UMS Concert Program, April 30, May 1, 2, 3, 1964: The Seventy-first Annual Ann Arbor May Festival -- The Philadelphia Orchestra

Season: Eighty-fifth
Concert: SIXTH
Hill Auditorium, Ann Arbor, Michigan

ANN ARBOR
you should gaze on the bloom
Of the narcissus .... This flower of the field, most beautiful
Only remnant of spring that I bring to the underworld ....
--PERSEPHONE
Cover: X-ray photograph
of narcissus by A. G. Richards
UNIVERSITY MUSICAL SOCIETY
of The University of Michigan
Cintu-j-ij-tk
Program of the Seventy-first Annual
ANN ARBOR
MAY FESTIVAI
Six Concerts
April 30, May 1, 2, 3, 1964 ill Auditorium, Ann Arbor, Michigan
Published by the University Musical Society, Ann Arbor
CONTENTS
Page
Igor Stravinsky (photograph) .......................... 4
University Musical Society, Board of Directors......... 5
Performing Artists................................... 7
Concert Programs ................................... 8
Annotations
First Concert....................................... 17
Second Concert.................................... 28
Third Concert ..................................... 36
Fourth Concert..................................... 45
Fifth Concert....................................... 53
Sixth Concert....................................... 67
Notes on the Philadelphia Orchestra and May Festival
Artists............................................ 72
Organizations--Personnel
The University Choral Union and Youth Chorus........ 78
The Philadelphia Orchestra.......................... 80
History, Repertoire, and Resume
The University Musical Society........................ 81
The Ann Arbor May Festival......................... 83
Choral Union Repertoire............................. 84
Resume of 1963-64 Season............................ 86
Presentations for the 1964-65 Season.................. 94
IGOR STRAVINSKY
THE UNIVERSITY MUSICAL SOCIETY
Board of Directors
Charles A. Sink, A.B., M.Ed., LL.D., HH.D. . . President Alexander G. Ruthven, Ph.D., LL.D., Sc.D. . Vice-President
Erich A. Walter, A.M...........Secretary
Oscar A. Eberbach, A.B..........Treasurer
Roscoe O. Bonisteel, LL.B., LL.D., Sc.D.
Assistant Secretary-Treasurer
James R. Breakey, Jr., A.M., LL.B., LL.D. 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. E. Thurston Thieme, M.S., M.D. Henry F. Vaughan, M.S., Dr.P.H.
Gail W. Rector, B.Mus., Executive Director
THE UNIVERSITY MUSICAL SOCIETY is a nonprofit organiza?tion devoted to educational purposes. For eighty-five years its concerts have been maintained through the sale of tickets. Gifts, credited to the Endowment Fund, will commensurately ensure continuance of the quality of concert presentation and make possible advances in scope and activity as new opportunities arise.
THE SEVENTY-FIRST ANNUAL
ANN ARBOR MAY FESTIVAL
Conductors
Eugene Ormandy, Orchestral Conductor
William Smith, Assistant Orchestral Conductor
Igor Stravinsky, Guest Conductor
Thor Johnson, Guest Conductor
Robert Craft, Guest Conductor
Lester McCoy, Chorusmaster
Organizations
The Philadelphia Orchestra The University Choral Union
Soloists
Joan Sutherland................................Soprano
Lois Marshall ..................................Soprano
John McCollum ..................................Tenor
Ralph Herbert .................................Baritone
Van Cliburn......................................Pianist
Philippe Entremont..............................Pianist
Charles Treger.................................Violinist
Anshel Brusilow................................Violinist
Vera Zorina....................................Narrator
Mason Jones................................French Horn
(For biographical sketches of all performers, see pages 72 to 78) An exhibit of floral X-ray photographs by Mr. Richards is on display in the Lobby.
The Steinway is the official piano of the University Musical Society. The Baldwin Piano is the official piano of the Philadelphia Orchestra.
FIRST MAY FESTIVAL CONCERT
Thursday Evening, April 30, at 8:30
THE PHILADELPHIA ORCHESTRA EUGENE ORMANDY, Conductor
SOLOIST
JOAN SUTHERLAND, Soprano
PROGRAM "Leonore" Overture No. 3, Op. 72............................Beethoven
"Ah, fors' e lui"; "Sempre libera" from La Traviata..................Verdi
Joan Sutherland
intermission
"II dolce suono--Ardon gl'incensi" ("Mad
Scene") from Lucia di Lammermoor........................Donizetti
Miss Sutherland
?Symphony No. 7 in A major, Op. 92........................Beethoven
Poco sostenuto, vivace Allegretto
Presto; presto meno assai Finale: allegro con brio
Columbia Records
8
SECOND MAY FESTIVAL CONCERT
Friday Evening, May 1, at 8:30
THE PHILADELPHIA ORCHESTRA
THE UNIVERSITY CHORAL UNION
THOR JOHNSON, Guest Conductor
SOLOISTS
LOIS MARSHALL, Soprano
JOHN McCOLLUM, Tenor RALPH HERBERT, Baritone CHARLES TREGER, Violinist
PROGRAM
"Sleepers, Wake" (Wachet auf, raft uns die
Stimme)--Cantata for Soprano, Tenor, Bass, Chorus
and Orchestra (No. 140) .....................................Bach
University Choral Union and Soloists
"Scottish Fantasy" for Violin and Orchestra......................Bruch
Grave
Allegro
Andante sostcnutn
Andante guerriero
Charles Treger
intermission
Gloria, for Soprano, Mixed Chorus, and Orchestra................Poulexc
Gloria
Laudamus te Domine Deus Domine fili unigenite Domine Deus, Agnus Dei Qui sedes ad deiteram Patris
Lois Marshall and University Choral Union
9
THIRD MAY FESTIVAL CONCERT
Saturday Afternoon, May 2, at 2:30
THE PHILADELPHIA ORCHESTRA WILLIAM SMITH, Assistant Conductor
SOLOIST
PHILIPPE ENTREMONT, Pianist
PROGRAM
Ballet Suite, "The Good-Humored Ladies" ..........Scarlatti-Tommasini
Presto
Allegro
Andante
Non presto, in tempo di ballo
Presto
Concerto No. 2 in G minor for Piano and Orchestra, Op. 22.....Saint-Saens
Andante sostenuto
Allegro scherzando Presto
Philippe Entremont
INTERMISSION
Trois gymnopedies .............................................Satte
Lent et douloureux (orchestrated by Debussy) Lent et triste (orchestrated by William Smith) Lent et grave (orchestrated by Debussy)
Two Nocturnes: "Nuages"; "Fetes" ...........................Debussy
?Polovetzian Dances from Prince Igor ..........................Borodin
Columbia Records
10
FOURTH MAY FESTIVAL CONCERT
Saturday Evening, May 2, at 8:30
THE PHILADELPHIA ORCHESTRA EUGENE ORMANDY, Conductor
SOLOISTS
MASON JONES, Horn ANSHEL BRUSILOW, Violin
PROGRAM
Compositions of Richard Strauss "Till Eulenspiegel's Merry Pranks," Op. 28
Tone Poem, "Ein Heldenleben," Op. 40
The Hero
The Hero's Adversaries
The Hero's Helpmate
The Hero's Battlefield
The Hero's Works of Peace
The Hero's Release from the World and the Fulfillment of His Life
Anshzl Brusilow, Solo Violin
INTERMISSION
Concerto No. 1 in E-flat major for Horn and Orchestra, Op. 11
Allegro
Andante
Rondo: allegro; tempo un poco piu mosso
Mason Jones Suite from Der Rosenkavalier, Op. 59
Columbia Records
11
FIFTH MAY FESTIVAL CONCERT
Sunday Afternoon, May 3, at 2:30
THE PHILADELPHIA ORCHESTRA
IGOR STRAVINSKY, Guest Conductor
ROBERT CRAFT, Guest Conductor
SOLOISTS
VERA ZORINA, Narrator JOHN McCOLLUM, Tenor
PROGRAM
Symphony in C ..........................................Stravinsky
Moderato alia breve
Larghetto concertante Allegretto
Largo; tempo giusto, alia breve; largo
Robert Craft, Conducting
Five Pieces for Orchestra ..................................Schonberg
Vorgefuhle ("Presentiments")
Vergangenes ("The Past")
Farben ("Colors")
Peripetie ('Teripeteia")
Das Obligate Rezitativ (The Obligato Recitative)
Robert Craft, Conducting
INTERMISSION
Persephone (Melodrama to words by Andre Gide) ..............Stravinsky
Persephone ravie Persephone aux enfers Persephone renaissante
(played without pause)
Vera Zorina and John McCollum
University Choral Union
Igor Stravinsky, Conducting
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SIXTH MAY FESTIVAL CONCERT
Sunday Evening, May 3, at 8:30
THE PHILADELPHIA ORCHESTRA EUGENE ORMANDY, Conductor
SOLOIST
VAN CLIBURN, Pianist PROGRAM
Compositions of Sergei Rachmaninoff
Vocalise, Op. 34, No. 14
Concerto No. 3 in D minor, for Piano and Orchestra, Op. 30
Allegro ma non tanto Intermezzo: adagio Finale
Van Cliburn
INTERMISSION
?Symphony No. 2 in E minor, Op. 27 Largo; allegro moderato Allegro molto Adagio
Allegro vivace
Columbia Records
13
ANNOTATIONS
by GLENN D. McGEOCH
The Author of the annotations expresses his appreciation to
Ferol Brinkman and Shirley Mattern Smith of the University Publications
Office for their editorial services.
FIRST CONCERT
Thursday Evening, April 30
"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. Certainly, as far as music is con?cerned, he created the age of Romanticism to such a degree that the new move?ment which began in the nineteenth century could be called "Beethovenism" as well. On the other hand, there is no more decided proof in music history that the age produces the man. In his life and in his works, Beethoven is the embodi?ment of his period. Born at the end of the eighteenth century, he witnessed, in 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. The French Revolution, break?ing up an old civilization, announced the dawn of a new social regime. The spirit of freedom which animated the poetic thoughts of Goethe, Schiller, Wordsworth, and Byron poured into the music of Beethoven, from the creation of the Appas-sionata Sonata to the Choral Ninth Symphony.
Throughout this period of chaos and turmoil, Beethoven stood, a colossus, bridging with his mighty grasp the two centuries in which he lived. In his person were embodied the ideas of both the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; he became the sage and prophet of his period, 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 introduce Promethean fire into the old, worn-out forms, endowing them with new vitality; his respect for classic idioms aided him, the greatest of the early Romanticists, in tempering the excesses and extremes of his contemporaries. Thus, harmonious embodiment of opposing forces, controlled by an architectonic wisdom molding and fusing them together into one passionate, creative impulse, resulted in the production of epoch-making masterpieces, built upon firm foundations but emancipated from the 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 the succeeding opera composers. But Fidelio, his single attempt in that field, has been far less an emancipating force than most of his instrumental compositions, or the operas of his lesser contemporary, von Weber. The supreme service of Fidelio to aesthetic history was accomplished in turning Beethoven's attention to the dramatic overture. There is more real dramatic art in the four
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overtures designed as preludes for Fidelio than exists in the entire bulky score of the opera.
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, November 20, 180S. The incomparable No. 3, on this evening's program, is a remodeled form written for the reconstructed version, heard March 29, 1806. For a revival of the opera in Vienna, 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 an enigma.
For years it was a question as to what place No. 1 really occupied in the sequence of composition. Schindler stated it had been tried before a few friends of Beethoven and discarded as inadequate for the premiere of the opera, which implies that it was the first written. Subsequent research of Nottebohm, now proved false, declared Schindler's information incorrect, and stated the actual succession of the "Leonore" overtures to be No. 2 (1805), No. 3 (1806), No. 1 (Op. 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 (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 jaiter. Rocco's daughter falls in love with the supposed handsome youth, who is soon in such high favor that permission to accompany Rocco on his visits to the prisoner is granted.
Alexander Wheelock Thayer, The Life of Ludwig van Beethoven, trans, and ed. by H. E. Krehbiel (New York: Novello Co. Ltd., 1921), 3 vols.
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FIRST CONCERT
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.
Richard Wagner 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 even 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.
ANALYSIS
After a long and solemn introduction, relating to Florestan's hopeless situa?tion (adagio, C major, 34 time), the main movement (allegro, 22 time) presents a short figured principal theme in the cellos and violins, which is de?veloped to unusual length in a grimly passionate manner. The second subject, entering rather abruptly in an extended upward flight in violins and flutes, con?tinues in short fragmentary phrases to a climax of vigorous syncopated string and woodwind passages. The development section continues with these short phrases, occasionally joined by the figures of the principal theme. Sudden and unex?pected outbursts in the whole orchestra lend an inarticulate expressiveness to the climax of the work, dramatically interrupted by the trumpet call which, in
Richard Wagner, "On the Overture," Gazette ifusicale, January 10, 14, and 17, 1S41, trans, by William Ashton Ellis, Wagner's Prose Works (London: Kegan Paul, French, Trubner & Co., 1892-99), VII.
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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 al?tered, 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 thrill?ing finale.
Recitative and Aria: "Ah, fors' e lui"; "Sempre libera"
from La Traviata.............Verdi
(Fortunino) Giuseppe (Francesco) Verdi was born in Le Roncle,
Italy, October 10, 1813; died in Milano, January 27, 1901.
In the world of artistic creation, it is much better to invent truth than to imitate it.
--Verdi
When Donizetti, who ruled as undisputed leader of Italian opera, died in 1848, Verdi was thirty-five years of age and had already composed twelve operas. He was not known in Italy as a national figure, however, until 1842 when he produced his third opera, but first real success, Nabucco. Of his early works, only Nabucco, Ernani (1844), and Macbeth (1847, revised in 1865) still hold the stage today. In general Verdi stuck closely to the conventions he inherited from his predecessors of the bel canto era--Rossini, Donizetti, and Bellini. He therefore composed his early operas in a series of separate "numbers": recitatives, arias, ensembles, and cabalettas (sections at the end of arias, etc., in quick uni?form rhythms) and recognized the human voice as the most expressive of all instruments, never allowing the orchestra to usurp its position of pre-eminence.
