance I ask ... on all the nation of cattes . . ."). Her sorrow is temporarily allayed when she recalls her pet's playful ways (change from G minor to G major). The orchestra attempts in "tone painting" to describe Philip's antics ("Sometime he would gasp when he saw a wasp; would pant when he saw an ant; hop after a grass?hopper" etc.). The chorus returns with the funeral dirge of the opening ("Alas, alas"). Trumpet calls are heard as Jane summons all the birds to weep for Philip ("To weep with me, look that ye come"). Then follows the "Symphony of the Birds," the most original writing in the suite. The air is filled with the sounds of their arrival. The chorus assigns each bird his duty ("Robin Red?breast, He shall be the priest the requiem mass to sing, . . . With help of the reed sparrow"). In the bass, an allusion to the Dies Irae is heard. All the mourners raise their voices in lamentation (harp and winds). Philip's body is committed to earth and his soul to the mercy of heaven, as the chorus and Jane whisper their last farewell.
Placebo!
Who is there, who
Dilexil
Dame Margery
Fa, re mi, mi,
Wherefore and why, why
For the soul of Philip Sparrow,
That was, late, slain at Carrow
Among the Nuns Black.
For that sweet soul's sake,
And for all sparrows' souls
Set in our bead-rolls.
When I remember again How my Philip was slain, Never half the pain Was between you twain, Pyramus and Thisbe, As then befell to me:
1 Benedictine Nuns.
62
I wept and I wailed,
The tears down hailed,
But nothing it availed
To call Philip again,
Whom Gib, our cat, hath slain.
Vengeance I ask and cry,
By way of exclamation,
On all the whole nation
Of cattes wild and tame:
God send them sorrow and shame!
That cat specially
That slew so cruelly
My little pretty sparrow
That I brought up at Carrow!
O cat of churlish kind,
The fiend was in thy mind
So traitorously my bird to kill
That never owed thee evil will!
FIFTH CONCERT
It had a velvet cap, And would sit upon my lap, And seek after small wormes, And sometime whitebread-crumbes; And many times and oft, Between my breastes soft It would lie and rest; It was proper and prest!8
Sometime he would gasp
When he saw a wasp;
A fly, or a gnat,
He would fly at that;
And prettily he would pant
When he saw an ant!
Lord how he would pry
After a butterfly!
Lord, how he would hop
After the grasshop!
And when I said, 'Phip, Phip!'
Then he would leap and skip,
And take me by the lip.
Alas! it will me slo'
That Philip is gone me fro!
For Philip Sparrow's soul, Set in our bead-roll, Let us now whisper A Pater noster.
Lauda, anima mea, Dominum! To weep with me, look that ye come, All manner of birdes in your kind; See none be left behind.
To mourning look that ye fall With dolorous songs funeral, Some to sing, and some to say, Some to weep, and some to pray, Every bird in his lay. The goldfinch, the wagtail; The jangling jay to rail, The flecked pie to chatter Of this dolorous matter; And Robin Redbreast, He shall be the priest The requiem mass to sing, Softly warbling, With help of the reed sparrow, And the chattering swallow, This hearse for to hallow;
Neat.
The peacock so proud,
Because his voice is loud,
And hath a glorious tail,
He shall sing the Grail.
The bird of Araby
That potentially
May never die,
A phoenix it is
This hearse that must bless
With aromatic gums
That cost great sums,
The way of thurification
To make a fumigation,
Sweet of reflare,
And redolent of air,
This corse for to 'cense
With great reverence,
As patriarch or pope
In a black cope.
Whiles he 'censeth the hearse,
He shall sing the verse,
Libera vie, Dominel
In do, la, sol, re,
Softly Be-mol
For my sparrow's soul.
And now the dark cloudy night
Chaseth away Phoebus bright,
Taking his course toward the west,
God send my sparrow's soul good rest!
Requiem aeternam dona eis, Dominel
I pray God, Philip to heaven may fly!
Domine, exaudi orationem meant!
To Heaven he shall, from Heaven he came!
Dominus vobiscuml
Of all good prayers God send him some!
Oremus,
Deus, cui proprium est misereri et parcere, On Philip's soul have pity! For he was a pretty cock, And came of a gentle stock, And wrapt in a maiden's smock, And cherished full daintily, Till cruel fate made him to die; Alas, for doleful destiny! Farewell, Philip adieu! Our Lord, thy soul rescue! Farewell, without restore, Farewell for evermore!
1 Slay.
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MAY FESTIVAL PROGRAM
V Scherzo--Jolly Rutterkin For Chorus and Baritone
A blaring forte in the trumpets introduces us to the dashing young Rutterkin who, the chorus tells us, "is come unto our town." The mixed chorus opens with an outburst of welcome to the young braggart who in solo passages tells us of his personal attractions ("What now, let see, Who looketh on me"). The chorus joins him in bringing the Tudor Portraits to a spirited and brilliant finish.
Hoyda, Jolly Rutterkin,1 hoyda! Like a rutter hoyda.
Rutterkin is come unto our town In a cloak without coat or gown, Save a ragged hood to cover his crown, Like a rutter hoyda.
Rutterkin can speak no English, His tongue runneth all on buttered fish, Besmeared with grease about his dish, Like a rutter hoyda.
Rutterkin shall bring you all good luck, A stoup of beer up at a pluck,3 Till his brain be as wise as a duck, Like a rutter hoyda.
What now, let see, Who looketh on me Well round about, How gay and how stout That I can wear Courtly my gear.
My hair brusheth
So pleasantly, My robe rusheth
So ruttingly,
Meseem I fly,
I am so light To dance delight. Properly dressed,
All point devise, My person pressed
Beyond all size Of the new guise,
To rush it out In every rout.
Beyond measure My sleeve is wide,
All of pleasure My hose strait tied,
My buskin wide Rich to behold,
Glittering in gold. Rutterkin is come, etc.
'Derived from Rulter, a German cavalry soldier. It came to mean a swaggering gallant. ' Gulp. s Handsomely.
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.
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
64
FIFTH CONCERT
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 forr vadowed 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 cellos, 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 themes heard in the orchestral open?ing of the concerto and summarizing in a broad melodic sweep the content 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, Op. 4, and the later piano capricci in its uncouth 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 con?cise sonata-form exposition which closes in A major, and is repeated. A develop?ment 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
65
MAY FESTIVAL PROGRAM
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 Brahm's song "Todessehen," Op. 86, is stated by two clarinets in the accompaniment. "The melody," writes Tovey, "consists of 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 alternates 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 University Press, 1936), III, 124.
66
SIXTH CONCERT Sunday Evening, May 5
Academic Festival Overture, Op. 80.......Brahms
If ever a piece of music stood as an eternal refutation of all that is meant by "academic," it is this "Festival Overture." The work was written in 1880, as an acknowledgment by Brahms of the doctor's degree which had been con?ferred upon him by the University of Breslau, as the Princeps musicae severioris in Germany. But shockingly enough, the rollicking "Academic Festival Over?ture" is anything but severely in keeping with the pedantic solemnities of academic convention. It is typical of Brahms that he should delight in thanking the pompous dignitaries of the university with such a quip, for certainly here is one of the gayest and most sparkling overtures in the orchestral repertory.
In the spirit of "He hath cast down the mighty from their seats, and exalted them that are of low degree," Brahms selected as the thematic materials for his overture a handful of student drinking songs, which he championed against all the established conventions of serious composition. He always took an impish joy in indulging his instinct for championing underdogs of art such as music boxes, banjos, brass bands, and working men's singing societies. And here he elevated the lowly student song into the realm of legitimate art. There was never a "nobler man of the people" in the whole history of music.
The overture begins (Allegro, C minor, 2-2 time) without an introduction. The principal theme is announced in the violins. Section II is a tranquil melody in the violas, which returns to the opening material. After an episode (E minor) there follows the student song, "Wir hatten gebauet ein stattliches Haus" ("We had built a stately house"), heard in three trumpets (C major). At the close of this section, tie full orchestra presents another section partly sug?gested by the first theme of the overture. The key changes to E major and the second violins with cellos pizzicato announce the second student song, "Der Landesvater" ("The Father of the Country"), an old eighteenth-century tune.
The development section does not begin with the working out of the expo?sition material, but rather, and strangely enough, with the introduction of another student melody (in two bassoons) "Was kommt dort von der Hoh" ("What comes there from on high"), a freshman song. An elaborate develop?ment of the material of the exposition then follows. The recapitulation is ir?regular in that it merely suggests the return of the principal theme; but then it presents the rest of the material in more or less regular restatement. The conclusion is reached in a stirring section which presents a fourth song, Gaudeamus igitur, in the woodwind choir, with tumultuous scale passages against it in the higher strings, and with this emphatic and boisterous theme-the most popular of all student songs--the overture gives its final thrust at the Academicians.
This is a vivacious and sliRhtly grotesque version of the "Fuchslied" ("Fox Song"), "Fuchs" being equivalent to "Freshman." Max Kalbeck, an admirer of Brahms, and also his biographer, was shocked at the idea of this irreverence to the learned doctors of the University, but Brahms was unperturbed.
67
MAY FESTIVAL PROGRAM Symphony No. 3 in One Movement.......Harris
Roy Harris was born in Lincoln County, Oklahoma, February 12, 1898.
A little over a quarter of a century ago a virile and tremendously active group of composers appeared in America. Among the outstanding names were those of Marc Blitzstein, George Antheil, Aaron Copland, Henry Cowell, Randall Thompson, Virgil Thomson, Howard Hanson, Walter Piston, Roger Sessions, and Roy Harris. These composers energetically espoused the cause of American music, although as individuals they represented every variety of background, attitude, and musical style. Some were mildly conservative, others daringly experimental, but, in their enthusiasm and newly awakened nation?alistic feeling, they possessed a common goal--to uphold the autonomy of their art, to free it from all the extramusical trappings inherited from nineteenth-century Europe, and to make the world aware that America had come of age musically through the discovery of an idiom that was indigenous to her. Ac?cording to Roger Sessions, writing in Modern Music in November of 1927, "young men are dreaming of an entirely different kind of music--a music which derives its power from forms beautiful and significant by virtue of in?herent musical weight, rather than intensity of utterance; a music whose impersonality and self-sufficiency preclude the exotic, which takes its impulse from the realities of a passionate logic, which in the authentic freshness of its moods, is the reverse of the ironic, and in its very aloofness from the con?crete preoccupations of life, strives rather to contribute form, design, a vision of order and harmony."
In the decade between 1930 and 1940, the name of Roy Harris emerged with persistent frequency, as the white hope of American music. Critical acco?lades were showered upon him from every quarter, and without doubt during this period he remained the most frequently performed of our serious composers. "He comes from the West," wrote Douglas Moore, "and as a sort of musical Walt Whitman, is filled with the sense of Destiny." In January, 1932, Arthur Farwell, writing in Musical Quarterly (Vol. XVIII, No. 1) noted that "already a peculiar feeling of vitality attaches to the mention of his name, which in a fugitive way is coming to be regarded as a symbol of the most advanced modern musical thought . . . that he is now steadily and rapidly coming to the fore is no mere chance of fluctuating musical styles and opinions. It is the result of a premeditated and thoroughly prepared attack upon the entire front of musical issues and resources."
Today, however, Harris' idiom, still highly individual, has lost much of its novelty, and the words of prophecy uttered in the twenties and thirties, have only partly been fulfilled. His popularity today rests upon relatively few com?positions, and of these few, the Third Symphony seems to be the one that has retained all of its original freshness and novelty. It has established itself as one of the most popular and ingratiating works written by a contemporary
Robert Bagar and Louis Biancolli, The Concert Companion (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc., 1947).
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SIXTH CONCERT
American, and has remained consistently in the repertoire of our major orches?tras. It is the quintessence of his best writing to date, filled as it is with a profusion of elastic, broadly-conceived melody that avoids symmetrical and sequential patterns, and constructed with a largeness of style and firmness of form, all of its factors being co-ordinated toward a unified and eloquent expres?sion. It was written late in 1938 and on February 24, 1939, had its world premiere in Boston under Serge Koussevitzky, who referred to it as "the first truly great orchestral work to be produced in America." Today, almost twenty years later, it still remains, as Francis Perkins wrote in the New York Herald-Tribune, March 18, 1940, "one of the most significant contributions of the last few years to the native orchestral repertoire, in breadth of scope, conse-quentiality of ideas and emotional force." Few American composers today have achieved a greater technical control of their medium and at the same time, a more spontaneous communication of the emotional parallels of human experience.
For the Boston premiere, Mr. Harris supplied John N. Burk, program an-notator, with the following outline, in lieu of a detailed analysis of the work:
Section I: Tragic--low string sonorities.
Section II: Lyric--strings, horns, woodwinds.
Section III: Pastoral--emphasizing woodwind color.
Section IV: Fugue--dramatic
A. Brass-percussion predominating
B. Canonic development of Section II material constituting back-
ground for further development of fugue
C. Brass climax; rhythmic motif derived from fugue subject. Materials:
1. Melodic contours--diatonic-poly tonal
2. Harmonic textures--consonance-poly tonal.
Lieder eines jahrenden Gesellen........Mahler
Gustav Mahler was born in Kalischt, Bohemia, July 7, 1860; died in Vienna, Austria, May 8, 1911.
Near the end of Mahler's life tremendous changes were taking place in the world. It was inevitable that the changing currents in European thought at the end of the nineteenth century would affect music. The romantic spirit that had given the art its tremendous vitality was fading before the advance of the realistic, the logical, and the scientific. Between the end of the romantic nineteenth and the beginning of the scientific twentieth century, music was experiencing a period of the greatest intellectual fermentation and creative fer?tility. Mahler found himself surrounded by numerous composers who seemed to have discovered untrammeled ways into the future of their art. On every hand, in every field of re-creation, he heard about him a host of the most tech?nically skilled performers, and he beheld such huge and eager audiences as the world of music had never before known. Yet before his untimely death in 1911, the first year of what was to be a tragic decade, this active spring of inspiration
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began to grow sluggish. German music had grown weary of perpetuating the principles of romanticism, and her composers had, by 1911, begun to forsake the past and to follow their new leaders, Reger and Schonberg. The composers of the post-Wagnerian period in Germany were not writing the last chapter of romanticism; they were writing its epilogue.
It was for Mahler alone, among German composers of his period, to reach full maturity while the romantic point of view still survived as a potent source of musical fecundity; his mind like that of Wagner and Brahms was nurtured by the rich blood of German romanticism. But with keen instinct and sensitive awareness, he felt that he was experiencing the end rather than the climax of a great era. His peculiar position--as the last real romanticist who lived on into the twentieth century, forming, as it were, a bridge between a dying tradition and the birth of a new scientific ideology--is what gave to his art its peculiar distinction and character. His voice echoed from a vanishing world, a world that was becoming increasingly remote, still beheld in the mists of distance, but irrecoverably lost. Yet, with the soul of a mystic, Mahler continued to seek after deeper realities than appeared in the immediate and material world; with the mind of a philosopher he probed the depths of human experience and tried to relate the values he found there to those that were already superseding them.
The overwrought pathos, the impassioned eloquence, and fitful intensity found in his art have often been accredited to his Jewish origin, but the desperate nostalgia, the restless longing that surges through his pages, is not to be explained merely in terms of race. It was the gloomy premonition of the approaching death of the romantic world view that haunted Mahler. In the wake of an advancing machine age and its insistence upon scientific reality, he was troubled by the fading away of illusion and the loss of the picturesque, disturbed by the slow emasculation of the magic, the super?natural, and the mythical symbols that so vitalized the music of the world he knew. It is the consciousness of this receding world, this slipping away of old values, that gives to such works as the Liedcr eines jahrenden Gesellen their deeply nostalgic color and their troubled, poignant feeling. Yet Mahler had little in common with the earlier and fully-formed romanticists; he shared their sensitivity and burning passion, but he lacked their fervor and strength, their "soaring flight in grief." There is in him none of the heroic and epic pathos of Wagner; there is only an unconquerable melancholy and infinite regret, a heartfelt protestation against the fleetingness and pain of life. As Santayana wrote of those philosophers who, like Mahler, believed that existence was an illusion, he was "without one ray of humor, and all persuaded that the universe, too, must be without one."
The history of the art song is largely the record of the separation rather than the union of poetry and music. In its early stages of evolution poetic rhythm and structure exerted an imperious control over music. Through the genius of Franz Schubert, however, the song was emancipated. With his freely composed and fluently expressive piano accompaniment, Schubert enriched and deepened its musical meaning; with his incomparable melodic gift he transformed what
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was for the most part ordinary poetry into indescribable musical beauty. In Robert Schumann, Johannes Brahms, and Hugo Wolf this freedom continued, and the more the accompaniment expressed, the more firmly the song became established as a musical form; the more music asserted itself the further poetry receded into the background. Poetic rhymes lost their effect through the lack of correspondence between musical and verbal phrases; accented notes in music did not always coincide with the stress in the verse; the measure in music was often at cross purposes with the meter in the poetry; a single word was often dismembered by the bar line and most serious of all, the direct intellectual and emotional appeal of the poem was swept away in a flood of pleasure derived directly and overwhelmingly from the music. Instead of poetry giving meaning to music, music added meaning to and enforced the expression of the words. The suggestion of an atmosphere was the most direct service which poetry now rendered to music. The poet merely furnished a mood and an inspiration; the art song had emerged primarily as an expression of the composer's art.
A tendency had already begun in Beethoven (An die feme Geliebte, Op. 84) and was continued in Schubert (Die schone Milllerin and Die Winterreisse) to group poems together to create a larger framework and scope for music than the single song allowed. In these song cycles, the composer, by writing piano preludes, interludes, and postludes (Schumann's Dichterliebe) continued to increase music's share in the responsibility for expression. A later development saw the piano finally give way as an accompanying instrument to various instrumental en?sembles and to the full orchestra. It was Richard Strauss and particularly Mahler who, in thus accompanying their songs, destroyed perhaps some of their intimacy, but without question increased their musical effectiveness. Song and poetry formed the basis of most of Mahler's orchestral works--five out of his nine sym?phonies employed voices, chorales, and solos. Essentially he was as personal and introspective a writer of song as Brahms or Schumann. Like them, he too, in the nineteenth century tradition, felt compelled to express himself in the more extended form of the song cycle, but for the piano he substituted the more complex orchestral accompaniment.