Traviata was Verdi's seventeenth opera and belongs to what is generally re?ferred to as his "middle period" that began in 1851 with Rigoletto. It was in these operas that Verdi began to search for new and bolder ways of expressing himself. He could not dismiss all of what had become the commonplace fea?tures of Italian opera, but he ennobled them by constantly reaching out for new means, both musical and dramatic. In these operas he rose above tradition with?out altogether destroying it. For twelve years and through fifteen operas, he had labored in an atmosphere of febrile romanticism. Little by little he began to look in his librettos for texts that would give him greater opportunities to create human characters and situations. With Rigoletto and Traviata, he found a new direction and an individual strength, and with them, Italian opera of the second half of the nineteenth century took its first step toward its ultimate glory in his incomparable scores, Otello and Falstaff. In the former he embraced subject matter that was inconceivable in the lyric theater as it had previously existed. In Rigoletto he put a hunchback on the stage as his hero; in Traviata, a courtesan as his heroine. He constantly attempted to reshape his musical idiom to accommodate the new dramatic intensity he sought in his librettos. In doing
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FIRST CONCERT
so, he gradually obliterated the "number" opera, turned the old static choruses and the pedestal-like orchestral accompaniments into protagonists in the dra?matic action, and greatly increased the depth of his harmonic language and the expressive power of his orchestration. By never questioning the fact that melody was the principal medium of dramatic expression in opera, and the one ingredient that can project human emotion and personalize feeling, he began to create characters that reach us with gripping immediacy. The easy tune-like melodies of the early operas continuously deepen into powerfully expressive characterizations. More than anyone else, Verdi knew the power of music to convert dismal melodrama into noble human sentiment. As he slowly developed, his music gained significantly in quality and value; in his last great works it stood supreme. Traviata is a work of transition at the threshhold of a new idiom. It was characteristic of the nineteenth-century opera, Italian or otherwise, to take its librettos from famous novels and dramas. Traviata, as is well known, is based upon La Dame aux Camillas by Alexander Dumas. Verdi saw the drama in 1852. At the time, he was writing Trovatore, but was so moved by the Dumas story that he set to work immediately turning it into an opera. Or?dinarily it took him four months to complete one; Traviata was finished in about four weeks. No artistic work reveals to better advantage the transforma?tion that takes place in the mind of a creative artist as he moulds, modifies, and transforms the events of everyday life into a work of art. Dumas' drama had its inception in the true-life story of one Alphonsine Plessis, a young peasant giri who was born in Normandy in 1824. She went to Paris before she was twenty years of age, became the toast of the town, and the most famous courtesan of the Parisian demimonde. From all accounts, she possessed unusual charm, dig?nity, wit, and exquisite beauty. On February 3, 1846, she died, alone and for?saken by her friends at the age of twenty-two, from the then incurable disease, consumption. Shortly after, her personal effects were sold at public auction. She was buried in Montmartre cemetery, and to this day fresh flowers are often found placed on her tombstone which carries a portrait of her wearing her favorite flower--a camellia. During the three years she reigned as the undis?puted queen of her realm, five portrait artists painted her portrait; but it was Alexander Dumas fils, in his novel La Dame aux Camillas, published in 1848, one year after her death, who won for her and for himself, immortality. The novel, in which she was called Marguerite Gautier, was dramatized by Dumas in 1849 and performed on February 2, 1852, after three years of delay because of censorship. The play created a scandal and was declared indecent, immoral, and an incentive to vice and loose living. Dumas, who had known and loved Duplessis, as she became known, was infuriated at society's double standard of morals and ethics, and, stung by its hypocrisy wrote in the white heat of indig?nation upon the social problems involved in the story. Verdi, who attended the play shortly after it opened, saw in it no such problems, but rather a great
Sir Walter Scott: Rossinis La Dame du Lac (Lady of the Lake); Donizetti's Lucia di Lammcrmoor (The Bride of Lammermoor)] Victor Hugo: Donizetti's Lucrezia Borgia; Verdi's Ernani (Heraani); RigoUtto (.Le Roi s'amuse) etc.
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human and personal tragedy. Today, the play, whenever revived, appears somewhat dated. Its purple has faded, its burning issues are no longer meaning?ful, and its artificiality becomes more and more apparent. But once Verdi touched it with his music, he transformed Marguerite Gautier into a woman redeemed by love, and her story into a universal human document that for one hundred and ten years has kept its place in the hearts of audiences throughout the civilized world. If longevity is the supreme testimony to the value of a work of art, and there is no other equal criterion, then Verdi's Traviata needs no de?fense against its popularity. The truthfulness of its emotional expression and the strength and beauty of its form are its enduring qualities.
In Act I, Violetta (Dumas' Marguerite Gautier, renamed by Verdi) is hold?ing a brilliant revel in her home. Among her guests is a young man from Prov?ence, Alfredo Germont, who has been secretly in love with her, and as she learns, has kept a secret vigilance over her during a recent illness. After declaring his affection and concern, he bids her farewell with the promise of seeing her again. Violetta left alone, is moved by Alfredo's protestations of love. In a reci?tative she sings, "E strano, e strano," . . .
How strange, how wondrous! I feel my heart responding. But would it be possible for me to love sincerely How can I ever really know No love has ever moved me deeply. Shall I distrust it for the empty folly of my life
She then sings the plaintive, hesitant aria, "Ah, fors' e lui" in which she acknowl?edges the awakening of true love:
In the confusion of my life, could it be that he has stirred my heart Is he the answer to all my dreams and fond illusions--he who kept a silent vigilance during my illness Is it he who has at last awakened my heart to love Never before have I known such happiness, or felt such an emotion.
Here she repeats the words of Alfredo earlier in the scene, "It is the mysterious power of love, sorrow and rapture, pain and delight." An instant later she is suddenly transformed. Thinking that her dreams are hopeless, she dismisses her momentary feelings of love in a brilliant cabaletta, "Follie, follie delirio vanoaquesto":
What folly, what folly! It is all a vain illusion. How could I think of it. My life is devoted to pleasure and amusement. What more can I hope for What shall I do Forget him! Enjoy life and what it offers me and live from day to day. Let destiny be my guide.
At this point in the opera Alfredo's voice is heard offstage singing his theme of the "mysterious power of love." (In the concert version of this aria, the orchestra plays the theme.) For a moment she responds, but immediately she assumes the reckless abandonment of the courtesan:
Forget him forever. O let me live for pleasure only.
She leaves the stage as the curtain descends upon the first act.
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Aria: "II dolce suono; Ardon gl'incensi"
("Mad Scene") from Lucia di Lammermoor . . Donizetti
Gaetano Donizetti was born March 29, 1797, in Bergamo; died there April 8, 1848.
Facility always! fortunate melodies, passages well composed for the voice, a certain eclat. --Theophile Gautier
In the foreword to his new book on Donizetti, Herbert Weinstock writes that his special interest in this composer dates from a performance of his tragic opera Anna Bolena which he heard at La Scala in Milan, Italy, in 1958. Referring to it as one of the most profoundly moving operatic experiences of his life, he states that "Donizetti was a musico-dramatic creator of far greater importance than any of my earlier contacts with other of his operas had led me to believe." In spite of what textbooks have stated for years, and academicians firmly be?lieved--namely that few of his operas were of enduring quality, and that those that have survived are merely technical vocal exercises to delight the "canarie fanciers"--his position today as one of the great masters of the lyric theater is slowly but surely being established. The fact is that for over one hundred and fifteen years, several of his operas have firmly kept their places in the operatic repertory of the world, among them Lucia di Lammermoor, Don Pas-guale, and L'Elisir d'amore. But these are only three of the seventy-one operas he produced over a period of twenty-six years! What is not commonly known about Donizetti today is that he was a prodigious composer in practically every field, producing, in addition to his fabulous output of operas, 31 cantatas, 116 religious works, 21 concert overtures, 183 songs and arias, 56 vocal duets, 44 piano solos and duets, 19 string quartets, etc. "His talent is great," wrote Hein-rich Heine, "but even greater was his fecundity, in which he was excelled only by rabbits." There is little doubt that this frenetic overproduction doomed much of his work, and that, in most fields of composition, he remained merely a talented artisan. He was, however, in the realm of opera, both comic and tragic, a master craftsman.
The neglect of Donizetti and his two contemporaries, Rossini and Bellini, can be explained on two counts. They have been, for over half a century, com?pletely overshadowed by Wagner and the public misled by the false contention that Wagnerian music-drama was in every way superior to Italian opera. But it must be remembered also that these composers wrote for an era of great singers whose training made them capable of the most incredible vocal attainments. Once that generation of singers had passed, Italian opera of the early nineteenth-century lost its appeal and soon fell into disrepute. Donizetti's serious operas, in particular, were not only neglected but considered mere period pieces un?worthy of the attention of real musicians. It became a tradition, and an intellec-
Herbert Weinstock, Donizetti and the World ol Opera in Italy, Paris, and Vienna in the First Ball of the Nineteenth Century (New York: Pantheon Books, 1963).
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tual "status symbol" among critics and dilettantes alike, to dismiss Doni?zetti and his colleagues as beneath contempt. Recently this attitude has been dramatically reversed, largely due to the fact that once again, for some mys?terious reason, we have singers capable of meeting the vocal demands of these scores. As a result of possessing such superlative artists as Maria Callas, Joan Sutherland, and Teresa Berganza, to mention only three of the most sensa?tional, a great revival is taking place all over the world, and the beauty and dramatic power of many of these operas is once more revealed to us. Donizetti's Maria Stuarda, La Favorite, Anna Bolena; Bellini's Norma, II Pirata, La Son-nambtda, and Puritani; Rossini's Semiramide and others are firmly back in the center of the repertory of every self-respecting opera house in the world. Still, to many, Lucia di Lammermoor can be summed up as being merely a cadenza for soprano and flute in which each vies with the other for speed and altitude. The fact is there is not a note above A-flat in the whole score. Singers in Donizetti's day were free to embellish his melodies at will; in fact, their reputa?tions often depended upon their creative ability to do so. But florid execution is only a minor part of the operatic duties of a Lucia. Lyric expression and dramatic recitative have a far greater part to play than runs, trills, and other vocal fireworks. The real core of this kind of opera is the cantilena (a vocal melody of a lyrical rather than dramatic or virtuoso character), and the chief require?ment is basically a firm lyric voice, full-bodied and perfectly controlled, such as we are hearing tonight. The opera composers of Donizetti's time had the greatest knowledge of and respect for the unique expressive potentialities of the human voice. "Their wonderful sense for the beauty of the voice," wrote Paul Henry Lang, "gave their melodies that broad elastic, flexible, freely arch?ing line which is the birthright of the lyric stage. The soul of this melody is in love with the reality of the human voice, and while it shares of this love, it also fires it with passion and exuberance." It was this melody that influenced Chopin to such a marked degree. He never lost his enthusiasm for the Italian opera of his day, particularly that of Bellini. It is impossible to explain the cantabile phrases and the tempo rubato (elasticity of time) he used in his piano works without reference to it.
Lucia was first performed in Naples, September 26, 1835. (Donizetti was not yet forty years of age and had already composed forty operas.) It quickly be?came one of the most universally popular operas of the nineteenth century. Its position in the middle decades of the century is suggested by the fact that it occupied a position of emotional crisis in two great novels, Flaubert's Madame Bovary (1857) and Tolstoi's Anna Karinina (1875-76). Both ill-fated heroines heard in its music a revelation of their own ill-starred lives; the opera had become a universal symbol of tragic love.
Lucia, sister of Henry Ashton, Lord of Lammermoor, has pledged her love to Edgardo of Ravenswood. By deceit, her brother convinces her that her lover is unfaithful, and she yields to his wish that she marry Lord Arthur Bucklaw.
Paul Henry Lang, Music in Western Civilization (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, Inc., 1941), p. 837.
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FIRST CONCERT
But immediately after this hasty wedding, Edgardo returns to claim her. Think?ing her false to him, he tears the ring from her finger and leaves in anger. Lucia, in a demented state, slays her husband in the bridal chamber. She enters the great hall of the castle, still dressed in her bridal robes. Disheveled in appearance, her madness is evident and her mind wanders as she sings (Freely translated and condensed):
Recitative: I hear his sweet voice 1 Ah, that voice touches my heart. Edgardo, oh be?loved Edgardo, now I have returned to you. I have escaped your enemies ... I feel an icy chill run through me; I tremble, I falter. Let us sit down by the fountain a moment. Alas! that gloomy ghost appears again to separate us. Alas! Alas, Edgardo, that spectre drives us apart. [Her reference here is to a fountain in her garden where a lover's tragedy had taken place many years ago. She speaks of it to her maid in an aria in Act I]. Let us take refuge at the altar. The rose petals are scattered; do you hear the heavenly music It is our wedding day. This is the wedding ceremony. How happy I am. Edgardo, Edgardo, my joy is unbounded.
Aria: The incense is lighted, the sacred candles burn all around us. Here is the minister; give me your hand. Oh, happy day! I am yours and you are mine. God has united us forever.
Here she sings a cadenza for voice alone which recalls the beautiful cantilena of the duet with Edgardo in Act I when they pledged their troth. At this point in the opera, the scene is interrupted briefly by comments by the chorus in the manner of a Greek tragedy. . . . Lucia then continues:
Cabaletta: All the joys of the world are ours. Our life together will be one of boundless joy. Weep over my earthly remains. In heaven I will pray for you. But until you join me there, Heaven will not seem fair to me.
She then leaves the hall and goes to her death. Accepting the fact that Lucia has a plot psychologically far removed from our day and that its conventions are completely antiquated, given the proper performance within the frame?work of these conventions and with superlative voices and sensitive singers, it can emerge as a lyric tragedy of great power and beauty. It still proves the dramatic strength of pure melody and the power of the human voice to touch us deeply.
Symphony No. 7 in A major, Op. 92.....Beethoven
The Seventh Symphony was written in the summer of 1812, a year of momentous importance in Germany. When the whole map of Europe was being remade, when Beethoven's beloved Vienna was a part of the Napoleonic Empire, when the world was seething with hatreds and fears, this glorious music, with unbounded joy and tremendous vitality, came into existence, giving promise of a new and better world to come.
While Beethoven tenaciously held to the creation of this symphony in the midst of chaos, the summer campaign of 1812 was causing the final disintegra?tion of Napoleon's unwieldy empire. Between its inception and the first per-
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MAY FESTIVAL PROGRAM
formance of the symphony in the large hall of the University of Vienna, De?cember 18, 1813, the decisive battle of Leipzig was fought; Napoleon went down to defeat. In his retreat, however, Napoleon gained an unimportant victory at the Battle of Hanau where the Austrian army was routed. It was at a memorial service for the soldiers who died in this battle that the exuberant music of the Seventh Symphony was first given to a weary and heartsick world--music that has outlived the renown of the craftiest statesmen and the glory of the bravest soldiers, surviving more than one remaking of the map of Europe.
The Seventh Symphony fairly pulsates with free and untrammeled melody; it has an atmosphere of its own, quite unlike that of any other. For Richard Wagner "all tumult, all yearning and storming of the heart became here the blissful insolence of joy, which snatches us away with bacchanalian might and bears us through the roomy space of nature, through all the streams and seas of life, shouting hi glad self-consciousness as we tread throughout the universe the daring measures of this--the 'Apotheosis of the Dance.' " Out of grief, chaos, and confusion, Beethoven created an indestructible world of joy, order, and purpose.
At the premiere, Beethoven, himself, quite deaf, conducted. The performance suffered somewhat from the fact that he could scarcely hear the music his genius had created.