With the cycle Mahler was able to achieve the detailed subtlety that the single song invited, and yet, within the fuller span it provided, accomplish a more dramatic effect; with the orchestra, he could realize the possibilities of subtle instrumental color and nuance, of which he was such a complete and incomparable master. Perhaps his finest and most representative work as a com?poser is to be found, not in his lengthy, wandering, and often redundant sym?phonies, but here where he was free, yet disciplined by the inherent demands of the song, to achieve his effects with directness and immediacy.
Mahler wrote forty-two songs. Of these, there are two song cycles with orchestral accompaniment: the first, Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen; the sec?ond, the Kindertotenlieder.
The poems for the Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen were written by Mahler himself and were inspired by an unhappy, youthful love affair. The work, his first major one, was composed in 1883 when he was twenty-three years of age. It
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had its first performance in Berlin in 1896 and was not published until 1897. In it are recalled many of what later were to become his best qualities: an in?tense lyricism, an almost supersensitive awareness of the emotional overtones in a text, and an ability to project them in music through a highly individual and infinitely subtle kind of orchestration. Although a full orchestra is em?ployed in these songs, it is used sparingly, in the almost chamber-like manner employed later in Das Lied von der Erde. The first two songs lead up to the major climax of the cycle in the third song, and just once, at the end is the full orchestra employed. The brass is used sparingly to achieve this effect; horns in the first and fourth songs, a slight use of trumpets in the second, and full brass only in the climactic third song. As in everything Mahler wrote, the whole work is infused with an all-embracing mood of nostalgia and tender longing.
I Wenn mein Schatz Hochzeit Macht (Leise und traurig bis zum Schluss, D minor--G minor, 2-4)
When my love is a bride,
A merry wedding bride,
Mine will be the saddest day;
I will hie me to my chamber,
To my darkened room,
There to weep for my love,
My dearest love.
Fairest flower! Oh, do not fade!
Sweet little bird, sing in the woods!
Ah, the world is fair indeed!
Do not sing and do not flower,
Spring hath long gone by,
Song must cease and flower must fade.
At nightfall when I go to rest,
I feel my heart's great weariness.
Note the alternation of duple and triple meter, one of Mahler's favorite devices. The opening motif in the clarinets dominates the song in symphonic fashion. The song is in a simple three-part design.
II Ging heut Morgen iiber's Feld ('In gemachlkher Bewegung,' D major--F-sharp major, 4-4)
As I walked abroad this morn,
Dew was sparkling on the grass.
Said to me a merry finch:
"Ah, my good friend, good morning to you,
Good morning. Is this world not fair
to see Tweet! Tweet! Fair and sweet!
Well this world does please me!" And the bluebells in the field, Merrily they greeted me With their tiny bells, ding dong; 'Twas a merry morning song:
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"Is this world not fair to see
Dong ding, dong ding!
Lovely thing!
Well this world does please me, Heigho!"
Straightway all the world's aglow,
In the golden rays of the sun,
All the birds, all the flowers fair
Are arrayed in brightest tones.
Eh, good-day: eh, good-day!
Is this world not lair to see
Heigho! Hey! Heigh! Hey!
Will this be my heart's dawn too
Nay, nay,
Nevermore!
My heart is dead, my heart is dead!
This song is built on one long theme, which later became the basis for the first movement of the first symphony. Note expressive use of the timpani.
Ill Ich hab' ein gluhend Messer (Stiirmisch, wild, D minor--E-flat minor, 9-8)
Deep in my aching heart
A cruel sword is set,
Alas! Alas! how it does tear
And mars my every joy!
Alas! Alas! how it does tear with pain!
Ah me! and will it never cease,
nevermore be peace
Not by day and not by night when I rest Alas! Alas!
When I gaze upon the stars Naught I see but two blue eyes. Alas! Alas!
When I pass the waving corn, It is my love's fair hair I see,
afloat in the wind. Alas! Alas!
When I wake from deepest dreams, And hear like bells her silv'ry laugh, Alas! Alas!
I would I lay in my silent grave, No more, no more to open my eyes.
This is the most dramatic and perhaps the finest of the songs. At the words "Wenn ich in den Himmel seh" in the second stanza, a crescendo begins that climaxes at the end of the song with "Ich wollt, ich lag auf der schwarzen Bahr," accompanied by full brass and woodwinds.
IV Die zwei blauen Augen
(Mit geheimnisvoll scJtwermiltigcn Ausdruck, E minor-F minor, 4-4)
My love's blue eyes, my love's blue eyes, They sent me away in the wide, wide world,
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MAY FESTIVAL PROGRAM
So I must leave and say good-bye
To the dearest place of all.
Oh, eyes so blue, why did you look into my eyes
Now shall I ever grieve and long for you.
I walked away at the dead of night
Across the dark and dreary moor,
Nobody said God-speed, good-bye--
Only love and grief were at my side.
On my way I passed a lime-tree fair,
There rested my weary heart in sleep,
The lime-tree shed on me its blossoms white,
Till I forgot all life's sad woe,
And all, and all was fair and good,
Love and grief--Truth and Dreams.
The theme here became the basis for the trio of the third movement of the First Symphony. Note the use of the harp.
Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun.......Debussy
Claude Debussy was born in Saint Germain on August 22, 1862; died in Paris, March 26, 1918.
France had no music of a real national character for over a century before the advent of Debussy. While the nationalization of music in France was not the work of Debussy alone, certainly no one approached the expression of so truly a French musical spirit with greater success than he. His style reveals the purest craftsmanship, impeccable taste, and above all a finesse and lucidity in execution.
Debussy's style is eminently individual and poetic. He became the leader in the movement toward impressionistic expression, not for its pictorial or representative effects, but as the embodiment of delicate and subtle inner expe?riences. Upon returning to Paris from Rome, where he had held the Prix de Rome fellowship, Debussy came into close personal contact with the "Impres?sionists" in French art, and it was through him that Impressionism entered music by way of painting.
The term "Impressionism" passed from a general term to a specialized use about 1863, when a sunset by Monet was shown in Paris, at the Salon des Refuses, entitled "Impression." The name was then adopted for a whole group of painters, of which Monet, Manet, and Degas were the leaders.
Impressionism came to reject all traditions and to devote itself to the sensuous side of art to the exclusion of the intellectual. It subordinated the subject for the most part to the interest of the execution, and it interpreted isolated momen?tary sensations, not thoughts or concrete things. Impressionism, in the words of Walter Pater, is "a vivid personal impression of a fugitive effect." Tech?nically, it is the concentration on one quality, to the comparative neglect of all the rest; it deliberately constructs but a fragment, in order to convey more suggestively an idea of the whole; it emphatically and deliberately destroys outline in the interest of creating "atmosphere," thus giving a sense of vague?ness and incompleteness. Painters, poets, and musicians were drawn alike to
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the same sources of inspiration, emanating from an interior life of reflection-things sensitive, suggestive, intuitional, unsubstantial, and remote--to mists, fogs, sound of distant bells, clouds, and gardens in the rain. Debussy used his art as a plastic medium for recording such fleeting impressions and fugitive glimpses. His style and technique, like that of Monet and Renoir, and early Pissarro, rendered a music that was intimate though evasive, a music with a twilight beauty and glamour, revealing a world of sense, flavor, and color. Debussy, working to the same end as the French Impressionists in art, through the ephemeral medium of sound, created a world of vague feelings and subtle emotions, a world of momentary impressions--of enchanted islands, the romance of old brocades, the glimmer of moonlight, morning mists, shadowy pools, sunlight on waves, or the faint odor of dying flowers.
Realizing the unlimited power of suggestion possessed by music, and under?standing its capability of giving a fleeting existence to immaterial abstract ideas, Debussy chose these delicate intangible subjects and flights of fancy which gain an added and prolonged eloquence in music. Thus he found inspiration for his art in the sensuous poetry of Paul Verlaine ("Les Fetes galantes" and "Ariettes oubliees") and the mysterious verse of Baudelaire, in the haunting beauty of Maeterlinck ("Pelleas and Melisande"), in the richly woven tapestry and mystic passion of Gabriel Rossetti ("The Blessed Damozel"), and in the exotic symbolism of Stephane Mallarme ("The Afternoon of a Faun"). For the accomplishment of a highly subjective conception of music, Debussy did not hesitate to diverge from established notions of tonal construction, utilizing new scale series, tending toward plastic and even vague rhythmic patterns, and was in all of his work more interested in color and contrast than in contour or design.
Adverse to binding music down to exact reproduction of set programs, he has chosen rather to amplify and expand evanescent, shadowy thoughts, to distill their essence, and then to capture and protract them in sound. Form, as understood by the classical masters, did not ordinarily enter into Debussy's artistic calculations. "No fixed rule should guide the creative artist; rules are established by works of art, not for works of art. One should seek discipline in freedom, not in the precepts of a philosophy in its decline--that is good only for those who are weak. I write music only in order to serve music as best I can and without any other intention .... It is for love of music that I strive to rid it of a certain sterile tradition that enshrouds it. It is a free spontaneous art, an open art, an art to be measured with the elements--the winds, the sky, the sea. It must not be made confined and scholastic." And so in the silvery, weblike tracery of his tonal material, in unresolved dissonances, the use of the whole tone and chromatic scales, in his recourse to old medieval modes, in the sensitive awareness of delicate color combinations, and in the intangible fabric of his aerial architecture, Debussy disclosed a new and superrefined beauty in music.
Stephane Mallarme's first truly significant work, which formulated his revolutionary ideas concerning style, was rejected; the Parnasse Contemporain
Statement made in an interview for the Paris paper, Excelsior, 1911.
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in 1875 found his poem "L'Apres-midi d'un faune," cryptic, perplexing, and unintelligible. Mallarme had struck an individual style in literature and had attempted to formulate a poetic art which would embody with perfect harmony a medley of dissimilar emotions and ideas. Each of his verses conveyed at one and the same time a plastic image, an expression of a thought, the enunciation of a sentiment, and a philosophical symbol. All this was subordinated to the strictest rules of prosody so as to form a perfect whole, thus depicting the complete trans?figuration of a state of mind. The poems appealed quite as much to the reader's intuition and sensibility as to his intelligence, and feeling was expressed as much by the mere sounds of the words as by the imagery or exactness of the descrip?tion. The isolated word, rather than the sentence, conjured up thought.
"I make music," wrote Mallarme in a letter to Mr. Gosse, "and do not call by this name that which is drawn from the euphonic putting together of words--this first requirement is taken for granted; but that which is beyond, on the other side, and produced magically by certain dispositions of speech and language, is then only a means of material communication with the reader, as are the keys of a pianoforte to a hearer."
Edmund Gosse wrote the following explanation and paraphrase of the original poem:
It appears in the florilege which he has just published, and I have now read it again, as I have often read it before. To say that I understand it bit by bit, phrase by phrase, would be excessive. But, if I am asked whether this famous miracle of unintelligibility gives me pleasure, I answer, cordially, Yes. I even fancy that I obtain from it as definite and as solid an impression as M. Mallarme desires to produce. This is what I read in it: A faun--a simple, sensuous, passionate being--wakens in the forest at daybreak and tries to recall his experience of the previous afternoon. Was he the fortunate recipient of an actual visit from nymphs, white and golden goddesses, divinely tender and indulgent Or is the memory he seems to retain nothing but the shadow of a vision, no more sub?stantial than the "arid rain" of notes from his own flute He cannot tell. Yet surely there was, surely there is, an animal whiteness among the brown reeds of the lake that shines out yonder, Were they, are they, swans No! But Naiads plunging Perhaps! Vaguer and vaguer grows the impression of this delicious experience. He would resign his woodland godship to retain it. A garden of lilies, golden-headed, white-stalked, behind the trellis of red roses Ah! the effort is too great for his poor brain. Perhaps if he selects one lily from the garth of lilies, one benign and beneficent yielder of her cup to thirsty lips, the memory, the ever-receding memory, may be forced back. So when he has glutted upon a bunch of grapes, he is wont to toss the empty skins in the air and blow them out in a visionary greediness. But now, the delicious hour grows vaguer; expe?rience or dream, he will never know which it was. The sun is warm, the grasses yielding; and he curls himself up again, after worshipping the efficacious star of wine, that he may pursue the dubious ecstasy into the more hopeful boskages of sleep.
This, then, is what I read in the so excessively obscure and unintelligible "L'Apres-midi d'un faune"; and, accompanied as it is with a perfect suavity of language and melody of rhythm, I know not what more a poem of eight pages could be expected to give. It supplies a simple and direct impression of physical beauty, of harmony, of color; it is exceedingly mellifluous, when once the ear understands that the poet, instead of being the slave of the Alexandrine, weaves his variations round it, like a musical composer.
Philip Hale, Great Concert Music (New York: Garden City Publishing Co., Inc., 1939) p. 120.
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To Edmund Gosse, Mallarme's poem, "L'Apres-midi d'un faune," was then not exactly a "famous miracle of unintelligibility." To Debussy, certainly, it was not. Gosse's lucid and unperplexing paraphrase of the original poem may have rid it of that indisposing epithet "cryptic," but it was Debussy's exquisite orchestra sounds that seem to have given Mallarme's "Faun" its greater elusive beauty, its perennial freshness, and its immortal life.
The strangeness which this music incredibly possessed when Debussy wrote it in 1892, and when it was first performed at a concert of the Societe Nationale in Paris, has evaporated somewhat; but the elusive turn of its melodies, the ravishing and limpid beauty of its haunting harmonies, the color and brilliance of its fantastic weaving of iridescent chords with delicately tinted sonorous aggregations, now charm us with the full awareness of the new and unique kind of musical beauty Debussy alone has brought to us.
In her book Claude Achille Debussy (London, 1917), Louise Liebich inter?prets the Faun as a symbol of the artist; the dream nymphs, inspiration. The creative impulse, the artist's response to ideal inspired thought, is represented as blighted and blurred by analysis in the garish waking light of midday reality; and the artist's realization of beauty is understood to be correspondent with his own interior vision of truth. But these are per?sonal predilections, and the poem is wide and elastic enough to be modified, amplified, and controverted as one desires. And, after all, it is Debussy's marvelous music which concerns us here, and the ultimate value of the work as a musical masterpiece lies in its amazing myriad of orchestral colors, in its picturesque chromaticism, in its fluent, unbounded melody, and expressively free, unhampered rhythms, all working together to create a mirage-like work of strange and exotic beauty.
"Connais-tu le pays" from Mignon......Thomas
Charles-Louis-Ambroise Thomas was born in Metz, August 5, 1811; died in Paris, February 12, 1896.
Ambroise Thomas is known to the'world at large as the composer of Mignon and Hamlet. Twenty other dramatic works, three of which are ballets, stand to his credit. His work as an opera composer represents but part of his activity, for in 1871 he was elected to Spontinio chair as director of the famous Con?servatoire at Paris.
The libretto of Mignon is by Machel Carre and Jules Barbier, and the in?cidents of the plot are drawn chiefly from episodes in Goethe's novel Wilhclm Meister's Lehrjare. Proceeding after the manner of their treatment of Faust for Gounod a few years before, the librettists constructed a romantic play out of the Mignon incidents, which in the novel were only of subordinate interest. The Mignon of Carre and Barbier bears little more than external resemblance to Goethe's Mignon; as the young girl stolen by gypsies, she is merely "the embodiment of pathos, and the exemplar of the cantabile style," as is to be noted in her aria "Connais-tu le pays"
Wilhelm Meister, a traveling student, happens upon a troupe of gypsies. One
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of the leaders forces Mignon, a beautiful young girl, to dance, and when she refuses, begins to abuse her.
She is saved by the intercession of Wilhelm who begins to question her about her childhood. She remembers nothing except that she was captured by gypsies in some far-away country that she describes in a mood of nostalgia and longing:
Knowcst thou the land where the orange grows, Where the fruit is gold, and fair the rose, Where the gentle breeze wafts the song of birds There spring eternally reigns with the sky ever blue. Alas, why do I stray afar; why do I linger Here! It is there I wish to live and die.
Recitative and Aria of Lia from L'Enfant prodigue . . Debussy
Debussy was not one of those artists who, like Beethoven and Verdi, find themselves only after years of incessant striving and innumerable failures and disappointments. He was singularily sure of himself and his artistic purpose; his art was always wholly personal, fully developed, and self assured. In only two of his early works, the cantatas, L'Enjant prodigue and La Damoiselle elue, could it be said that he was in any process of gestation. This was particularly true of L'Enjant prodigue, with which Debussy won the Grand prix de Rome in 1884, at the age of twenty-two.
The story is simple. Lia, the mother of Azael, bemoans the loss of her way?ward son. As she expresses her grief, Simeon, her husband, exhorts her to hearken to the music of the merrymakers and to partake of their joy. A pro?cession of the revelers enters, and Simeon and Lia join the throng. Azael, who has returned home, exhausted and repentant, has, unobserved by the people who pass by, fallen unconscious outside the home which had once sheltered him. There he is discovered by his parents. Forgiveness is extended to the erring wanderer, and all thank heaven for his restoration.
From this tenuous dramatic fare, Debussy created a youthful score that gave little indication of the direction in which his affinities were to lie.
The work was performed in the hall of the Paris Conservatoire, June 27, 1884. For a number of years the score remained in Debussy's possession, but he revised and rescored it for a performance at the Sheffield Musical Festival in England, October 8, 1908, and later revamped it for an operatic presenta?tion at Covent Garden on October 28, 1910.
The following is a free translation and condensation of the French text. Lia calls in anguish for the return of her son:
Year follows year and each succeeding season brings only grief and sorrow, which I must hide within my heart. I walk alone along this wild shore to seek surcease from this heavy woe. But my heart still mourns the child I have no more. Azael, Azael, my beloved one, why have you forsaken me
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SIXTH CONCERT "Amour, viens aider," from Samson et Dalila . . 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 croix. Cambridge University conferred upon him the Doctor of Music in 1892. His literary productions were considerable and of 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 suf?fering under the oppression of the Philistines. Samson, burning with indigna?tion, 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. Night is descending as Delilah waits outside her dwelling for the approach of Samson. In the aria, "Amour, viens aider," she calls upon the God of love to aid her in destroying him. A condensed translation of the aria follows:
Oh Love, in my weakness give me power to destroy the enemy of my people. Tomorrow let him be my captive. In vain his people may entreat, but he is under my domination; I alone can hold him captive at my feet.