ANALYSIS
The first movement (Poco sostenuto; vivace) is introduced (poco sostenuto, A major) with an A-major chord, full orchestra, which draws attention to the themes alternating in clarinet and oboe. Ascending scale passages in the strings lead to an episode in woodwinds. The main movement (vivace) states its prin?cipal theme in flutes accompanied by other woodwinds, horns, and strings. The second subject is announced by violins and flute, much of its rhythmic character being drawn from the preceding material. The development concerns itself almost entirely with the main theme. There is the customary recapitulation, and the movement closes with a coda in which fragments of the main theme, with its characteristic rhythm, are heard.
The theme of the second movement (Allegretto) was originally intended for Beethoven's String Quartet in C, Op. 59, No. 3. After two measures in which the A-minor chord is held by woodwinds and horns, the strings enter with the main theme (note the persistent employment of their rhythmic movement throughout). There is a trio with the theme in clarinets in A major. The original subject and key return, but with different instrumentation, followed by a fugato on a figure of the main theme. The material of the trio is heard again, and a coda, making references to the main theme, brings the movement to a close on the chord with which it opened. The form of this movement is an interesting combination of two distinctly different forms--a song and trio and a theme and variations.
The third movement (Presto; assai meno presto; presto) is in reality a scherzo, though it is not so titled in the score. It begins with the subject for full orchestra.
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FIRST CONCERT
The trio opens with a clarinet figure over a long pedal point, A, in the violins. This melody is based, say some authorities, on a pilgrim song often heard in lower Austria. The material of the first part returns and there is another pre?sentation of the subject of the trio and a final reference to the principal theme. A coda concludes the whole.
The subject of the fourth movement (Allegro con brio) is taken from an Irish song "Nora Creina," which Beethoven had edited for an Edinburgh pub?lisher. The second theme appears in the first violins. The principal subjects having made their appearance, the exposition is repeated and is followed by the development in which the principal subject figures. The ideas of the exposition are heard as before, and the work concludes with a remarkable coda based on the main theme, bandied about by the strings and culminating in a forceful climax.
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Friday Evening, May 1
"Sleepers, Wake" (Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme)-Cantata for Soprano, Tenor, Bass, Chorus, and Orchestra (No. 140)..........Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach was born in Eisenach, March 21, 1685; died in Leipzig, July 28, 1750.
Music owes almost as much to Bach as Christianity does to its founder.
--Schumann
In Johann Sebastian Bach, the musical development of two centuries reached its climax. From a family of distinguished musicians famous in Germany for one hundred and fifty years, he gathered the full heritage of his predecessors and used, with incomparable effect, all the musical learning of his day.
Born in the heart of medieval Germany, in the remote town of Eisenach under the tree-clad summits of the Thuringian Wald, Bach lived in an atmosphere charged with poetry, romance, and music. The stately Wartburg, where the German Bible came into being, and which once sheltered Luther, towered pre?cipitously over the village. Here, in 1207, the famous Tourney of Song was held, and German minstrelsy flowered.
In these surroundings Bach spent his youth, and his musical foundation was formed under the careful guidance of his father. Subsequent events in his life were less propitious. Orphaned at ten, he pursued his studies alone, turning to the works of Buxtehude, Pachelbel, and other predecessors and contemporaries as models.
Singing in a church choir to gain free tuition at school, traveling on foot to neighboring towns where he heard visiting organists who brought him oc?casional touches with the outside world, securing menial positions as organist in Arnstadt and Muhlhausen filled the monotonous years of this great master's youth.
Although he gained some fame as the foremost organist of his day, he was ignored and neglected as a composer. References by contemporaries are scanty; they had no insight into the value of his art. Fifty years after his death his music was practically unknown, many of the manuscripts having been lost or mislaid.
The neglect, discovery, and final triumph of Bach's music are without parallel in history. His triumphant progress from utter obscurity to a place of unrivaled and unprecedented brilliance is a unique phenomenon. Today his position is extraordinary. Never was there a period when there were more diverse ideals, new methods, confusion of aims and styles, yet never has Bach been so uni?versally acknowledged as the supreme master of music.
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Certainly masterpieces were never so naively conceived. Treated with con?tempt by his associates in Leipzig, where he spent the last years of his life, and restrained by the narrow ideals and numbing pedantry of his superiors, he went on creating a world of beauty, without the slightest thought of posterity. The quiet old cantor, patiently teaching his pupils Latin and music, supervising all the choral and occasional music in the two principal churches of Leipzig, gradu?ally losing his sight, never for a moment dreamed of immortality. He continued, year after year, to fulfill his laborious duties, and in doing so created the great works that have brought him eternal fame. Although his ambitions never passed beyond his city, church, and family, his art grew, deepened, and flowed on into the advancing years.
Bach's vocal works outnumbered his instrumental ones, but they suffered comparative neglect. The reasons for this can be found in the fact that during his lifetime Bach was known chiefly as a performer on the organ and harpsichord. Many of his finest works for these instruments were published by himself in the "Clavieriibung"; others were spread abroad in manuscript copies by his pupils. But of the vocal works, only one, the early cantata Gott ist mein Konig, written at the age of twenty-two, was published during his lifetime. When the Bach So?ciety was formed in 1850 (centenary of his death), most of his compositions existed only in manuscript; of the vocal ones, not more than twenty had ap?peared in print. By far the most numerous of them are the church cantatas, with devotional subject matter, estimated at about 250, although only 200 are extant, and of those some are incomplete. Owing to Bach's activity in this area, the church cantata is particularly well known and its form clearly defined. It was written for use in the services of the various churches in which Bach of?ficiated as organist. He composed five complete sets for the ecclesiastical year, most of them for the city of Leipzig, not earlier than 1723. They come, therefore, from his most mature period and rank among the most beautiful and sublime of his creations. Each was a part of the religious service closely co-ordinated with the Gospel for the day whose topic was elucidated and enforced by the sermon, cantata, hymn, and prayer. Bach's church cantatas have been divided into various catagories. "Wachet auf ruft uns die Stimme" comes from the group of 137 that were written for chorus (52 were written for solo voices), and from those 61 which were founded upon chorales (others were based upon a scrip?tural text or specially written words). It uses a hymn and hymn tune by Philipp Nicholai (1556-1608). published in 1599. Between each two stanzas (after one and four) is placed a recitative and a duet, the texts of which were possibly written by Christian Frederick (1700-64), a Leipzig excise officer long associated with Bach, who wrote under the pseudonym of Picander.
"Wachet auf ruft uns die Stimme" is the most popular and best-known of all Bach's cantatas. It was composed in the fullness of his maturity; a work of near perfection technically, spiritually, and emotionally. The date of its composition is uncertain. We know, however, that it was composed for the twenty-seventh Sunday after Trinity, perhaps in 1731 or 1732. The Gospel reading for the
William Rust, In the preface to the Bach Society edition of the score, suggests the date to be 1742.
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day is the parable of the wise and foolish virgins (Matthew XXV: 1-13). Bach made use of the entire hymn, its three verses occurring in the first, middle (4th), and final movements (7th), which form the basic structure of the work. Essentially, this is a wedding cantata, representing symbolically the union of Christ with the human soul, and unfolding the spiritual love story with the utmost beauty of expression.
I. Chorus, Verse I. The first chorus depicts with great dramatic force the solemn approach of the Bridegroom's procession during the night. A majestic march-like rhythm persists throughout, against which the watchers high on the battlements cry, "Awake, thou city of Jerusalem." This vivid and compelling movement combines a four-part chorus in which the sopranos declaim in the serene choral theme the divine announcement of the coming of the Bridegroom. Against this, rushing string scales and short incisive passages in the other voices create the clamor and excitement of the awakening populace. On the word "Alleluia" the three lower voices engage temporarily in a florid fugato, after which the forces mount again to picture the seething multitude.
Sleepers wake! for night is flying. The watchmen on thy walls are crying: Awake, Thou city of Jerusalem! Hear ye now ere comes the morning, The midnight call of solemn warning: Where are ye, O wise virgins, where Behold, the Bridegroom comes, Arise and take your lamps. Alleluia! Yourselves prepare, Your Lord draws near. He bids you to his marriage feast.
II. Recitative (Tenor). The watchman in secco recitative addresses the bride, telling her to come forth to meet her Lord.
He comes, He comes, the Bridegroom comes,
And Zion's daughter shall rejoice;
He hastens to her dwelling,
Claiming the maiden of His choice.
The Bridegroom comes as does a roebuck,
Yea, like a lusty mountain roebuck, fleet and fair.
His marriage feast He bids you share.
Arise, and take your lamps!
In eagerness to meet Him, come 1
Hasten, sally forth to greet Him!
III. Duet (Bass and Soprano). The Bride and Bridegroom address each other in passages of unsurpassing tenderness and yearning. In the form of a dialogue they question and answer, with appropriate alteration, to the same lines. An exquisite obligato in the violin embellishes with many lovely ara?besques:
Come quickly, now come! ...
We wait thee with lamps all alighted;
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The doors open wide.
Come claim thou thy bride ....
We wait thee with lamps alighted.
IV. Chorale, Verse II (Tenors). Against the watchman's narrative of the virgin's joy at her lover's arrival, the choral theme of the first movement is heard, one of the most beautiful melodies in existence. It is announced in vio?lins and violas and henceforth forms a counterpoint of glowing warmth and compelling rhythm. This melody has won world fame in Bach's own arrange?ment of it as the first of the Schiibler Chorale Preludes for organ:
Zion hears her watchmen's voices,
Their gladd'ning cry her soul rejoices,
The shadows of her night depart.
In His might her Lord appeareth,
His word of grace and truth she heareth,
The daystar riseth in her heart.
O, come, in splendour bright,
Lord Jesu, Light of Light 1
Hosianna!
We follow Thee, Thy joy to see,
Where everlasting bliss shall be.
V. Recitative (Bass). Here the Bridegroom, accompanied by sustained strings, addresses his Bride with tender words of comfort. Note the lovely effect of the chromatic changes on the words "By ties that naught can sever."
So come thou unto me, my fair and chosen bride,
Thou whom I long to see forever at my side!
Within my heart of hearts art thou secure
By ties that naught can sever,
Where I may cherish thee forever.
Forget, beloved, ev'ry care.
Away with pain and grief and sadness.
For better or for worse to share
Our lives in love and joy and gladness.
VI. Duet (Bass and Soprano). In contrast to the question and answer dialogue of the first duet (Section .III), this one symbolically merges the two voices. It opens with an oboe obligato; its running line winds throughout the vocal parts creating an ecstatic mood of joy; the basses often join with a de?scending figure.
Thy love is mine!
True lovers n'er are parted. .. .
Now I with thee in flow'ry fields will wander,
In rapture united forever to be....
VII. Chorale, Verse III. This is a majestic peroration of combined choir and orchestra proclaiming in the choral theme the words of Nicholai's last verse, and shouting out a jubilant "dulci jubilo."
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Glory now to Thee be given,
On earth as in the highest heaven.
With lute and harp in sweetest tone.
All of pearl each dazzling portal,
Where we shall join the song immortal
Of Saints and Angels round Thy throne.
Beyond all earthly ken,
Those wondrous joys remain,
That God prepares.
Our hearts rejoice, i-o! i-o!
Ever in dulci jubilo!
"Scottish Fantasy" for Violin and Orchestra .... Bruch
Max Bruch was born in Cologne, January 6, 1838; died in Friednau near Berlin, October 2, 1920.
The respect with which this minor composer was held throughout Europe is indicated by the fact that he was elected to membership in the French Academic des beaux arts, received the Prussian order Pour le meriti, and was awarded the honorary degree of Doctor of Music by the Universities of Cam?bridge (1893), Breslau (1896), and Berlin (1918).
His life relates the usual story of the gifted composer who reached a respect?able level of distinction, if not the very pinnacle of fame. His first teacher was his mother, a professional singer; he won a four year scholarship at the Mozart Foundation in Frankfurt, wrote a symphony at the age of fourteen, and his first work for the stage at twenty; and distinguished himself as a notable teacher, musical director of orchestral societies, and conductor. In 1883 he visited the United States in this capacity and conducted a choral group in Boston.
Although his reputation as a composer, while he lived, depended largely upon his choral works, his fame today rests almost entirely upon the Concerto for Violin in G minor, one of the most popular in the repertory, and the Kol Nidrei Variations on a Hebrew Melody for Cello and Orchestra. His style is extremely conservative and provides little to discuss and nothing to justify or explain. It was, no doubt, his lack of adventure and awareness of the direction music was taking, that ultimately limited his fame. As for his qualifications as a com?poser, he was acknowledged as one of the most thorough musicians and polished technicians of his generation.
Among his instrumental works is the so-called "Scottish Fantasy" for Violin and Orchestra, composed in 1880, and dedicated to the virtuoso violinist Sara-sate. It shared in the tremendous success of the Violin Concerto and was per?formed constantly throughout Europe. In the "Scottish Fantasy," as in the case of the Hebrew melody of the "Kol Nidrei," Bruch transforms simple germs of folk song origin into cosmopolitan melody that conceals its source but retains its charm and appeal.
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SECOND CONCERT Gloria for Soprano, Mixed Chorus, and Orchestra . . Poulenc
Francois Poulenc was born in Paris, January 7, 1899; died in Paris, January 30, 1963.
I have sought neither to ridicule nor to mimic tradi?tion, but to compose naturally, as I felt impelled to.
--Poulenc
After the end of the First World War a group of young avant-garde composers, rebelling against the rich and wandering chromaticism of Cesar Franck and wearying of the vagueness and evanescence of Debussy (who, they declared, had "drawn French music into an impasse" with his glamorous veiled disson?ances) , grouped themselves together as the Societe des nouveaux jeunes. It in?cluded Arthur Honegger, Darius Milhaud, Francois Poulenc, Germaine Taille-ferre, Louis Durey, and Georges Auric. They were publicly recognized in an article appearing in Comocdia, January 16, 1920, by Henry Collet who re?ferred to them as "Les Six," "an inseparable group who by a magnificent and voluntary return to simplicity have brought about a renaissance of French music." The only thing they really had in common as artists was the patronage of Eric Satie and Jean Cocteau and a desire to react violently against the pastel music of the Impressionists and the elaborate and involved grandiose style of late Romanticism. These they opposed with a music that was direct, clean-cut, witty and, for its time, sophisticated. Actually they were quite independent of each other artistically. Of the six, only Honegger, Milhaud, and Poulenc achieved international recognition, and certainly each of these strongly indi?vidual composers maintained a high degree of stylistic independence throughout his career. They were active in the day of the "futurists" and "cubists" in paint?ing, a time of innovation, ridicule, and violent disputes in aesthetic matters, a time when young composers were creating in an artistic vacuum. The long steady tradition of Romanticism had spent its strength. In France, Claude Debussy had both opposed and, in a way, brought it to fruition, but by 1915 his im?pressive work was finished and no new impulse had taken its place. "Les Six" blithely ignored the problems of composition inherited from him and the late Romanticists. In their gay, trivial, and often impertinent music they scorned all tradition. Behind their disrespect for the "presumptuous composer" of the past and his musical conventions was no doubt a fear emanating from the fact that they found themselves lost and wandering in an artistic wasteland. "Aton-ality," "twelve-tone technique," "quarter-tone technique," "barbarism," "brut-ism," "futurism," "machine music," and "Gebrauchtsmusik" were some of the signposts that led nowhere.