"La Valse": A Choreographic Poem.......Ravel
Maurice Ravel was born March 7, 1875, in Cibourne; died December 28, 1937, in Paris.
In contrast to the ecstatic impressionism of Debussy, which fails to merge emotion into an objective lyricism but merely allows it to spread and dissolve into vague colored patterns, the art of Maurice Ravel appears more concrete. Although he was at home among the colored vapors of the Debussian harmonic system, Ravel expressed himself in a more tangible form and fashioned the same materials into set designs. In this structural sense lies the true secret of the difference between him and Debussy.
About 1805, Dr. Charles Burney spoke of the waltz as "a riotous German dance of modern invention. . . . The verb waltzen, whence this word is derived, implies a roll, wallow, welter, tumble down, or roll in the dirt and mire. What analogy there may be between these acceptations and the dance, we pretend not
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to say; but having seen it performed by a select party of foreigners, we could not help reflecting how uneasy an English mother would be to see her daughter so familiarly treated and still more to witness the obliging manner in which the freedom is returned by the females."
The waltz flourished, however, in spite of nice old Dr. Burney, and during the middle of the nineteenth century, under the refining influences of the Strausses, father and son, it reached its graceful and melodious perfection.
On the authority of Alfredo Casella, who, with the composer, played a two-piano arrangement of "The Waltz" in Vienna (1920), the composition had been sketched during the war and was completed in 1920; the themes are of Viennese character, and though Ravel had no exact idea of choreographic pro?duction, he conceived it with the idea of its realization in a dance representation. Casella further describes the composition: "The Poem is a sort of triptych: (a) The Birth of the Waltz. The poem begins with dull rumors as in Rheingold, and from this chaos gradually develops (b) The Waltz, (c) The Apotheosis of the Waltz."
The following "program" of "La Valse" is printed in the score:
Whirling clouds give glimpses, through rifts, of couples waltzing. The clouds scatter, little by little. One sees an immense hall peopled with a twirling crowd. The scene is gradually illuminated. The lights of the chandeliers burst forth, fortissimo. An Imperial Court about 1855.
The first performance of "La Valse" in the United States was at a concert of the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, Alfred Hertz, director, October 28, 1921. When the work was played at Boston the following year (January 13-14), Mr. Hale wrote that the music suggested to the critic, Raymond Schwab, who heard it at the first performance in Paris:
The atmosphere of a court ball of the Second Empire, at first a frenzy indistinctly sketched by the pizzicati of double-basses, then transports sounding forth the full hys?teria of an epoch. To the graces and languors of Carpeaux is opposed an implied anguish with some Prud'homme exclaiming: "We dance on a volcano." There is a certain threatening in this bacchanale, a drunkenness, as it were, warning itself of its decay, perhaps by the dissonances and shock of timbres, especially the repeated combinations in which the strings grate against the brass.
SO
THE UNIVERSITY MUSICAL SOCIETY
Organized in 1879. Incorporated in 1881.
PRESIDENTS
Henry Simmons Frieze, 1879-1881 and 1883-1S89 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, 1943-1947 Thor Johnson, (Guest), 1947-Lester McCoy, Associate Conductor, 1947-1956; Conductor, 1956-
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-; William R. Smith, Assistant Conductor, 1957.
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, 1947-1956, and Conductor, 1957-.
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, 1943-1956; Geneva Nelson, 1957.
81
MAY FESTIVAL PROGRAM
The Stanley Chorus, trained by Margaret Martindale, 1934; trained by Wilson Sawyer, 1944 The University Glee Club, trained by David Mattern, 1937 The Lyra Chorus, trained by Reuben H. Kempf, 1937
GUEST CONDUCTORS
Gustav Hoist (London, England), 1923, 1932 Howard Hanson (Rochester), 1926, 1927, 1933,
1935
Felix Borowski (Chicago), 1927 Percy Grainger (New York), 1928
Jose" Iturbi (PhUadelphia), 1937 Georges Enesco (Paris), 1939 Harl McDonald (PhUadelphia), 1939, 1940, 1944
FESTIVAL CHORAL REPERTOIRE University Choral Union
Bach: Mass in B minor (excerpts)--1923, 1924, 192S (complete), 19S3
Magnificat in D major--1930, 1950 Beethoven: Missa Solemnis in D major, Op. 123--1927, 1947, 1935
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 Chad wick: The Lily Nymph--1900 Chavez, Carlos: Corrido de "El Sol"-19S4J DELrus: Sea Drift--1924 Dvorak: Stabat Mater, Op. 58--1906 Elgar: Caractacus--1903, 1914, 1936
The Dream of Gerontius, Op. 38--1904, 1912, 1917 Fogg: The Seasons--1937 Franck: The Beatitudes--1918 Gluck: Orpheus--1902
Goldmark: The Queen of Sheba (March)--1923 Gomer, Llywelyn: Gloria in Excelsis--1949 Gounod: Faust--1902, 1908, 1919
Gallia--1899
Grainger, Percy: Marching Song of Democracy--1928 Hadley: "Music," An Ode, Op. 75--1919 Handel: Judas Maccabeus--1911
Messiah--1907, 1914 Hanson, Howard: Songs from "Drum Taps"--1935
Heroic Elegy--1927
The Lament for Beowulf--1926
Merry Mount--1933 Haydn: The Creation--1908, 1932
The Seasons--1909, 1934 Heger: Ein Friedenslied, Op. 19--1934t
World premiere
t American premiere
t United States premiere
82
MAY FESTIVAL PROGRAM
Holst: A Choral Fantasia--1932t
A Dirge for Two Veterans--1923
The Hymn of Jesus--1923t
First Choral Symphony (excerpts)--1927t Honecger, Arthur: King David--1930, 193S, 1942 KodAly: Psalmus Hungaricus, Op. 13--1939 Lambert, Constant: Summer's Last Will and Testament--1951t Lockwood, Normand: Prairie--1953
McDonald, Harl: Symphony No. 3 ("Lamentations of Fu Hsuan")--1939 Mendelssohn: Elijah--1901, 1921, 1926, 1944, 1954
St. Paul--190S
Mennin, Peter: Symphony No. 4, "The Cycle"--19S0 Moussorgsky: Boris Godounov--1931, 193S Mozart: Great Mass in C minor, K. 427--1948
Requiem Mass in D minor, K. 626--1946
"Davidde penitente"--19S6 Orff, Carl: Carmina Burana--1955 Parker: Hora Novissima, Op. 30--1900 Pierne: The Children's Crusade--1915
Saint Francis of Assisi--1928, 1931 Ponchtzlli: La Gioconda--1925 Prokofiev: Alexander Nevsky, Op. 78--1946 Rachmaninoff: The Bells--1925, 1938, 1948 Respighi: La Primavera--1924t Rimsky-Korsakov: The Legend of Kitesh--1931t Rossini: Stabat Mater--1897
Satnt-Saens: Samson and Delilah--1896, 1899, 1907, 1912, 1916, 1923, 1929, 1940 Schonberg: Gurre-Lieder--1956
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 Triumphalis, Op. 14--1897, 1912, 1921
Fair Land of Freedom--1919
Hymn of Consecration--1918
"Laus Deo," Choral Ode--1913, 1943
A Psalm of Victory, Op. 8--1906 Stock: A Psalmodic Rhapsody--1922, 1943 Stravinsky: Symphonie de Psaumes--1932 Sullivan: The Golden Legend--1901 Tchaikovsky: Episodes from Eugen Onegin--1911, 1941 Thompson, Randall: Alleluia--1941
Vardell, Charles: Cantata, "The Inimitable Lovers"--1940 Vaughan Williams, Ralph: Five Tudor Portraits--1957 Verdi: Aida--1903, 1906, 1917, 1921, 1924 (excerpts), 1928, 1937, 1957
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
Villa-Lobos, Heiter: Choros No. 10, "Rasga o corac.ao"--1949 Vivaldi-Casella: Gloria--1954 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 premiire t American premiire
S3
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
Lullabj--1931
Eleven Songs--19S4
Britten, Benjamin: Suite of Songs--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, Granvtlle: Cantata, "The Ugly Duckling"--1934 Farwell: Morning--1924
Fletcher: The Walrus and the Carpenter--1913, 1917, 1926, 1942, 19S0, 19S7 Folk Songs--Italian: The Blackbirds, Sleep Little Child--1921
Scotch: "Caller Herrin"--1920
Welsh: Dear Harp of My Country--1920
Zuni Indian: The Sun Worshippers--1924 Gaul: Cantata, "Old Johnny Appleseed"--1931
Cantata, "Spring Rapture"--1933, 1937 Gillett: Songs--1941 Gounod: "Waltz Song" from Faust--1924 Grainger, Percy: Country Gardens--1933 Gretchaninoff: The Snow Drop--1938 Handel: "He Shall Feed His Flock," from Messiah--1929 Howland, Russell (orchestrator): Song Cycle from the Masters--1947, 19S2 Humperdinck: Selection from Hansel and Gretel--1923 Hyde: Cantata, "The Quest of the Queer Prince"--1928 d'Indy: Saint Mary Magdalene--1941 James, Dorothy: Cantata, "Jumblies"--1935
Cantata, "Paul Bunyan"--1938
American Folk Songs (orchestration)--1946, 1951
Lieder Cycle (orchestration)--1949
Songs by Robert Schumann (orchestration)--1956 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--193S
World premifere
84
MAY FESTIVAL PROGRAM
Mozart: Cradle Song--1930
The Minuet--1922 Myrberg: Fisherman's Prayer--1922 Pierne: The Children at Bethlehem--1916, 1936
The Children's Crusade--1915
Saint Francis of Assisi--1928, 1931
Planquette: Invitation of the Bells from Chimes of Normandy--1924 Protheroe: Cantata, The Spider and the Fly--1932 Purchell: In the Delightful Pleasant Grove--1938 ReCER: The Virgin's Slumber Song--1938 Redtecke, Carl: "In Life If Love We Know Not"--1921
O Beautiful Violet--1924
Rowley-James: Cantata, Fun of the Fair--194S Rttbinstein: 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, Georg: Good Night, Pretty Stars--1924 Schumann, Robert: Lotus Flower--1930
Spring's Messenger--1929
The Nut Tree--1939
Songs--1956
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 Freischutz--1920
The Voice of Evening--1924
World premiere
ss
THE UNIVERSITY CHORAL UNION
Thor Johnson, Guest Conductor Lester McCoy, Conductor William Osborne, Pianist
FIRST SOPRANOS
Baumler, Joan Bouws, Marjorie J. Bradstreet, Lola Burr, Virginia A. Burroughs, Elizabeth Carrigan, Sharon A. Fischer, Laurel S. Folsom, Barbara A. Getty, Betty Jean Gilbert, Margaret Hagen, Ruth S. Hanson, Gladys M. Heatwole, Audry Ann Herter, Mary Jean Huber, Sally Hulsander, Nancy Kite, Nancy Carol Kossiak, Marina Kritzer, Valerie Laidlaw, Sue Ann Lo, Jiu-Fong Lock, Inez J. Loewen, Mary E. Long, Ardis R. Louch, June D. MacLaren, Helen L. Malan, Fannie Belle McDonald, Ruth M. Melling, Megan E. Muir, Novia Patton, Beatrice Pearson, Agnes I. Peters, Lynette Ann Pott, Margaret F. Saylor, Naomi Scheffer, Ann Marie Semmens, Joanne E. Sinanian, Jacqueline Spohn, Nancy J. Stevens, Ethel C. Tarboux, Isabelle N. Taylor, Merle G. Varley, Elizabeth Warren, Eleanor Watts, Barbara J. Wiedmayer, Fay C. Yokes, Jean Ann
86
SECOND SOPRANOS
Ahbe, Marcia Lee Bannasch, Norma Barnes, Judy E. Barr, Evelyn Jean Branson, Allegra Cargill, Carla A. Coedy, Mary Alice Corcoran, Mary E. Crump, Judith D. Datsko, Doris M. Dietz, Leslie Ann Dolby, Freida Dykhouse, Delphine Fosnaught, Mary Gratke, Barbara Green, Mary E. Groves, Kathryn M. Halm, Ruth Marie Hendrickson, Lois Holcomb, Karen A. Jerome, Ruth Owens Keller, Margaret Kellogg, Merlyn Kozachik, Marian Lewis, Dorothy McCann, Mary F. Miller, Nandeen Nutley, Jean M. Overall, Eleanor Penn, Patricia Ann Plant, Shirley Ann Riise, Ellen Romberger, Margery Selby, Ruth M. Semmler, Ruth H. Serbin, Sandra Sleet, Audrey M. Snyder, Karen V. Somora, Sharon Suina, Sandra E. Swinford, Georgiana Taylor, Kathleen Thomas, Grace J. Turner, Sara Jane Vlisides, Elena C. Warren, Linda Ann Winney, Patricia Wollam, Betty J. Young, Margaret
FIRST ALTOS
Andrews, Joyce Arnstine, Lillian Beane, Alice L. Bedford, Charlotte Birch, Dorothy Bowler, Joan K. Brehm, Beverly Brimmer, Brenda Calef, Jean C. Carpenter, Barbara Cook, Beverly B. Dames, Katherine Davidson, Connie Deuble, Hazel M. Eiteman, Sylvia Greenberger, Judy Hardie, Margaret Hill, Sue Ann Hodgman, Dorothy James, Innez L. Johnstone, Patricia Jones, Mary M. Kirchman, Margaret Knapp, Nora Jane Koss, Sandra Kay Kraai, Gertrude Lane, Rosemarie Lester, Betty B. Marsh, Martha M. Mattson, Margaret Meagher, Mary W. Mewhart, Judith A. Palmer, Anna Powers, Martha Reck, Linda M. Rockne, Susanne Rose, Janice M. Sakofsky, Edith R. Sayre, B. Jean Schipper, Nancy Lee Smalley, Joan W. Tomasek, Ruth V. Walton, Louise Weaver, Beverly Ann Westerman, Carol F. Widman, Judith M. Wiedmann, Louise Witteveen, Marilyn Wood, Delores J. Zeeb, Helen R.
MAY FESTIVAL PROGRAM
SECOND ALTOS
Arnold, Helen M. Baker, Diane Bayar, Zeporah Bindeman, Janice Bogart, Gertrude Bolander, Betty J. Brown, Mary K. Calhoun, Wanda J. Carlberg, Jean Rae Christensen, Jane A. Curtis, Elise C. Dykhouse, Thelma Enkemann, Gladys Fowler, Gloria Gamble, Judith Gelula, Susan Herzog, Lois Hibbard, Virginia Huey, Geraldine Kieft, Mary Lou King, Jean L. Lahde, Judith E. Leacock, Ann L. Lundin, Diantha McCotter, Suzanne Meyerson, Linda Mulcahy, Sheila Nixdorf, Dietlind Okey, Ruth Anne Papo, Martha Paterson, Nan Dale Pendill, Gretchen Pickard, Judith Porter, Anne Price, Susan Reich, Sally Roeger, Beverly Ross, Judith A. Simer, Sandra Lee Steward, Lenoir Strumia, Lucia Tolman, Ruth S. Watson, Hallie Wepfer, Virginia Williams, Elinor Williams, Nancy
FIRST TENORS
Alston, William Baker, Henry Becker, Frederick
Carpenter, Nicholas Chesnut, Walter Collins, Allan Edmiston, James Fair, Thomas W. Forman, Sidney Greenberger, Allen Heath, David L. Hendershott, Marcus Hulka, William E. James, Dr. William S. Kim, Joon Min Langenkamp, Jerry Lester, Thomas Lowry, Paul T. Robel, Ronald Senter, Albert W. Jr. Snortum, Niel K. Thompson, Frazier
SECOND TENORS
Akkerhuis, Gerard Ball, Robert Balsom, Norman Bieber, Charles Farrell, John M. Jr. Fuller, Robert B. Galbraith, D. James Gaskell, Jerry T. Gerrard, Allen G. Gorton, William Hankamp, Dr. LaMar Ironside, Roderick Kempf, Dr. John Kuisel, Richard Marks, Robert H. Jr. Mclnnis, Douglas Pearson, John R. Pratt, Richard E. Smith, Donald L. Stasiuk, Robert F. Stewart, John R. Sublette, Warren
FIRST BASSES
Beach, NeU W. Berg, James W. Burke, Michael Burr, Charles F. Cathey, Arthur Clemens, Earl Davis, Don A.
Doolittle, Robert Eisman, Michael Forsyth, Donald Friedman, James Hall, Lawrence Henley, Harold Kays, j. Warren LeBlond, Richard Manci, Orlando J. Jr. Marsh, Donald R. Mauch, Robert K. Padwe, Gerald W. Relyea, Bruce J. Rice, Wilbur Z. Strother, David H. Tazelaar, Josiah VerMeulen, Victor Weaver, Robert B. Wills, Robert E.
SECOND BASSES
Beall, Charles Blackall, Brewster Cook, Gerald Corcoran, John F. Jr. Damouth, David E. Dwyer, Donald H. Farrand, William Grauer, Richard Harary, Frank Honkanen, Roger Huber, Franz Hunt, James W. James, Donald E. Kirshbaum, Tom Koski, Arthur E. Kritzer, Patrick Mohr, Dale Moxon, Charles Muir, William K. Jr. Natanson, Leo Norton, Lome J. Ormand, E. Fred Palutke, Wally A. Patterson, Robert Reveno, James S. Schroeder, John S. Skinner, Thomas Snyder, Ronald D. Steinmetz, George Vanderveer, James Warren, Melville
MUSICAL SOCIETY ORCHESTRA51
Lester McCoy, Conductor
Thor Johnson, Guest Conductor
Earl F. Groner, Manager
FIRST VIOLINS
Green, Elizabeth A. H. Concertmaster
Avsharian, Michael Barron, Barbara Breen, Seely E. Close, Marcia Haughn, Elizabeth C. Kelly, Mary L. McKenzie, Sheila A. Merte, Herman Needham, Sally J. Purach, Janet Ripley, Donna Rupert, Jean Slawson, Nancy Stumm, Virginia West, Margaret
SECOND VIOLINS
Perelli, Wanda
Principal
Alkema, Henry D. Bredendieck, Dina Burton, Alice Carter, Mary Ellen Griffore, Celia Joseph, Alice Miner, Janice Shaler, Dorothy J. Springett, Marlita Whitmire, Rene D. Wise, Carolyn Zimmerman, Lynn
VIOLAS
Fenn, Thomas
Principal
Fouts, Merra Lee Harris, Pamela
Hayes, A. M. Hughes, Byron O. Lichty, Elizabeth Massman, Jane L. Mueller, Blanche Smalla, Joanne Thomas, Nancy
VIOLONCELLOS
Shetler, Donald
Principal Allen, Anne W. Conrad, Dieter Dalley, Gretchen Kaplan, Heidi Kren, Cynthia Mills, Maxine Osius, Richard Streicher, Yelma Trow, William
BASSES
Hurst, Lawrence P.