French music between the two world wars, in spite of its conscious attempt to advance the cause of the new in music, labored to little avail against the firm purposefulness of Stravinsky and Schonberg. Although much trivial and unsub?stantial music was produced in this period, France was able to keep the at?tention of the musical world upon her, recapturing to a degree some of her
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MAY FESTIVAL PROGRAM
former eminence through the highly lyrical and varied genius of Poulenc, an artist who had freed himself from tradition but was not disrespectful of it. In spite of the ambivalence of his style that ranges from witty impertinence to re?ligious fervor and somber tragedy, it remained that of a true classicist to the end, proudly restrained, clear, refined, and elegant.
Poulenc composed many sacred works, among them a mass, several motets for unaccompanied voices, settings of the Stabat Mater, and the Gloria for so?prano, mixed chorus, and orchestra on tonight's program. His last, Sept repons des tenebras, had its world premiere on April 11, 1963, four months after his death, with the New York Philharmonic under the direction of Thomas Schippers.
The Gloria was commissioned by the Koussevitsky Music Foundation and completed in the spring of 1960. Four of its six sections are for chorus, two for soprano solo. There are, in addition, brief entries for the solo voice in the con?cluding Qui sedes ad dexteram Patris. Sharp contrasts in mood are achieved be?tween the surprisingly jaunty, even gay choruses, and introspective, subdued solos. For those who seek in a religious work the epic grandeur of Handel, the searching introspection of Bach, or even the thrilling theatricalism of Verdi, Poulenc's artful and facile technique may seem to verge on inappropriate sophistication; for those who have learned to expect from a contemporary com?poser music that is either bewilderingly complex or uncompromisingly austere, the Gloria will come as a blessed relief. It is an uncomplicated and beautifully conceived work of unusual melodic distinction, written by a modern composer whose musical integrity and artistic sincerity are beyond question.
I. Gloria (Maestoso)
Gloria in excelsis Deo Et in terra pax hominibus bonae voluntatis
II. Laudamus te (Tres vif et joyeux)
Laudamus te, benedicimus te, Adoramus te, glorificamus te, Gratias agimus tibi
gloriam tuam
Propter magnam gloriam tuam Laudamus te
Glory be to God on high And on earth peace to men of good will.
We praise Thee, we bless Thee, We adore Thee, we glorify Thee, We give thanks to Thee for Thy
great glory. We praise Thee.
III. Domine Deus (Tres lent et calme), Soprano and Chorus
Domine Deus, rex caelestis
Pater omnipotens
Rex caelestis, Deus pater
Pater omnipotens, Deus pater
Gloria
Lord God, heavenly King,
Father almighty,
Heavenly King, God the Father,
Almighty Father, God the Father
Glory.
IV. Domine Fili Unigenite {Tres vite el joyeux)
Domine fill untgenite Jesu Christe
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Lord the only-begotten son, Jesus Christ
SECOND CONCERT
V. Domine Deus, Agnus Dei (Trls lent; plus allant), Soprano and Chorus
Domine Deus, Agnus Dei Filius patris, rex caelestis Qui tollis peccala mundi
Miserere nobis
Suscipe deprecationem nostram
Lord God, Lamb of God,
Son of the Father, heavenly King
Who takest away the sins of the
world,
Have mercy upon us, Receive our prayer
VI. Qui Sedes Ad Dexteram Patris (Maestoso), Soprano and Chorus
Qui sedes ad dexteram patris
Miserere nobis
Quoniam tu solus sanctus, tu solus
Dominus, Amen Qui sedes ... tu solus altissimus,
Jesu Christe, Cum Sancto Spiritu, in gloria Dei patris,
Amen
Who sitteth at the right hand
of the Father, Have mercy upon us, For Thou only art holy, Thou
only art the Lord, Amen, Thou only art the most high,
Jesus Christ With the Holy Ghost in the
glory of God the Father,
Amen.
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THIRD CONCERT
Saturday Afternoon, May 2
Ballet Suite, "The Good-humored Ladies" . . . Scarlatti-Tommasini
Vincenzo Tommasini was born in Rome, Septem?ber 17, 1880; died in Rome, December 23, 1950.
Domenico Scarlatti, whose music was used by Tommasini for this delightful ballet, was born in Naples in 1685, the same year as J. S. Bach, and died in Madrid in 1757. Although he was the son of a very famous father--Alessandro Scarlatti, the brilliant composer of opera--he needed only his own genius to win for him an equally prominent place in the history of music. He employed his talents not in the writing of operas, but in becoming one of the outstanding virtuoso performers of his age on the harpsichord, and in composing for his favorite instrument over five hundred and fifty little pieces which he desig?nated as "sonatas." In these single movement works, he employed contrasting thematic materials, and in so doing laid the simple foundation for the sonata form of the latter part of the eighteenth century.
Tommasini based his work, which had been commissioned in 1917 by Serge Diaghliev for the Ballet Russe, upon a comedy called Le Donne di buon umore, written by Carlo Goldoni, a contemporary countryman of Scarlatti. Leonide Massine was the choreographer, and the sets and costumes were designed by Leon Bakst. For the music Tommasini arranged and orchestrated two dozen sonatas of Scarlatti, five of which he arranged into an orchestral suite that has made his name famous throughout the world. A more perfect combination than Scarlatti-Tommasini could not be imagined, for although the music is Scarlatti's, the graceful and impeccable orchestration belongs to Tommasini, wherein the sonority and the very spirit of the harpsichord music of Scarlatti's day is caught and retained with the utmost artistry through the medium of the modern orchestra. The fourth movement, the "Tempo di Ballo" is perhaps the best known of all the Scarlatti sonatas.
Concerto No. 2 in G minor for Piano and Orchestra, Op. 22..........Saint-Saens
(Charles) Camille Saint-Saens was born in Paris, October 9, 1835; died in Algiers, December 16, 1921.
Grammarian, painter, augur, rhetorician, Rope-dancer, conjuror, fiddler and physician All trades his own, your hungry Greekling counts; And bid him mount the sky--the sky he mounts.
--Juvenal
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No other composer played so great a part in the formation of the modern French school of symphonic writing as Camille Saint-Saens; in the field of music in which France was weakest, he served her best. A thorough master of every technical detail of his art, he brought to everything he wrote a mastery of musical means and a skillful technical manipulation. Endowed with a pro?digious facility for production and a tremendous talent for the assimilation of musical thought, he was fabulously prolific and equally successful in every department of musical activity. He became a mercurial composer, an indefa?tigable teacher, a skillful pianist, a brilliant conductor--in which office he was active until after his eightieth year--an excellent organist, an incomparable improviser, and, besides distinguishing himself as a critic and editor, he was also a recognized poet, a dramatist, and a scientist of sorts. Nature had endowed him not only with a great intellect and talent, but also with a tremendous energy and inexhaustible capacity for work. There was hardly a branch of musical art he left untouched. He wrote piano and organ music, symphonies, symphonic poems, every variety of chamber music, cantatas, oratorios, masses, operas, songs, choral works, incidental music, operettas, ballets, transcriptions, and arrangements with equal ease and sureness. With a prodigious versatility he roamed the world of his imagination for inspiration, creating Breton and Auvergnian rhapsodies; Russian songs; Algerian suites; Portuguese barcarolles; Danish, Russian, and Arabian caprices; souvenirs of Italy; African fantasias; and Egyptian concertos. In the same manner he projected himself back into the ages past and wrote Greek tragedies, Biblical operas, pavans of the six?teenth century, minuets of the seventeenth, and preludes and fugues in the style of Bach. There was no composer he could not imitate with amazing perfection of style. "He could write at will a work in the style of Rossini, or Verdi, or Schumann, or of Wagner," wrote his fellow countryman and composer, Gounod, who never lost an opportunity of expressing admiration for his friend's wonderful gifts. This amazing versatility, however, was the source of his great weakness. Saint-Saens gave in his art, not himself, but a rather colorless and spiritless simulacrum of the masters of the past; he possessed the unfortunate faculty of assimilation. He knew all the styles, but he knew them superficially and only externally. Lacking in genuine warmth of temperament, in imagina?tion, perception, or genuine depth.of sentiment, he made up in part for these major defects by the unquestionable power of intuitive faculty, his natural charm of expression at all times, and his dexterous control of the technical elements of his art.
His works, however, are the product of an epoch in transition, and although not always intrinsic in value, they form so mountainous a bulk that the eye of the musical world turned perforce to France, at a period when she was poor in true musicians; they represented something which was unique in French music of the period--a great classical spirit and a fine breadth of musical culture. His personal tragedy was that although he wrote much, he added not an iota to the further progress of music.
Jean Aubry has made the most just estimate of Saint-Saens as an artist:
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It would be idle to deny his merits and to look with indifference upon his works, but none of them really forms a part of our emotional life or satisfies the needs of our minds completely. They already appear as respectable and necessary documents in musical history, but not as the living emanations of genius which will retain their vitality in spite of the passing of time and fashions.
In his day Saint-Saens achieved supreme distinction in the concerto form. He composed twenty works for solo instrument and orchestra, five of which were concertos for the piano. The first of these was an early work of 1859 that was little more than a promising effort of a young composer who had not yet found himself. Less than a decade later the Second Concerto on this afternoon's program won for him world-wide recognition, for here he was in the plenitude of his powers. In the early twentieth century it ranked in popularity with such concertos as Schumann's A minor, Liszt's E-flat and A major, Tchaikovsky's B-flat minor, and Grieg's A minor. Although it has not retained the place today still enjoyed by Tchaikovsky's B-flat minor concerto in particular, it still commands respect and continues to offer pianists opportunities, through the brilliant writing for the solo instrument, to display not only their own technical prowess, but the expressive potentials of their instrument. It is written in the old-fashioned nineteenth-century, virtuoso style, and should be judged and per?formed accordingly. It was composed with the taste and craftsmanship one has learned to expect from Saint-Saens, although its ideas sometimes lack force and distinction. At times, in fact, the ideas are trivial and their treatment brings the music dangerously close to the border line that separates good vigorous music from the blatantly banal.
Saint-Saens was a fabulously gifted pianist and performer at the premiere of his five concertos. His phenomenal technique astonished his famous contempo?raries such as Anton Rubinstein and Richard Wagner. It was the great pianist and composer Anton Rubinstein, in fact, who requested the composition of this concerto for a concert he was to conduct at the Salle Pleyel in Paris. In seventeen days the work was completed and a few days later Saint-Saens performed it at its premiere on May 13, 1868.
The concerto declares its virtuoso intent with an opening extended cadenza for the piano, with arpeggi that course over the total expanse of the keyboard. The first movement (andante sostenuto) is marked by tender themes, showy scale passages, brilliant dialogues between piano and orchestra, rising crescendos, syncopated rhythms, a second cadenza for the piano, and a brilliant tutti finale.
The second movement {allegro scherzando, in 68 meter throughout) pre?sents enchanting and frolicsome themes bandied about between the piano and various sections of the orchestra, compelling rhythms reminiscent of a huge twanging guitar and abrupt, effective modulations of key.
The chief interest of the third movement {presto) is centered in the solo instrument, the orchestra functioning merely as a support. It opens with a brisk rhythm of eighth-note triplets in common time. The material itself is of the slightest importance. The principal theme, a brusque tarantella (a Neapolitan
Jean Aubry, Chesterian (London, January, 1922).
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dance in rapid 68 meter) and the contrasting subject heard in unisons, maintain a lively pace to a rousing conclusion.
Trois gymnopedies.............Satie
Erik Alfred Leslie Satie was bom in Honfleur, May 17, 1866; died in Paris, July 2, 192S.
Satie teaches what in our age is the greatest audacity--simplicity.
--Cocteau
Contemporary with the cubists in art, Erik Satie accomplished in music what they achieved in terms of visual symbols. He retained the basic diatonic ma?terials of western European music, splitting them up and reorganizing them into fresh new forms. All manner of eccentric combinations caused consternation among the academicians but stimulated the imaginations of the avant garde. His influence upon the newly formed Les Six, particularly upon Poulenc and Milhaud, and upon contemporary music in general reached far beyond the in?trinsic value of his individual compositions, for it played a major part in shaping the direction French music was to take in the next few decades. Far removed from the complex and lush music found in France in the 1890's, as represented by Saint-Saens and his conservative contemporaries, Satie's works were marked by an extreme neoclassic, calculated simplicity. "He steadfastly refused to falsify or distort his responses to the slightest degree," wrote W. H. Mellers, "in an age in which temptations to emotional insincerity were perhaps greater than ever before." He desired above all things to free French music from every vestige of German influence, and to follow the lead of artists like Monet and Cezanne by creating a style basically French. "It was time," he once remarked to Debussy, "for a little French music without sauerkraut."
Satie's wit, humor and eccentricity, as well as his unique talents, endeared him to such famous personalities in the art world of the time as Debussy, Cocteau, Milhaud, Picasso, Honegger, and Stravinsky; but in spite of this valued recognition, Satie still remained one of the most solitary and personally abused figures in the annals of music history. He lived close to complete poverty the better part of his life, forced for many years to support himself by playing piano in a second rate Montmartre cafe. Described and recognized in some quarters as a genius, he was condemned in others as a charlatan and was often held up to public contempt. No other figure in recent music was subjected to such persistent and ignorant denigration. He was without doubt an eccentric of the most flamboyant kind in his living, writing, and composition. It was in his case no pose, but a part of an aesthetic credo which he insisted upon proclaiming in the face of devastating public ridicule. The meaningless titles of many of his works indicate a child-like whimsy, or at times a sardonic humor, but they were invariably mistaken for irreverence or buffoonery. They protected
W. H. Mellers, "Erik Satie and the Problem of Contemporary Music," Music and Letters, (1942) Vol. 23.
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his music, as Cocteau remarked, from "persons obsessed by the sublime," and often put his critics off guard. He named one of his most famous works "Pieces in the Shape of a Pear," after Debussy had warned him to pay more attention to the problem of musical form. "Sketches and Involvements of a Big Wooden Simpleton," "Things To Be Seen from Right to Left," "Dessicated Embryos," "Old Sequins and Old Armor" were some more of his enigmatic titles. He filled his scores with personal comments about their performance such as " to be played in the most profound silence," or "like a nightingale with a toothache." This sort of thing infuriated and disgusted those of a conservative turn of mind who were shocked enough at the unheard-of devices he employed in them. He outstepped by forty years the polytonalists (Stravinsky) and atonalists (Schon-berg) by such things as the suppression of time and key signatures and bar lines, and in new harmonic progressions he anticipated Debussy and the whole Im?pressionistic idiom.
His music no longer offers the slightest problem or even challenge. Everything it expresses has become so completely a part of our everyday musical language that we wonder how it could ever have been considered a novelty. We never fail however, when we hear it, to recognize its eternal charm, or question its musical quality. "Of all the influential composers of our time," wrote Virgil Thomson in the New York Herald Tribune, "Satie is the only one whose works can be enjoyed and appreciated without any knowledge of the history of music --they are as simple, as straightforward, as devastating as the remarks of a child. To the untutored, they sound trivial, to those who love them they are fresh and beautiful and firmly right."