Principal
Hammel, Virginia McCullough, Diane Patrick, Chester Spring, Peter B. Williams, James J.
FLUTES
Watson, Frances B. Baird, Sally J. Rearick, Martha, Piccolo Allen, Cynthia
OBOES
LaDouceur, Kay Jean
Lynch, Raymond
Curtis, John, English horn
CLARINETS Bandos, Bettie Hadcock, Peter Bauer, John Stephan, Dale Course, Thomas, Bass clarinet
BASSOONS Osborne, William Bird, Betty Lou Quayle, Robert Contrabassoon
HORNS
Whitwell, David Kendall, Nancy LaRue Howard, Howard Mindlin, Jackie
TRUMPETS Head, Emerson W. Stollsteimer, Gary K. Balduf, Carl R. Schultz, Paul M.
TROMBONES Hause, Robert L. Wirt, Karl M. Groner, Earl F. Peterson, Houghton Clauser, Charles
TUBA
Estes, Alan
HARP Mueller, Therese
TIMPANI
Effron, David L.
PERCUSSION Titus, Robert Jones, Harold A.
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.
88
THE PHILADELPHIA ORCHDESTRA
Eugene Ormandy, Conductor William R. Smith, Assistant Conductor
Donald L. Engle, Manager Joseph H. Santaelasci, Assistant Manager
FIRST VIOLINS Krachmalnick, Jacob
Concerttnaster Madison, David
Assistant Concerttnaster Reynolds, Veda Shulik, Morris Lusak, Owen Simkins, Jasha Costanzo, Frank Aleinikoff, Harry Ruden, Sol Henry, Dayton Zenker, Alexander Putlitz, Lois Stahl, Jacob Simkin, Meyer Gesensway, Louis Goldstein, Ernest L. Schmidt, Henry W.
SECOND VIOLINS Rosen, Irvin Schwartz, Isadore VVigler, Jerome Brodo, Joseph Weinberg, Herman Black, Norman Di Camillo, Armand Ludwig, Irving Sharlip, Benjamin Dreyfus, George Gorodetsky, Aaron Miller, Charles S. Roth, Manuel Bove, Domenico Eisenberg, Irwin I. Kaufman, Schima
VIOLAS
Cooley, Carlton Mogill, Leonard Braverman, Gabriel Ferguson, Paul Frantz, Leonard Primavera, Joseph P. Jr. Kahn, Gordon Bauer, J. K. Bogdanoff, Leonard Granat, Wolfgang Epstein, Leonard Kaplow, Maurice Greenberg, William S.
VIOLONCELLOS Munroe, Lome Hilger, Elsa Gorodetzer, Harry de Pasquale, Francis Druian, Joseph Belenko, Samuel Siegel, Adrian Saputelli, William Farago, Marcel Brennand, Charles Sterin, Jack Caserto, Santo Gray, John
BASSES Scott, Roger M. Torello, Carl Arian, Edward Maresh, Ferdinand Eney, F. Gilbert Lazzaro, Vincent Strassenberger, Max Batchelder, Wilfred Gorodetzer, Samuel
HARPS
Costello, Marilyn de Cray, Marcella
FLUTES
Kincaid, W. M. Cole, Robert Terry, Kenton F. Kreli, John C, Piccolo
OBOES
de Lancie, John Morris, Charles M. Di Fulvio, Louis Minsker, John, English Horn
CLARINETS Gigliotti, Anthony M. Rowe, George D. Serpentini, Jules J. Lester, Leon, Bass Clarinet
BASSOONS
Schoenbach, Sol
Shamlian, John
Angelucci, A. L.
Del Negro, F.,
Contrabassoon SAXOPHONE
Waxman, Carl HORNS
Jones, Mason
Hale, Leonard
Fearn, Ward O.
Mayer, Clarence
Lannutti, Charles
Pierson, Herbert TRUMPETS
Krauss, Samuel
Rosenfeld, Seymour
Rehrig, Harold W.
Hering, Sigmund
TROMBONES
Gusikoff, Charles
Smith, Henry C, III
Cole, Howard
Harper, Robert S., Bass Trombone TUBA
Torchinsky, Abe TIMPANI
Hinger, Fred D.
Bookspan, Michael BATTERY
Owen, Charles E.
Bookspan, Michael
Valerio, James
Roth, Manuel CELESTA, PIANO, ORGAN
Smith, William R.
Putlitz, Lois LIBRARIAN
Taynton, Jesse C. PERSONNEL MANAGER
Schmidt, Henry W. STAGE PERSONNEL
Hauptle, Theodore H., Mgr.
Hauptle, Theodore E.
Barnes, Edward
PHOTO PUBLICITY
Siegel, Adrian
UNIVERSITY MUSICAL SOCIETY PROGRAMS 1956-1957
The University Musical Society, in addition to the annual May Festival, provided the following concerts during the season of 1956-57.
78TH ANNUAL CHORAL UNION SERIES
HERVA NELLI, Soprano
CLARAMAE TURNER, Contralto
Leila Edwards, at the piano
October 4, 1956
The Flower Duet, from Madama Butterfly Puccini Come, Let's Be Merry . Arr. H. Lake Wilson Noel des tnfants qui n'ont plus
de maisons........Debussy
La Chevelure (Chansons de Bilitis,
No. 2) .........Debussy
Gerechter Gott, from Ricnzi .... Wagner
Spirit Flower......Campbell-Tipton
La Partida.....Flrmin Mama Alvarez
"Vissi d'arte," from Tosca.....Puccini
"Fu la sorle dell'armi" from Aida . . . Verdi
Vaghissima sembianza......Donaudy
Nymphes et sylvains......Bemberc
"L'Altra notte in fondo al mare,"
from Mcfistolele .......Boito
I Pastori ..........Pizzetti
Scherzo...........Respighi
Most Men . George Cory and Douglas Cross Aria from The Medium . Gian-Carlo Menotii "La Attest e il tempo colsi"
from La Gioconda.....Ponchielli
Encores:
"Oh mio babbino caro,"
from Gianni Schicchi.....Puccini
La Mattinata .......Leoncavallo
"Habanera" from Carmen .....Bizet
"June Is Bustin' Out All Over,"
from Carousel . Rodgers and Hammerstein "You'll Never Walk Alone"
Rodgers and Hammebstein
BOSTON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA
Charles Munch, Conductor
October 15, 1956
Overture to Euryanthe ......Weber
Symphony No. 6........Piston
Symphony No. 6 in B minor,
Op. 74........Tchaikovsky
BERLIN PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA
Herbert von Karajan, Conductor
October 21, 1956
Overture to Anacreon......Chesubini
Symphonie liturgique
(Symphony No. 3) ..... Honegger Symphony No. 7 in A major,
Op. 92 ........Beethoven
ROBERT CASADESUS
November 6, 1956 Compositions oj Robert Schumann Novelette, Op. 21, No. 8 Caraaval, Op. 9 Waldscenen, Op. 82 Etudes symphoniques, Op. 13 Encores:
Des Abends 1 Fantasiestiicke, Op. 12, Nos. 1, 2 Aufschwung J
90
VIENNA PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA Andre Cluytens, Conductor
November 20, 19S6 Symphony No. 96 in D major ("Miracle") Haydn
Rondo Ostinato.....Theodos Besgex
Suite from the ballet
"Baccus and Ariane . . Albert Roussel Symphony No. 5 in C minor, Op. 67 Beethoven Encore: Waltz, "On the Beautiful Blue
Danube"......Johann Strauss
ARTUR RUBINSTEIN
January 14, 1957 Sonata in F minor, Op. 57
("Appassionata").....Beethoven
Fantasiestiicke, Op. 12.....Schumann
Prelude in A minor ]
Ondine t.......Debussy
La Plus que lente J
Navarra...........Albeniz
The Maiden and the Nightingale . . Granados Ballade in A-flat 1
Nocturne in F-sharp ......Chopin
Scherzo in B-Sat J Encores:
Waltz in A minor........Chopin
La Punchinello ......Villa-Lobos
VIENNA CHOIR BOYS
Xaveb Meyers, Musical Director
January 20, 1957
Pueri concinite.........Gallue
Tsnebrae factae sunt......Vittoria
Exultate Deo.........Scarlatti
When I Am Laid in Earth, from
Dido and Aeneas......Purceli.