These extraordinary fragile "arabesques of sound," titled by Satie with the coined word Gymnopedies, were originally written by him for the piano in 1888. Number one and three were orchestrated by Debussy who was capti?vated by their charm and freshness.f In them Satie revealed early his exclusion of those intensely expressive and highly dynamic qualities which were so ap?parent in most of the music of his time. Essentially they are one piece written three times--cast in the same mold as it were, but with the most subtle variations in phrasing, balancing of parts, and harmonic colorings. In the same year, Debussy wrote an early work, La Damoiselle elite, but it showed no signs of his later harmonic distinction. Satie's shifting harmonies, on the other hand, were sensational for their daring and newness. As we listen this afternoon to the slow stately succession of chords indefinitely linked together, creating in their pro?gressions slightly dissonant and pungent harmonies, as we experience the cool impersonal contours of the melodies and the chaste transparency of the orchestral textures, it is difficult to imagine a time when their strangeness mystified and their novelty appalled.
A term no doubt derived from a Greek word that indicated a yearly festival, mentioned by Herodotus and others, in honor of warriors who fell at Thyrea, at which naked youths engaged in dances and gymnastics. tNumber two was orchestrated by William Smith.
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THIRD CONCERT Two Nocturnes: "Nuages"; "Fetes"......Debussy
Claude Debussy was born in Saint Germain-en-Laye on August 22, 1862; died in Paris, March 25, 1918.
He paints with pure colors--with that delicate sobriety that spurns all harshness and ugliness.
--ROMAIK ROLLAKD
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.
In our concert halls today, Debussy is definitely out of fashion. Yet among musicians of this generation, his star is in the ascent. They are re-evaluating his position in music history at a time when their art is floundering in a welter of experimentation some of which has already led to a complete annihilation of former expressive and formal values. Debussy emerges today as one of music's most original composers and effective liberators. In emphasizing sound for sound's sake, he destroyed the old rhetoric of music and invented a contempo?rary approach to form. He was the first of the really great moderns who pre?pared the way for the "atonalists" by introducing chords outside of the key signature, creating a vague feeling of tonality without actually rejecting it. His conscious reaction against Romanticism and especially Wagner, rejected the grandiose, the epic, and the aggressive and substituted for strong personal emo?tionalism, discreet, subtle, and evanescent moods. Preceded by minor com?posers like Satie, and followed by the major masters of our day--Schonberg, Stravinsky, Webern, Berg--he led music into a new world of enchantment and discovery.
Debussy's music is invariably identified with Impressionistic painting. In truth, they both created similar worlds of vagueness, atmosphere, and vibrant color. The Impressionist painters--Monet, Manet, Degas, and Renoir--who saw the world as a dynamic, constantly changing reality, offer an interesting parallel to Debussy whose music gives the most fleeting existence to immaterial abstract ideas. While they negated all the established rules of painting by reducing evenly colored surfaces to spots and dabs of color, or with abrupt short brush strokes shattered forms into fragments; so Debussy, through his unresolved dis?sonances, sensitive awareness of delicate instrumental combinations, fragmentary themes, flexible and even vague rhythms, forsook established musical forms in the interest of atmosphere. Debussy, in truth, knew very little about these painters. As has been pointed out by Alfred Frankenstein, there is no evidence that he found any direct inspiration in their paintings. Nowhere in his extensive writing is there any statement that he was conscious of their existence, far less that he acknowledged any indebtedness to them. The Impressionist painters were
Alfred Frankenstein, "The Imagery from Without," High Fidelity, September, 1962.
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all of a generation older than Debussy. Frankenstein further points out that their important exhibition was held in 1874 when Debussy was only twelve years of age; that Impressionism as a movement was over by 1866 before he had seriously begun to compose; that although he was more strictly contemporary with the Post-Impressionists--Van Gogh, Cezanne, and Gauguin--he shared none of their violence; and that the neo-primitivism of Picasso, which found such a striking parallel in Stravinsky's Sacre du printemps, left Debussy untouched. His relationship to the Symbolist movement in literature was much closer. The fluid mysterious imagery of Maeterlinck drew him to the creation of Pellias et MMisande; Mallarme's "network of illusion," as he referred to poetry, inspired him to compose "Prelude a l'apres midi d'un faune"; and to the sensuous poetry of Paul Verlaine ("Les Fetes galantes" and "Ariettes oubliees") he added a prolonged eloquence in his music.
Debussy wrote three Nocturnes for Orchestra. The first two performed on this program are "Nuages" and "Fetes"; the third entitled "Sirenes" was writ?ten for orchestra and a chorus of female voices. At the end of the sketches he pre?pared Debussy wrote--"Friday, December 15th, 1899, three o'clock in the morning." On the outside cover the date given is 1897-99. His original intention was to compose a work for viola and orchestra. When he completed it, six years after it was begun, it called for a large orchestra throughout with additional trombones (three) for the second section, "Fetes," and a women's chorus for the third, "Sirenes." Because of its choral demands this last section is usually omitted in performances. The pieces are individual and not inseparably linked as are the movements of a symphony or a concerto.
The first two nocturnes were produced for the first time at a Lamoureaux Concert in Paris, December 9, 1900. The orchestra for "Nuages" calls for two flutes, two oboes, English horn, two clarinets, three bassoons, four horns, kettle?drums, harp, and strings. "Fetes" is scored for three flutes, two oboes, English horn, two clarinets, three bassoons, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, bass tuba, two harps, a set of three kettledrums, cymbals, snare drum (in the distance) and strings.
In the fall of 1894, Debussy wrote to Eugene Ysaye about the Nocturnes. He called these pieces "an experiment in different combinations that can be achieved with one color--what a study in gray would be in painting." The only verbal description Debussy ever wrote about music, he provided for "Nocturnes":
The title Nocturnes is to be interpreted here in a general and, more particularly, in a decorative sense. Therefore, it is not meant to designate the usual form of a nocturne, but rather all the impressions and the special effects of light that the word suggests.
"Nuages" renders the immutable aspect of the sky and the slow, solemn motion of the clouds, fading away in gray tones slightly tinged with white.
"Fetes" gives us the vibrating, dancing rhythm of the atmosphere with sudden flashes of light. There is also the episode of the procession (a dazzling fantastic vision) which passes through the festive scene and becomes merged in it. But the background remains persistently the same: the festival with its blending of music and luminous dust participating in the cosmic rhythm.
Robert Bagar, The Concert Companion (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc., 1947), p. 212. 42
THIRD CONCERT Polovetzian Dances from Prince Igor......Borodin
Alexander Porfirievitch Borodin was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, November 12, 1833; died in St. Petersburg, February 28, 1887.
A great musician who was only a musical amateur. --Frederick H. Martens
At Borodin's tomb in the cemetery of the Alexander Nevski Convent where Rubinstein and Tchaikovsky are also buried, are two suspended wreaths; on one are carved some musical themes, on the other symbols of chemistry and titles of scientific books. Both commemorate the author of "On the Action of Ethyl Iodine on Hydrobenzamide and Amarine," and the composer of Prince Igor. "It should be understood that I do not seek recognition as a composer," wrote Borodin, "for I am somehow ashamed of admitting to my composing ac?tivities. This is understandable since, while for others it is a straight forward matter, a duty, and their life's purpose, for me it is a relaxation, a pastime, and an indulgence which distracts me from my principal work." Thus, one of the most distinguished scientists and original composers of nineteenth-century Russia established himself in the minds of the world as a musical amateur and mere dilettante. The relatively small body of his compositions, however (one opera, a dozen songs, a few chamber works, and some orchestral pieces, among them two symphonies), ultimately proved him to be an outstanding innovator in musical style and a powerful influence not only upon his own countrymen, Glazunov, Rachmaninoff, Khatchaturian, and Shostakovitch, but upon such composers as Debussy, Ravel, Sibelius, and even early Stravinsky. The splashes of gorgeous savage color and the chromatic and discordant harmonies in the Polovetzian Dances were to sound again in these and other composers.
Alexander Borodin was the illegitimate son of a Georgian prince and the wife of an army doctor. According to the custom in Russia at the time, he was regis?tered as the lawful son of one of the Prince's serfs--Porfiry Borodin--hence the patronymic, Alexander Porfirievitch. His musical talents became evident early, and at thirteen he wrote a concerto for flute. In 1850, at the age of seven?teen, however, animated by a genuine love for the study of chemistry, he en?tered the Academy of Medicine, relegating music to a secondary place as a mat?ter of deliberate choice. He was graduated with honors in 1856, joined the staff of the Academy as an assistant professor, received his doctorate in chemistry in 1858 (the title of his thesis: "On the Analogy of Arsenical with Phosphoric Acid"), contributed many treatises to the Russian Academy of Sciences, and in general distinguished himself as an outstanding scientist at home and abroad.
In the midst of his studies, however, he engaged in performing on the flute, piano, and cello--none of which he played very well--with amateur musical groups. Constantly encouraged by his friends, he composed a little in his spare moments. The turning point came, however, when in 1862 he met Mily Bala-
David Lloyd-Jones, "Professor Borodin's Indulgence," High Fidelity, June, 1963, Vol. 13, N'o. 6.
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kirev, a member of a St. Petersburg group of nationalist composers. Bala-kirev had, in the interest of developing an indigenous Russian musical style, already gathered about him amateur musicians--Cesar Cui, a military engineer; Modeste Mussorgsky, a civil servant; and the naval officer Rimsky-Korsakov-all of whom responded to his enthusiasm for nationalism and submitted to his discipline as a guide and teacher. Although Rimsky-Korsakov and Mussorgsky ultimately gave up their professions to become composers, Borodin was never persuaded to renounce his zealous devotion to science. He did, however, after studying theory and composition with Balakirev, follow his advice and compose a symphony which, at its premiere in January, 1869, left no doubt as to his status as a professional composer. The eminent critic, Vladimir Stassov, included him with Balakirev, Cui, Mussorgsky, and Rimsky-Korsakov in a group he proudly called "The Mighty Five."
At the suggestion of Stassov, Borodin began in 1867 to compose an opera on the subject of "The Epic of the Army of Igor," the most fascinating of all medi?eval Russian chronicles. He labored for seventeen years on the libretto and music of this, his only opera, and at his untimely death in February, 1887, both were left unfinished. The opera was completed by the joint efforts of Glazunov and Rimsky-Korsakov.
The plot of Prince Igor deals with the Christian Igor's campaign against the invading Polovetzki, a nomadic tribe inhabiting the steppes of far-eastern Rus?sia. In Act II the exotic dances of the Polovetzki maidens occur, interspersed with singing. These form a part of the festival devised for the entertainment of Prince Igor, now a captive in the Polovetzki camp, but highly respected by his enemies. Rimsky-Korsakov singled out these dances for concert performance and included them in a program he himself conducted in St. Petersburg. Since then they have achieved a notable place on programs, and as a part of the repertory of the Ballet Russe when Diaghilev introduced the music to a large public. If Borodin's place in the history of music has dimmed somewhat, his place among the immortals has been assured by a "Stranger in Paradise," the popular theme song from Edwin Lester's production Kismet.
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Saturday Evening, May 2
COMPOSITIONS OF RICHARD STRAUSS
Richard Strauss was born in Munich, June 11, 1864; died in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany, September 8, 1949.
Thirty years ago I was considered a rebel. I have lived long enough to find myself a classic. --Richard Steauss
Criticism has always been embarrassed in its attempt to evaluate Richard Strauss. There is no doubt that he was one of the most interesting and extra?ordinary personalities in the world of music. Whatever his antagonistic critics have said of him, he remains, in the light of his early works at least, one of the greatest composers of our time.
Trained during his formative years in a strict classical musical tradition, he exerted his individuality and independence of thought and expression with such daring and insistence that at his mature period he was considered the most modern and most radical of composers. Critics turned from their tirades against Wagner to vent their invectives upon him; they vilified him as they had Wagner, with a persistence that seems incredible to us today.
The progressive unfolding of his genius aroused much discussion, largely be?cause it was so uneven and erratic. Hailed on his appearance as the true suc?cessor to Richard Wagner, this "Richard II" became, for some years, the most commanding figure in modern music. Half a century ago, except in Germany and Austria, he was almost entirely ignored by the leaders of progressive musical opinion. No composer has ever suffered such a sudden and decisive reversal of fortune. Just when his popularity seemed to be steadily growing and contro?versy dying down, his works began to disappear from current programs and for a period of approximately a decade became almost inaccessible to the public.
During this period, music was developing at a greater rate of speed than at any time in its history. Russia had begun to exert herself in the field with such great force that it seemed she was about to usurp the position of Germany as the leading musical nation. France had caught the attention of the musical world with late impressionistic and modern devices and England had suddenly revived interest in native art by rediscovering her heritage of Elizabethan music, and by attending to a contemporary output.
With the interest of the world suddenly caught by the novelty of new styles and held by the rapid shift from one to another, attention was drawn away from Germany just at that period when Strauss was winning acceptance. When, after a period of indifference to his output, the world again began to hear his works, it was with different ears. Music that had been controversial now seemed per-
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fectly acceptable; what at first appeared to be novel in harmonic device, exotic in coloration, and new in conception of form was now looked upon as common?place. Strauss's fresh and ingenious manner of treating old material had been mistaken for startling innovation and open rebellion against musical traditions.
Russia, in particular, had so extended the expressive powers of music that much that had seemed unusual and even cacophonous now appeared to be utterly prosaic. After the performance of Stravinsky's "Le Sacre du printemps" (1913), the one-time exceptional harmony, erratic melody, and queer instrumen?tation of Strauss had "left the itch of novelty behind."
When, therefore, criticism again turned to him, it observed that he had not continued to fulfill the great promise of his youth, and that aside from his failure to develop from strength to greater strength, there was a marked decline of his talents. The world beheld the tragic spectacle of the deterioration of a genius.
Romain Rolland, in his essay on Strauss, sensed this depletion when he wrote: "The frenzied laugh of Zarathustra ends in an avowal of discouraged impotence. The delirious passion of Don Juan dies away into nothingness. Don Quixote, in dying, foreswears his illusions. Even the Hero himself "Heldenleben" admits the futility of his work, and seeks oblivion in an indifferent nature."
Strauss had expressed momentarily in his early masterpieces--the great tone poems and the operas Elektra and Salome--the modem psychological point of view; yet he was too strongly marked by the nineteenth-century romanticism to venture far into the new and challenging world. The Romantic movement had persisted longer in music than in any of the other arts, still making in the early years of the twentieth century, as Ernest Newman so colorfully writes, "an occasional effectual effort to raise its old head, ludicrous now with its faded gar?lands of flowers overhanging the wrinkled cheeks, "f Romanticism had long since outlived itself; yet for composers like Strauss, Mahler, and Rachmaninoff, its fascination proved too strong to be completely resisted. Mahler defended it with a kind of impassioned eloquence; Rachmaninoff embraced it to the end of his life with filial affection; and, although Strauss, in his early sojourn in this dying world, seemed at first to "behave toward it like a graceless, irreverent urchin in a cathedral," he soon fell under its spell. The undercurrent of weariness and disgust, of satiety and disillusion, that runs through his work links him today spiritually, mentally, and psychologically with the great romanticists of the past, rather than with the modernists. Like them, he had his roots in the same soil that nurtured Wagner, Byron, Goethe, Leopardi, and Tchaikovsky, and the tragic spectacle of his gradual but perceptible deterioration is a reflec?tion of the disenchantment with life that had caught the Romantic artists in its merciless grip.
More than a quarter of a century ago Cecil Gray wrote of Strauss:
His whole career is symbolically mirrored in his own Don Juan, in the splendid vitality and high promise of his beginning, the subsequent period of cold and reckless perversity,
Romain Rolland, Musicians of Today (New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1915) p. 166. tErnest Newman, Musical Studies (3d ed; New York: John Lane Co., 1913), p. 274.
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the gradual oncoming of the inevitable nemesis of weariness and disillusion, until at last, in the words of Lenau, on whose poem the work is ostensibly based, ergreijt ihn der Ekel und der ist der Teujel der ihn halt, and the theme of disgust that is blared out triumphantly in Don Juan reappears in Zarathustra. In place of the arrogant, triumphant figure conceived and portrayed in Nietzsche, we are shown a man tormented by doubt and disillusion, des?perately seeking relief in religion, passion, science, and intellectual ecstasy and finally ending up where he began, in doubt and disillusion.
In the light of today, therefore, Strauss is no longer considered an innovator of any true significance. But let it be said that, from the first, he manifested an extraordinary mastery of technical procedure, that he is one of the few com?posers of our century who has shown himself capable of creating on a monu?mental scale and of approaching the epic conception. His work as a whole is greater than any of its constituent parts, and, in this sense, he possessed an architectonic quality of mind that is impressive. There are in his greatest works a nervous energy and exuberance, a vitality and fertility of invention, and a technique of handling the orchestra that is admittedly unsurpassed. He has again and again shown his power to create beauty of rare freshness, although he most tragically failed in the complete realization of his highest potential. For this, the present generation will never forgive him. His unpardonable sin was that he promised nothing for the future; he offered no challenge, as did Stravinsky and Schonberg, to the composers of our day.
A contemporary and highly individual evaluation of the art of Strauss today appeared in High Fidelity magazine for March, 1962. It was written by the pianist, Glenn Gould. He wrote in part:
The great thing about the music of Richard Strauss is that it presents and substantiates an argument which transcends all the dogmatisms of art--all questions of style and taste and idiom, all the frivolous, effete preoccupation of the chronologist. It presents to us an example of the man who makes richer his own time by not being of it; who speaks for all gen?erations by being of none. It is an ultimate argument of individuality--an argument that man can create his own synthesis of time without being bound by the conformities that time imposes.
Tone Poem, "Till Eulenspiegel's Merry Pranks," Op. 28
After the advent of Richard Wagner and Johannes Brahms, German music began to falter and lose its direction. By the end of the nineteenth century it was confounded by multitudinous trends, most of them having been conditioned by the dictates of the past. Only Richard Strauss seemed to have found a sure path into the new century with the creation of all of his symphonic tone poems. In them he transformed the enlarged orchestra, inherited from Berlioz, Liszt, and Wagner, into a dazzling ensemble capable of the most prodigious virtuosity. Through it he displayed an apparently inexhaustible fertility of mind. None of his contemporaries possessed his orchestral mastery. Believing that music could express not only inner states of mind but outward appearances of reality, he
Cecil Gray, A Survey of Contemporary Music (London: Oxford University Press, 1927), p. 48.
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surcharged his works with incisive, erratic rhythms and tense, impetuous themes, that, in a moment, would sweep through the whole gamut of the scale. He filled his scores with realistic sound effects created by extending the avail?able instruments beyond their expressive limitations, introducing unheard-of combinations, and even including such sound-making devices as wind and thunder machines, cowbells, and so forth. In general, he created a "Gothic abundance" that bewildered and shocked the public. He became, like Wagner before him, the enfant terrible of his time. Each successive tone poem--"Mac?beth" (1887); "Don Juan" (1888); "Tod und Verklarung" (1889); "Till Eulenspiegel" (1895); "Also Sprach Zarathustra" (1896); "Don Quixote" (1897); "Ein Heldenleben" (1898)--attempted to increase the descriptive powers of music beyond the mere evocation of elementary emotions. He was ac?cused in his attempts, as was Schonberg a few years later, of cold-blooded calculation which, said his critics, took the place of artistic impulse. The prob?lems he set before the musical world at the beginning of this century seem almost elementary today. Tonal effects which sounded irredeemably cacophonous to con?temporary ears now in many instances seem innocuous; every daring feat of orchestration which in its day seemed impossible, ultimately became a matter of routine practice.
In "Till Eulenspiegel," completed on May 6, 1895, Strauss taxed the orches?tra to the utmost, calling for a revision and extension of techniques in every di?rection. He was thirty years of age at the time, and had already established his sensational reputation with "Don Juan." Even to an innovator like Debussy, it was "like an hour of new music in a madhouse." For us hearing it tonight, almost sLxty-nine years to the day of its creation, it provides through its exhilar?ating rhythms, its myriad colors, and its occasional touches of humor and pathos, nothing but unmitigated joy and pleasure.
There is much wisdom contained in an old German proverb, Der Mensch erkennt seine Fehler cbensowenig wie eine Affe oder eine Eule die in den Spiegel sehn, ihre eigene Hesslichkeit erkennen--"A man is as little prone to recognize his own shortcomings as an ape, or an owl, looking into a mirror, is conscious of his own ugliness."
The name "Eulenspiegel" itself is translated "owls' glass" or "owls' mirror," and the rascal Till first came into prominence in the pages of Dr. Thomas Mur-ner's Volksbuch or book of folklore, supposed to have been widely read by the German people in the year 1500. Till's escapades, household tales in Germany, consisted of crude horseplay and jests that he--insolent, perverse, arrogant, defiant--practiced without any discrimination, and, in some instances, with a very studied lack of propriety.
Strauss's tone poem was presented without an explanatory program. In fact, Strauss demurred at the demand for such a program. "Were I to put into words," he wrote at the time of the first performance at Cologne in November, 1895, "the thoughts which the composition's several incidents suggested to me, they
Murncr stated that Till Eulenspiegel was born at Kneilinger, Brunswick, in 1282, and that after various wanderings through Germany, Italy, and Poland, he died of the plague in 1350 or 1353 at Mb'lln near Liibeck.
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would seldom suffice and might even give rise to offense. Let me leave it, there?fore, to my readers to crack the hard nut which the rogue has prepared for them."
Almost immediately after the first performance, a lengthy and detailed de?scription of practically every bar in the score was made by one Wilhelm Klatte, in the Allgemeine Musik Zeitiing. Paraphrased and reduced, it is somewhat as follows:
Once upon a time, there was a pranking rogue, ever up to new tricks, named Till Eulen-spiegel. Now he jumps on his horse and gallops into the midst of a crowd of market women, overturning their wares with a prodigious clatter. Now he lights out with seven league boots, now conceals himself in a mousehole. Disguised as a priest "he drips with unction and morals," yet out of his toe peeps the scamp. As cavalier, he makes love, first in jest, but soon in earnest, and is properly rebuffed. He is furious and swears vengeance on all mankind, but meeting some "Philistines," he forgets his wrath and mocks them. At length his hoaxes fail. He is tried in a court of justice and is condemned to hang for his misdeeds; but he still whistles de?fiantly as he ascends the ladder. Even on the scaffold he jests. Now he swings; he gasps for air; a last convulsion. Till is dead.
Tone Poem, "Ein Heldenleben," Op. 40
Strauss began the composition of "Ein Heldenleben" at Munich, August 2, 1898, and finished it at Berlin, December 27 of the same year. Its first perform?ance, under his direction, took place at Frankfort-on-the-Main, March 3, 1899. The work was dedicated to Willem Mengelberg and the Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam.
Strauss has stated that "A Hero's Life" was written as a kind of sequel to "Don Quixote" composed one year before. Having in the latter work sketched the tragicomic figure of the Spanish knight whose vain search after heroism leads to insanity, he presented in "A Hero's Life" not a single poetical or histori?cal figure, but rather a more general and free ideal of great and manly heroism to which one can apply an everyday standard of valor; a heroism which describes the universal battle of life and aspires, through effort and renunciation, towards the evolution of the Soul.
Much has been written concerning the "program" of "A Hero's Life." It was the general conviction that Strauss was describing the events and experiences of his own life, but nowhere did he officially admit this. In his Musiciens d'Aujourd'hui (Paris, 1908), Romain Rolland wrote:
Without doubt Strauss had a program in his mind, but he said to me himself: "You have no need to read it. It is enough to know that the hero is there fighting against his enemies." I do not know how far that is true, or if parts of the symphonic poem would not be somewhat obscure to anyone who followed it without text; but this speech seems to prove that he has understood the dangers of the literary symphony, and that he is striving for pure music. ... At its first performance in Germany I saw people tremble as they listened to it [the tone-poem], and some rose up suddenly and made violent gestures quite un?consciously. I myself had a strange feeling of giddiness, as if an ocean had been upheaved, and I thought that for the first time in thirty years Germany had found a poet of victory.
When the work was published in March, 1899, however, a pamphlet of
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themes and motives compiled by Friedrich Rosch, a personal friend, and a descriptive poem by Eberhard Konig accompanied the score. Later a pupil of Strauss, one Wilhelm Klatte, published a similar pamphlet. In it he summarized "Ein Heldenleben" as follows:
The score embraces six principal divisions. In the first, after the motive of the hero has been established, the more important thematic materials, characteristic of the different sides of his nature and bearing, are forthwith given out; wherewith the hero is brought into rela?tion with the world about him. Next comes the contrast between the hero and mankind in general, men of mean and envious nature--a picture full of severe and glaring color contrasts, to which, as a reconciling counterpart, immediately succeeds a charming scene, wherein the hero is revealed under the "ban" of love. A call to arms marks the ending of this situation, and forthwith the hero appears on the battlefield. The combat concluded, through a gloriously gained victory, there follows a period of proof by deed of intellectual prowess--a ripening and blossoming of noble thoughts and grander plans, a peaceful and steady development of the inner nature. From the world, full of hatred and sensuality, the hero, enlightened and resigned, finally withdraws himself into the solitude of Nature. Recol?lections of war and combat, of love and life's joys, are interwoven with the dreams of the last days.
The following are six connected sections of the tone-poem:
The Hero. The music here suggests the character of the hero, courageous, sensitive, intelligent, and full of an all-embracing enthusiam for life.
The Hero's Adversaries. The piercing, penetrating, and snarling phrases of the woodwind section signify the criticism and mockery of the world. The hero theme is heard, gently pro?testing at first, but soon asserting itself with strength into opposition.
The Hero's Companion. This section is introduced by the solo violin. It pictures the coy, demure, petulant, tender, and coquettish "loved one," and the hero's sincere, at first in?articulate, but quietly passionate pleading.
The Hero's Battlefield. The calm serenity of love is disturbed by the hero's adversaries. The mockery of the world intrudes upon his peace. Inspired by love, he enters the battle with Olympian rage. (Fanfare of trumpets.)
The Hero's Mission or Peace. This section describes the growth and ripening of the hero's soul and his intellectual and spiritual accomplishments. It is this section that gives rise to the belief that Strauss is himself the hero. He has made use of thematic material from his earlier works. Fragments from "Don Juan," "Also Sprach Zarathustra," "Tod und Verklarung," "Till Eulenspiegel," and the song, Traum durch die Dammerung, are woven into this section with aptness, subtlety, and coherence.
The Hero's Escape from the World--Conclusion. The hero is resigned to the indifference of the world. With his memories he builds up a world within himself which protects him from all harm, and with this "Ein Heldenleben" comes to a majestic and serene end.
In "Ein Heldenleben" the true powers of Strauss are displayed. In the greatness of its general conception, in the fine sense of form that controls the vast design, and in the skill with which the themes are made, in this or that metamorphosis, to play organic parts in the development of the work, it stands at the head of all the symphonic poems we know. Its exciting episodes, the rich?ness of its instrumentation, its high peaks of emotional intensity, and its infinite contrasts satisfy completely the demands of the modern ear for color, movement, and strength.
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Concerto No. 1 in E-flat major for Horn and Orchestra, Op. 11
Strauss wrote this youthful work during the winter of 1882-83. It was cre?ated for his father, Franz Strauss, who had gained fame throughout Europe as a performer on, teacher of, and composer for the horn. He was referred to by the great conductor von Bulow as the "Joachim of the horn," and was selected by Richard Wagner to play the solo passages at the premiere of his operas, Tristan und Isolde, Die Meistersinger, and Parsifal. He was also credited with having, at Wagner's request, reduced the famous horn call in Siegfried, which in its original form was almost unplayable, to its final shape. Until 1896 he was professor of his instrument at the Akademie der Tonkunst and soloist at the Hofoper in Munich. He was, unfortunately, as irascible as he was talented. His students and his colleagues constantly bore the brunt of his chronic irritability but never lost their respect for him as a superb artist. "Strauss is an unbearable fellow, but when he plays his horn," said Wagner, "one cannot be cross with him." "He was extremely temperamental, quick tempered and tyrannical," wrote Strauss of his father; but he acknowledged him, as did every musician, to be the most notable of horn players, "as regards beauty and volume of tone, perfection of phrasing and technique, "f
In spite of the respect proffered him by Wagner, Franz Strauss was in turn very outspoken about his scorn for everything Wagner wrote and represented in contemporary music. As an uncompromising conservative in his musical tastes, he exerted a restraining influence on his son. "His musical creed worshipped the trinity of Mozart (above others), Haydn, and Beethoven," wrote Strauss. "Under my father's strict tutelage I heard nothing but classical music until I was sixteen, and I owe it to this discipline that my love and adoration for the classical masters of music has remained untainted to this day."J
After entering the forbidden and intoxicating world of Richard Wagner, Strauss emerged a completely emancipated artist. "I was quite incapable of appreciating the first performances of Tristan and Siegfried" he wrote. "At any rate, it was not until, against my father's orders, I studied the score of Tristan that I entered into this magic work, and later into the Ring des Nibelungen, and I can well remember how, at the age of seventeen, I positively wolfed the score of Tristan as if in a trance, and how intoxicated I was with enthusiasm . . . like Anteus after touching the soil, I re-emerged into new life with strength from immersion in the Wagnerian orchestra."?
The Concerto for Horn, written by Strauss at the age of eighteen, therefore, bears little resemblance to the works of his full maturity as represented by "Till Eulenspiegel" and "Ein Heldenleben" on this program. Quite obviously written to exploit the possibilities of the instrument and the technical prowess
Richard Strauss, RecolUctiont and Relections (New York: Boosey and Hawkes Ltd., 1949) p. 128. 17AM., p. 131. tlbid., p. 131-32. ilbid., p. 132-33.