Der Kuckuckauf dem Zaune sass . . Stepuani
Ein Hennlein weiss......Scandello
Zigcunerleben (Gypsy Life) . . . Schumann
Two Solo Lreder........Schubert
Der Gondelfahrer.......Schubert
An der schonen blauen Donau . Johann Strauss Der Schulmeister.....Johann Strauss
BYRON JANIS, Pianist February 21, 1957
Sonata in D major........Haydn
Arabesque .........Schumann
Impromptu in E-flat major,
Op. 90, No. 2.......Schubert
Pictures at an Exhibition . . . Moussorgsky
Sonatine............Ravel
Nocturne in D-flat major, Op. 27,
No. 2 Impromptu in A-flat major, Op. 29
Mazurka in A minor, Op. 67, No. 4
Chopin
Mazurka in C major, Op. 33, No. 3 Mazurka in C-sharp minor, Op. 41,
No. 1
Scherzo in C-sharp minor, Op. 39 Encores: Song Without Words, Op. 62,
No. 1........Mendelssohn
Etude in F-major, Op. 25, No. 3 ... Chopin "Miller's Dance," from
The Three Cornered Hat . . . DeFalla
MAY FESTIVAL PROGRAM
CINCINNATI SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA
Thor Johnson, Conductor
Mayne Miller, Pianist
February 26, 1957 Suite from "Music for the Royal
Fireworks".........Handel
Concerto No. 4 in G major. Op. 58,
for Piano and Orchestra . . . .Beethoven Symphony No. 1 in F minor, Op. 10 Shostakovich
THE CLEVELAND ORCHESTRA
George Szell, Conductor
March 10, 1957
Overture to La Cazza ladra.....Rossini
Symphony No. 6 in F major
(Pastoral), Op. 68.....Beethoven
"Music for Orchestra" .....Riecger
Prelude to Irmclin........Delius
Till Eulenspiegel's Merry Pranks . . Strauss
11TH ANNUAL EXTRA CONCERT SERIES
MANTOVANI and His New Music October 11, 1956
American Gypsy........Manilla
Always ...........Berlin
Hejre, Kati..........Hubay
Greensleeves .... English Traditional
Petit ballet.........Lambrecht
Blue Danube Waltz .... Johann Strauss
Ave Marie .........Schubert
Symphonic des machines.....Wal Berg
"Some Enchanted Evening", from
South Pacific .......Rodgebs
Light Cavalry Overture.....von Suppe
Luxembourg Polka.......Reisdors
Moulin Rouge.........Auric
Donkey Serenade, from The Firefly . . . Friul
Begin the Beguine.....Cole Poster
Dance of the Comedians, from
the Bartered Bride.....Shetana
"Le Cygne," from the
Carnival of Animals .... Satnt-Saens
Gold and Silver Waltz.......Lehar
Italian Fantasia.......Mantovani
Encore:
Charmaine.........Mantovani
BOSTON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA Charles Munch, Music Director
October 17, 1956 Suite No. 2 in B minor, for
Flute and Strings.......Bach
"Iberia" ("Images" for Orchestra,
No. 2) .........Debussy
Symphony No. 3 in E-flat major,
Op. 55 ........Beethoven
ELIZABETH SCHWARZKOPF, Soprano
Geokge Reeves at the piano
November 14, 1956
Bist du bei mir.........Bach
Einem Bach dcr fliesst......Gluck
Se tu m'ami.........Percolesi
Care selve..........Handel
Wamung...........Mozart
An die Musik
Der Einsame
Romanze aus "Rosamunde"
Die Vogel
"Batti, batti, o bel Masetto"
from Don Giovanni.....Mozart
"Voi che sapete" from Le None di Figaro Mozart Immer leise wird mein Schlummer . . Brahms
Da unten im Tale.......Brahms
Auftrage
Marienwiirmchen .......Schuuann
Der Nussbaum
Schubert
Kennst du das Land
In dem Schatten meiner Locken
O war dein Haus f . Hugo Wolf
Nachtzauber
Die Zigeunerin
"Donde lieta usci" from La Bohime . Puccini
"O mio babbino caro" from
Gianni Schicchi.......Puccini
Encores:
"Un moto di gioja" from
The Marriage of Figaro .... Mozart "Ungeduld" from Die schone Mullerin Schubebt Drink to me only with
thine eyes.....Mellish-Quilter
Seliskeit ..........Schubert
GsaUli........Ait. Robert Gund
DE PAUR'S OPERA GALA Leonard DePaur, Conductor
January 10, 1957 Excerpts from: Four Saints in Three Acts . . Vircil Thomson
Carmen Jones.....Bizet-Hammebstein
Porgy and Bess.....Geoece Geesuwin
BOSTON POPS TOUR ORCHESTRA
Arthur Fiedler, Conductor
Ruth Slenczynska, Pianist
Cortege, from Le Coq d'Or . Rimskv-Korsakov
"Water Music".........Handel
Londonderry Air.....Arr. by Granger
Overture to Orpheus in Hades . . .Offenbach Concerto No. 1 in G minor for
Piano and Orchestra . . . Mendelssohn
"Nutcracker Suite".....Tchaikovsky
Selections from My Fair Lady .... Loewe
Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing . Fain-Mason
Look Sharp, Be Sharp . . Merrick-Bennett
Encores:
Fugue in G minor (Little) . . Bach-Calliet
Galop from
Genevicve de Brabant Offenbach-Fiedler Music from Picnic .... Allen-G. Dunino Stars and Stripes ........Sousa
17TH ANNUAL CHAMBER MUSIC FESTIVAL
QUARTETTO ITALIANO Paolo Borciani, First Violin Elisa Pegreffi, Second Violin
Piero Farulli, Viola
Franco Rossi, Violoncello
Friday, February IS, 1957
Capriccio a quattro (1669) . . . G. B. Vitali
Sonata a quattro (1651).....M. Neei
Quartet No. 2 in F major, Op. 92 . Peokofiev Quartet in E-flat major Op. 74 . . Beethoven
Saturday, February 16, 1957 Quartet in C major, K. 465
("The Dissonance").....Mozast
Quartet No. 1 (1956) . . Valentino Bucchi Quartet in G minor, Op. 10 .... Debussy
Sunday, February 17, 1957
Quartet No. 2 in G minor . . G. G. Cambini Quartet in D minor, K. 421 . . . . Mozart Quartet in C major (1812) . . . Schubert Encore: Sonata, "Al Santo Sepolcro" .... Vivaldi
ANNUAL CHRISTMAS CONCERTS
HANDEL'S Messiah
December 1 and 2, 1956
Adele Addison, Soprano
Pateicia Fraher, Contralto
Howard Jarratt, Tenor
Kenneth Smith, Bass
University Choral Union
Musical Society Orchestra
Mary McCall Stubbins, Organist
Lester McCoy, Conductor
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CONCERTS FOR 1957-1958
SEVENTY-NINTH ANNUAL CHORAL UNION SERIES
Lily Pons, Soprano............Thursday, October 3
Boston Symphony Orchestra........Thursday, October 17
Charles Munch, Conductor
Yehudi Menuhin, Violinist.........Tuesday, October 29
The Cleveland Orchestra.........Sunday, November 10
George Szell, Conductor
William Warfield, Baritone........Tuesday, November 26
Prague Philharmonic Orchestra......Thursday, February 13
Karel Ancerl, Conductor
Obernkirchen Children's Choir......Tuesday, February 25
Chicago Symphony Orchestra........Sunday, March 2
Fritz Reiner, Conductor
Myra Hess, Pianist............Saturday, March 8
Vienna on Parade............Wednesday, April 2
Capt. Julius Herrmann, Conductor
TWELFTH ANNUAL EXTRA CONCERT SERIES
The NBC Opera Company..........Sunday, October 6
(Verdi: La Traviata in concert form) Peter Herman Adler, Conductor
Florence Festival Orchestra.......Thursday, October 24
Carlo Zecchi, Conductor
Rudolf Serkin, Pianist..........Friday, November IS
Vienna Choir Boys (2:30 p.m.).......Sunday, January 12
Mantovani and His New Music.......Tuesday, March 11
ANNUAL CHRISTMAS CONCERTS
Messiah (Handel)...........December 7 and 8, 1957
Adele Addison, Soprano Paul Matthen, Bass
Eunice Alberts, Contralto Choral Union and Orchestra
Harold Haugh, Tenor Lester McCoy, Conductor
EIGHTEENTH ANNUAL CHAMBER MUSIC FESTIVAL
Budapest String Quartet........February 21, 22, 23, 1958
Joseph Roisman, First Violin Boris Kroyt, Viola
Alexander Schneider, Second Violin Mischa Schneider, Violoncello Assisted by Robert Courte, Viola
SIXTY-FIFTH ANNUAL MAY FESTIVAL
Six Concerts..............May 1, 2, 3, 4, 1958
The Philadelphia Orchestra, Eugene Ormandy, Conductor, William R. Smith, Assistant Conductor; University Choral Union, Thor Johnson, Guest Conductor, and Lester McCoy, Conductor; Festival Youth Chorus, Marguerite Hood, Conductor. Soloists to be announced. The right is reserved to make such changes in dates and personnel as necessity may require.
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UNIVERSITY MUSICAL SOCIETY