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of his father, it does not, in its rhapsodic style, adhere strictly to the conven?tional concerto form. The spirited opening theme which reappears in the last movement, is, in truth, the rather slender source material for most of the work. It occurs in the orchestral interludes and in the long lyrical passages for the solo instrument. The second movement, a tender romantic effusion supported by harmonies that must have disturbed his father, follows without interruption. There is a brief introduction to the last movement which again recalls the open?ing theme, now treated in something resembling a rondo form.
His father, we are told, remonstrated against some of the solo passages, saying that they were badly written for the horn, to which the son retorted, "I have heard you practice passages like these at home; now you will have to play them in public." But this he never did. The work had its premiere, March 4, 188S, with one Leinhos as soloist and von Biilow conducting the ducal orchestra of Meiningen.
Suite from Der Rosenkavalier, Op. 59
"If it's Richard, we'll take Wagner; if it's Strauss, we'll take Johann," wrote a Berlin critic after hearing the first performance of Der Rosenkavalier in 1911. But this is not the critical opinion today.
No other of the Strauss scores has endeared him to so large a public, for no other abounds in such geniality, tenderness, and charm. Nor are there many of his pages that reveal such a wealth of mellifluous and engaging melody or such opulent, and at the same time, transparent orchestration.
To a public shocked and antagonized by the consuming lust and appalling frankness of Salome (1902) or by the repellent decadence and crushing disson?ance of Electra (1903), the warm humanity and gentility of this comedy of man?ners, with its engaging intrigue and its appealing blend of wit and pathos, buffoonery and nostalgic charm, came as a great relief that restored to the late Victorians their faith in decency and good taste.
Der Rosenkavalier is a comedy of eighteenth-century Vienna, written by von Hofmannsthal. It tells the story of a charming woman's reconciliation to her advancing years, and her noble renunciation of a love that has turned from her to a younger woman. The story, relieved by scenes of humor that verge on the bawdy, is so permeated with the spirit of human understanding, humility, and wisdom that it never fails to leave the spectator with a renewed faith in the goodness of living.
The present Suite was compiled for Fiirstner, Strauss's publisher. It begins with the orchestral introduction to the opera, and includes the outstanding en?semble music as well as that associated with the entrance of the Rosebearer. It ends with the waltzes that occur throughout the opera, particularly at the end of Act II, which are mostly associated with the capers of the fat and lecherous, but impoverished, Baron von Lerchenau as he dances around the room delighted with the outcome of his immediate amorous plans.
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Sunday Afternoon, May 3
Symphony in C............Stravinsky
Igor Feodorovitch Stravinsky was born in Oranien-baum (now Lomonosov), Russia, June 17, 1882.
Wherever Stravinsky lives or thinks, an embryo of a new world is formed. --Jean Riviere
Igor Stravinsky's position as the greatest living composer in the world today is universally established and recognized. Since the deaths of Bela Bartok in 1945, and Arnold Schonberg in 1951, he is undoubtedly the most illustrious and signifi?cant figure in contemporary music, not only for his monumental works, but be?cause of the influence he has exerted upon other composers; there are few in our day who have not felt the impact of his powerful and challenging art.
Unlike Arnold Schonberg, a true revolutionist who caused a decided break with conventional methods of tonal organization, Stravinsky has remained firmly rooted in tradition. In spite of the often sensational innovations he has brought to each successive work, he has always held to certain basic musical values with characteristic conviction, and practiced them with unusual fidelity. Aesthetically, technically, and stylistically, his music is a flowering of traditional thought and practice. The term neoclassic is often applied to it and perhaps best describes the methods he has employed with such mastery throughout a long career. As Stravinsky himself has often asserted, the classical roots of his music strike deeper than we suspect or are willing to admit. Certainly its con?structive coherence and inexorable logic, its economy of means, its avoidance of all unessentials, and the directness and clarity of its communication attest to its rational sources. The manner in which he successfully conceals himself in his art and the complete absence of any personal commentary or preoccupation with lyrical expression without first subjecting it to rules identify him with classical rather than Romantic tradition. In aesthetic theory, he is a strict autonomist, maintaining that music's main function is not merely to evoke sensations but "to bring order into things" and to help us pass "from an anarchic and individual state into a state of order." He has devoted his life to becoming a superb artisan, constantly refining his idiom and developing his technique. In the words of Andre Malroux, he has been concerned almost exclusively with "rendering forms into style."
Wagner and Brahms had brought German Romanticism and its concept of music as the "soul expression" of the individual to a complete fruition. After a
Igor Stravinsky, Autobiography (New York: M. J. Steuer, 1958).
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century in which music was called upon to express personal and private emo?tion, paint pictures, comment upon "programs," abet the drama and ballet, it had lost much of its inherent dignity. Its intrinsic principles had gone into decay, while its superficial powers were exalted and enthroned in their place. A return to some sort of classic conception of form, simplicity, and the absolute was inevitable. When music began to exaggerate Romanticism and to force the continuance of a spirit that had already passed out of art, the reaction set in. Composers like Mahler, Bruckner, and Strauss illustrate a final attempt to administer artificial respiration to the dying Romanticism of the nineteenth century. The post-Romanticists were not only writing its last chapter; they were inscribing its epitaph. Schonberg in his early career pursued a similar course with Verkldrte Nacht in 1899, and until 1912 his scores grew in size and complexity, becoming increasingly intricate and unwieldy (Gurre--Lieder, 1901-10; Pierrot Lunaire, 1912). Exactly parallel with Schonberg, Igor Stra?vinsky was creating the involved score of Sacre du printemps (1913). It is interesting to note that both these composers reacted rather suddenly in favor of simplicity directly after writing these complicated scores. Schonberg became increasingly concise, logical, and sparing of decorative complexity and finally evolved a highly intellectualized system of his own. Another interesting observation, proving the leaven of classicism at work, is that between 1915 and 1929 neither of these composers wrote for a full orchestra, but composed for smaller chamber music combinations. This tendency toward simplification in composition became known as neoclassisicm. At the time, writers on music, sensing the "new" style, attempted to explain it by pointing out that it was as much a progression as a revival; that in its new rationality it revealed more variety in its treatment of form; that in its harmony there was an underlying direction toward free horizontal movement. Debussy's revolutionary dissonances had passed their aggressive stage and were now accepted as consonances and points of rest, and had already taken their place alongside the accepted har?monic progressions of the past. They pointed out the pre-eminently horizontal texture of the new music, the sparseness of its style, and its general anti-romantic and anti-idealistic intentions. They noted its self-contained quality and that it eschewed for the most part descriptive programs or any implication of "inner meaning." This generation believed that music should be adapted to the demands of its time and no longer re-echo an age that was in every sense remote. What was written about it was diametrically opposed to the traditional German idealistic and philosophical concept. Music was not superhuman, not inspir?ational; it was a human, useful, practical, and purposeful art with no descriptive intention, no sentimentalism. The composer's responsibility was not to express individual emotion or reflect personal moods and feelings, but to create directly out of music's own substance. There was no deep mystery about it; it spoke the same accessible language to everyone.
The Symphony in C and Persipkone on this afternoon's program signified a turning point in Stravinsky's evolution as an artist. To many who had heralded "Le Sacre du printemps" as the fulfillment of his theories of art in revolt, these
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works represented reactionary tendencies and an abjuration of everything he had stood for. They are in truth the logical culmination of a tendency first evidenced in his Symphonies of Wind Instruments (1920), dedicated to Debussy and con?tinued in other neoclassical works such as the Concerto for Piano and Wind In?struments (1924), the Oedipus Rex (1927), Apollon Musagete (1928), and the Symphonie des psaumes (1930).
Late in the summer of 1939, before the outbreak of the war, Stravinsky made sketches for a symphony which had been commissioned by the Chicago Sym?phony Orchestra. Meantime he received an invitation to give a series of lec?tures at Harvard University. The threat of war discouraged him temporarily from carrying out his commitments, but encouraged by the writer Jean Girau-doux, then Minister of Information, and by Nadia Boulanger, he sailed for America on one of the last ships to leave fear-torn Europe. He spent the first year in Boston where he completed the symphony. The work had its premiere November 7, 1940, in Chicago, under his direction. Virgil Thomson wrote in the New York Herald, April 12, 1948: "It is a compound of grace and of brusqueness, thoroughly Russian in its charm and its rudeness, and so utterly sophisticated musically and intellectually that few musicians of intellect and taste can resist it."
There is a unique simultaneity of economy of means and richness of effect in this uncluttered score. Its material is sparse but tuneful, its orchestration clear and precise, and its forms unfold with the utmost clarity and logic. Written in the spirit of Haydn and Mozart, it has its own elegance and elevation of tone.
Five Pieces for Orchestra........Schonberg
Arnold Schonberg was born in Vienna, September 13, 1874; died in West Los Angeles (Brentwood), July 13, 1951.
"I feel air from other planets." --Stephan George
Arnold Schonberg, the greatest' innovator in twentieth-century music, took one of the most courageous and significant stands against established tradition ever assumed by a creative artist. In 1907--8 he wrote the last work in which he used a key signature (String Quartet No. 2 in F-sharp minor, Op. 10). From then on the feeling of a home key was forsaken, and the distinction be?tween consonance and dissonance abolished. This music is popularly referred to as atonal. (Schonberg objected to the word and preferred "pantonal" or all in?clusive tonality.) The abandonment of traditional tonality is, so far, the major achievement of twentieth-century music. By 1923 Schonberg had evolved a new method of composing, using the twelve chromatic tones of the octave. Arranging
These lectures are available in English translation under the title Poetics of Music, Vintage Books, K 39.
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them arbitrarily for each new work into a "series" or "row," he avoided any reference to the traditional diatonic system of major and minor scales or keys. This technique became known as "serial," and the music resulting from the use of the twelve chromatic tones, as "dodecaphonic." In his reaction to the over?extended forms and subjectivity of the romantic composers of the nineteenth century, Schonberg evolved a rigidly objective and highly intellectualized system, the use of which resulted in the creation of a music that was marked by the ut?most formal concentration, thematic logic, yet perpetual variation of rhythm, texture, dynamics, and timbre.
A little more than a decade after his death, Arnold Schonberg is still a challenging name in contemporary music. In Music and Letters for October, 1951, twenty-five eminent musicians and critics gave their opinion of his work. As can be expected, opinions varied; not many expressed admiration. There were divided attitudes toward the value of his early works, but all agreed in finding no artistic merit in his compositions since the first World War. Some believed that he had rejected tradition only to invent a purely intellectual but artistically invalid system that revealed a complete lack of real creative ability. Hostile personal criticism, however, be it of professional musicians, critics, or laymen, has failed to affect the universal acceptance and acknowledgment of Schonberg as one of the most remarkable musical minds and original creative geniuses of our time. Music history has provided few such innovators, seldom such challengers to tradition and convention. The world has only occasionally witnessed such a tormented and tormenting spirit in art.
It is sufficient to say that no modern composer of eminence has encountered such opposition and critical scorn, and at the same time wielded such a far-reaching influence upon contemporary musical thinking. No major distinguished composer of our time is so well known by name, yet has received relatively so few public performances; there is no comparable phenomenon of an artist's ideas persisting, independent of the successful realization of his work. The disparity between his fame and the public's familiarity and knowledge of his music has had few parallels in music history. In spite of this no artist of our day has won such universal respect. Noel Strauss wrote in the New York Times, September 10,1944:
Undaunted by violent opposition, Schonberg has fought unrelentingly for the right of the creative musician to throw off the shackles of outworn convention. His road as pioneer has been no easy one to tread. But neither contumely nor the loneliness of the spirit that is the inevitable lot of those who open up new paths in any field of endeavor, has shaken in the slightest his determined stand for the musical principles he advocated with such un?common courage, conviction and consistency. Schonberg already displayed extraordinary imaginative powers, absolute clarity of patterning, rich rhythmic invention, and strong individuality in his earliest works. All of his music exhibits his lofty ideals and unquestioned sincerity. His influence on other composers to write has been responsible for many new practices. His chamber symphony, for instance, was the original source from which emanated the resultant trend of present-day composers to write for small ensembles. His expressionistic music of later days with its avoidance of sensuous sound has had its effect on the works of many other musical creators, as have its purely functional intentions.
. . . Schonberg, whose genius was recognized at once by Mahler and Zemlinsky, has writ-
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ten in every musical category. A bom teacher, he has numbered among his pupils such composers as Berg, von Webern, and Wellesz. He is the author of valuable theoretical works, has proved himself a splendid conductor, and also has disclosed marked talents for painting. A great personality as well as one of the leading figures of his epoch, he has inspired the love of his disciples and the profound respect of the whole musical world.
The early works composed before the revolutionary change in his style that made him the most controversial figure in music in this century were the String Sextet Verkldrte Nacht, Op. 4 (1899); Gurre-Lieder (1900-1901); and the symphonic tone poem, Pelleas und Melisande, Op. 5 (1902-3). They were written in the free symphonic idiom and style of Wagner. All suffered from the megalomania that affected so much of the hyperbolic and congested music of the late nineteenth century. Germany at this period seemed to be the only musical nation that had lost its direction. Her composers, floundering in the lavish chro?matic jungle of Wagnerism, wandered aimlessly, beguiled yet misled by the dark shifting shadows of Romanticism, which had long since outlived itself. For the youthful Schonberg, the fascination proved too strong to be completely resisted. After proving his complete mastery over it, he turned courageously to the future and with uncompromising determination never again glanced backward.
Although the String Quartet in F-sharp minor, Op. 10, had a key sig?nature, it was in the last movement of the work and in the Three Pieces for Piano, Op. 11 (1908) that he finally reached the goal for which he was aiming. In these works the concept of tonality was finally abandoned. From now on he became the standard bearer for "atonality," its chief and most notable exponent. He wrote in this same year, Fifteen Songs from Stefan George's Das Buck der hangenden Garten (Op. IS), Erwartung (Op. 17), and the work on tonight's program. "The Five Orchestral Pieces," Op. 16, was written originally for a full orchestra, and performed for the first time September 3, 1912, in Queens Hall, London, Sir Henry Wood conducting. It was received by the audience with complete bewilderment and obvious irritation in spite of Karl Linke who in his explan?atory program notes pointed out that the music, seeking to express sub?conscious and dreamlike states of mind, was built upon none of the lines familiar to us; that it had rhythm "as all life in us has its rhythm"; that it had a ton?ality but "only as the sea and the storm has tonality"; that it had harmonies "al?though we cannot analyze them, nor can we detect or trace its themes, for all its technical craft is submerged and made one and indivisible with the content."
In 1949, feeling that his ideas were too personal to be effectively presented by a huge orchestra, Schonberg prepared a revised version in which he reduced the number of instruments and changed details of orchestration. Only the most rigorous analysis could reveal the nature of the musical materials and their in?credible concentration in this magnificent score. Although its form and idiom are more familiar to musicians in 1964 than they were in 1908, most audiences meeting it for the first time may find comprehension of its strange beauty dif?ficult.
Musical Times, London, Vol. 55, 1914, p. 88.
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In employing an entirely new melodic and harmonic vocabulary, Schonberg in this work created a style of the highest expressive and structural significance and opened up to us a hitherto unexplored world of sound experience. The "twelve-tone row" was not yet employed in the "Five Pieces for Orchestra," but in their tightly wrought textures and sparse style, they anticipated the later "serial" works. One hears the music in "harmonic planes," as it were. In this music we are less conscious of "mixed" orchestral colors resulting in rich and opulent sounds than we are of instruments of a kind working rather leanly in groups. With these general suggestions in mind, the following brief references to each of the pieces may be of further aid in reaching some of the meaning of this most complicated and challenging music.
First Piece: Vorgefiihle ("Presentiments"). It is very difficult to detect in this essentially contrapuntal movement any thematic material in the accepted sense of the term, although the first four bars of the introduction form a kind of motive that persists under a very free fugue until the last chord. In a middle section, an unusual climax is reached by a tongue-fluttering (Flutterzunge) in muted trombones and bass tuba.
Second Piece: Vergangenes ("The Past"). The form of this section is some?times referred to as "protoplasmic." The whole piece is essentially lyrical. It begins with a subject in solo viola. Into an episode in which a celesta is joined by two flutes, a light staccato theme, which later becomes more prominent, is introduced. Instruments mingle with gossamer lightness, as fragments from themes flash out here and there. It ends on a strangely eerie chord.
Third Piece: Farben ("Colors"). The vast shimmering iridescence of this section might best be described as "music of the spheres." There is no con?struction apparent here. It is a pure study in harmonic color of opalescent hues and shifting orchestral sonorities. Its indefinable shapes move with vague?ness. Changes in the same chord take place so imperceptibly with no instru?ment obtruding, that we feel what must be akin to the eternal quietude of outer space. Schonberg is specific as to how this movement is to be performed. He writes, "It is not the conductor's task in this piece to bring into prominence certain parts that seem to him of thematic importance, nor to tone down any apparent inequalities in the combination of sound. Wherever one part is to be more prominent than others, it is so orchestrated, and the tone is not to be reduced. On the other hand, it is his business to see that each instrument is played with exactly the intensity prescribed for it--that is, in its own pro?portion and not in subordination to the sound as a whole." This movement never rises above a pianissimo.
Fourth Piece: Peripetie ("Peripeteia"). Vigorous passages for woodwinds and imperious figures for trumpets and trombones create a sharp contrast to the two previous movements. Indefinable lyrical fragments plunge suddenly into fierce conflict with nerve-shattering impacts: "Huge dismembered boulders of sound are hurled forth in gigantic strife." Strongly contrasted with the preceding section, this movement is apt to offer the greatest challenge to the listener.
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Fifth Piece: Das Obligate Rezitativ: ("The Obligato Recitative"). In the Third Piece, the volume and color nuances were all reduced to one dynamic level. Here everything is specifically indicated, yet no instrument holds its place for long. The "harmonic planes" of the other pieces seem to give way to a kind of counterpoint. We are less conscious, however, of individual melodic fragments in conventional imitation and overlapping than we are of a continuous flow of austere-sounding harmonies. Unlike the other pieces, this section seems to move at a steady pace throughout. After a fortissimo climax, a new lyrical level is reached in which the melodic element becomes more definite for a moment. It mounts up to a still greater clash of sound, after which everything seems to collapse--"a hideous nightmare in which the music reaches the nadir of un-vocability."
Schonberg is the foremost early representative of Expressionism in music. Atonalism and Expressionism in art and literature were simultaneous move?ments, and both were used to express man's bewilderment in the modern world; his frustrations, anxieties, and fears; his feeling of isolation; and his rebellion against forces over which he has no control. These feelings were expressed in the paintings of Vassily Kandinsky, Oscar Kokoschka, Franz Marc, and Paul Klee with their distorted images, strange conflicting shapes, bold dynamic lines, and violently contrasting colors; in the hallucinated visions of Franz Kafka and the "stream of consciousness" school of writers. Expressionism in the arts had its inception in the theories of Sigmund Freud that dealt with the shadowy realm of the unconscious. The arts, too, began to explore into inner psychic states and experiences, and to make them manifest in color, word, and tone with desperate intensity and a maximum of expressive force.
Persiphone..............Stravinsky
A melodrama in three parts to words by Andre Gide
As defined by Mozart in a letter to his father in 1788, a melodrama was "a recitative with instruments, but the actors speak instead of sing." Only part of Persephone is in the melodrama tradition, however, for much of it is sung. It was originally conceived for the stage, commissioned by the actress Ida Rubinstein in 1933, and performed for the first time at the Paris Opera, April 30, 1934, un?der Stravinsky's direction. In this form it was a dramatic treatment of Andre Gide's poem based upon the Homeric Hymn to Demeter in which the part of Persephone was mimed, danced, and spoken by Ida Rubinstein. Dances were provided by Kurt Jooss, scenery and costumes by Andre Barsacq.
At that time Stravinsky published a statement of his aims in writing Perse?phone:
I wish to call the public's attention to a word which sums up a whole policy--the word 'syllable'; and further to the verb "to syllabize." Therein lies my chief concern. In music (which is time and regulated tone, as distinct from the confused tone that exists in nature) there is always the syllable. Between the syllable and the general sense--or the mode
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MAY FESTIVAL PROGRAM
permeating the work--there is the word, which canalizes the scattered thought and brings to a head the discursive sense. But the word does not help the musician. On the contrary, it is a cumbersome intermediate. For "Persephone," I wanted nothing but syllables--beauti?ful strong syllables--and an action. This is exactly what Gide has given me....
Music is not thought. We say "crescendo" and "dimuendo," but music which is really music does not swell or subside according to the temperatures of the action. I do not exteriorize. I hold that music is given us to create order, to carry us from an anarchical, individual condition to a regulated condition, thoroughly conscious and provided with guar?antees of enduring vitality. That which specifically appertains to my conscious emotion cannot be expressed in regulated form. . . .
When emotion becomes conscious, it is already cold and set. I warn the public that I loathe orchestral effects as means of embellishment. I have long since renounced the futilities of brio. I dislike cajoling the public; it inconveniences me.. . .
This score, as it is written and as it must remain in the archives of our time, forms an inseparable whole with the tendencies repeatedly asserted in my previous works. It is a sequel to Oedipus Rex, to the Symphony of Psalms, to the Caprkcio, to the Violin Concerto and to the Duo-Concertante--in short, to a progression from which the spectacular is absent, without this absence affecting the autonomous life of the works.
Nothing of all this originates in a caprice of my own. I am on a perfectly sure road. There is nothing to discuss or criticize. One does not criticize anybody or anything that is functioning. A nose is not manufactured; a nose just is. Thus, too, my art.
When Stravinsky set the words of Gide to music, therefore, wanting nothing more than "beautiful strong syllables," he perverted not only the sense of the words, but destroyed their very shape and sound value by superimposing to an extreme degree his own musical intervals and rhythms. Even when the words are spoken, their inherent sonorities are in constant conflict with the fascinating music that accompanies them. In the choruses, musically so impressive, the incompatibility between the luxurious word-sounds of Gide, and the often austere music-sounds of Stravinsky becomes even more apparent. This procedure, pre?ferred by him, could not be further removed from that of Bach who strove in all his vocal works for the most apposite relationship between word and tone. For Stravinsky words become purely phonetic material for the composer to dissect at will. In spite of the fact that this music insists upon its own autonomy and adheres at all times to natural musical laws, it catches most remarkably the essential spirit of the poem; it probes the inner core of its meaning and often illuminates it for us. Thus through its own rhythmic formulas, astringent har?monies, and often hard but gleaming orchestration, it evokes through its simplicity and immaculate style thoughts of new life, youthfulness and eternal loveliness, symbolized by Persephone, the Goddess, who brings us the vernal season. Music is not used here to communicate personal feelings, comment upon litera?ture, or to attempt to evoke imagery suggested by words, but rather through its own means "to bring order into things." In so doing, it creates a unique kind of beauty that is both serene and profound.
Le Sacre du printemps, with its frenetic convulsions of brutal chords and rhythms, had ushered in an era of war and devastation. Persephone heralded the arrival of a new world of order and reason. Building upon foundations of the
Lawrence Gilman, New York Herald, October 21, 1934.
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past, Stravinsky in this work concerned himself with the resurgence of faith and hope in a world sorely in need of both. The continuity, logic, and coherence of its formal beauty attest to his well-defined purpose.
The text of Andre Gide was originally inspired by the Homeric Hymn to De-meter which told the story of Persephone, the Goddess of Fertility, and the daugh?ter of Zeus and Demeter. She was abducted by Pluto and taken to the under?world. In grief, her mother caused a famine to descend upon the earth. Zeus, through his messenger, Mercury, persuaded Pluto to allow Persephone to return to the gods. It was arranged that she would spend half her time with them and half with Pluto. For six months Demeter mourns for her daughter. This is the period of barren winter. Her return to earth is signaled by the birth of spring. Thus the myth explained the changing of seasons.
Gide's poem follows the myth closely, though his treatment of it shows con?siderable departure in interpretation and details. He added to the purely pagan poetry the Christian ideal of compassion so dear to Wagner. Persephone ac?cepts as her destiny the role of bringing love and pity to those in Pluto's dismal realm. She will return yearly to his somber kingdom to bring love and affection to the unhappy souls who dwell there.
The poem is divided into three parts; Persephone Abducted, Persiphone in the Underworld, and Persephone Reborn.
PART I
Persephone Abducted: A series of arias, choruses, and recitatives tell us of the departure of Demeter who leaves her daughter in the care of nymphs. Not heed?ing their warning, Persephone plucks a narcissus, the scent of which fills her with anxiety and grief, and she has a vision of those suffering in the underworld. Eumolpus reassures her that it is her destiny to rule over the underworld and she is transported there as Part I ends.
EUMOLPUS
Goddess of a thousand names--
powerful Demeter
You who cover the earth with harvest, The giver of wheat, We celebrate here your mysteries Before this people assembled-To the Nymphs you entrusted Persephone, your cherished daughter Who makes springtime on earth And delights in the meadow flowers-How she was taken from you We learn from Homer.
Chorus
Stay with us, Princess Persephone,
Stay with us, your mother Demeter
Queen of fair summer
Entrusted you to us
Among the birds and flowers
The kisses of the streams
The caresses of the wind.
See the sunlight smiling on the waves.
Stay with us, stay with us
Princess Persephone Stay with us in happiness It is the world's first morning.
Persephone
The wanton breeze
Has caressed the flowers.
Chorus
Come, rejoice with us, Persephone The breeze has caressed the flowers It is the world's first morning. All is joyful as our hearts Even-thing smiles on earth and sea. Come! Rejoice with us, Persephone The breeze has caressed the flowers.
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MAY FESTIVAL PROGRAM
Persephone
I listen with all my heart
To your song of the world's first morning.
Chorus
Morning rapture
Sunlit petal
Wet with dew--
Yield, heed no longer
The most loving counsel
And let the future tenderly enfold you.
Persephone
So subtle is
The delicate caress of this day
That the most timid soul
Might give itself to love.
EuMOLPUS AND CHORUS
Hyacinth, anemone, saffron Adonis, bloodroot Lily, iris, verbena, columbine And all of the flowers of spring The narcissus is most beautiful.
Eumolpus
Those who bend over its petals
Those who breathe its scent
See visions of the mysterious underworld.
Chorus
Be on your guard
Defend yourself always
Against following blindly
What you regard
With too much affection.
Do not approach the narcissus
No--do not gather this flower.
EUMOLPUS
Those who bend, etc.
Persephone
I see upon meadows bright with asphodel
Shadows wandering slowly.
They walk plaintively
And monotonously. I see wandering
A multitude without hope
Sad, unquiet, pale.
Chorus
Do not gather this flower.
Eumolpts
Persephone, a people await you--
A wretched people grieve
Who do not know hope
On whom smiles no springtime.
Persephone, a people await you.
Already pity has betrothed you
To Pluto, king of the underworld--
You shall descend to him
To console the spirits.
Your youth shall make their distress less
somber, Your springtime shall thaw their eternal
winter Come! Come! You shall reign over the
spirits.
Persephone
Nymphs, my sisters, my charming companions, How can I ever again Laugh and sing with you, carefree, Now that I know, now that I have seen That an unhappy people are suffering and living in want.
PART II
Persephone in the Underworld. Persephone is tempted by Mercury to bite a ripe pomegranate which fills her with longing for the world she lost. The narcissus has the magic power to permit a vision of earth, and Persephone is stunned to see it shrouded in eternal winter and her mother in despair. Eumolpus foretells the birth of Triptolemus, his upbringing by Demeter, and the eventual restora?tion of Persephone to earth.
Persephone
0 sad people of the underworld, you draw me to you!
1 come to you.
Eumolpus
In this way, Homer tells us
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The king of winter, Pluto of the underworld Stole Persephone from her mother And springtime from the earth.
Chorus
On this bed she reposes And I dare not disturb her.
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Still drowsy, half drowsy, She presses to her heart The narcissus whose odor Has overpowered her with pity. On this bed, etc.
Persephone
In what a strange place I awake-Where am I
Is it already evening Or, rather, the end of the night
Chorus
Here nothing ends
Here everyone pursues without rest
Things that glide away and vanish.
Eumolpus
Here the death of time makes life eternal.
Persephone
What am I to do here
Chorus
You shall reign over the spirits--
Persephone
Plaintive spirits, how do you fare
Chorus
Patiently on the shores of Eternity
By the shallow waters
Of the river Lethe
Silently, in our urns we try to gather,
one by one, That mocking water from the fountains
that always escapes Nothing is finished-Everyone pursues without rest things that
vanish.
Persephone
What can I do for your happiness
Chorus
The spirits are not unhappy Without hate and without love Without pain and without desire They have no other destiny Than to recommence, endlessly The unfinished cycle of life. Speak to us of springtime, immortal Persephone.
Persephone
My mother Demeter, how beautiful was life
When the loving sound of our laughter
mingled
With golden corn, flowers and the odor of milk. Far from you, Demeter, I, your lost daughter See with wonder through the endless
course of the everlasting day Pale flowers spring up where I chance to
look, The gray banks of the Lethe adorned with
white roses, And in the shadow of evening, the
shadows enchanted By the uncertain light of a subterranean
summer.
Chorus
Speak to us, Persephone.
Persephone Who calls me
Chorus Pluto!
EUMOLPUS
It is your task to reign
Not to show pity, Persephone.
Do not hope to have power to aid them.
No one, were he a god, can escape his
destiny.
Accept it, and to forget your pity Drink this cup from Lethe which the
underworld offers you With all the treasures of earth.
Persephone
No, take back these gems;
The frailest flower of the meadows
Is a more desirable ornament.
Chorus
Come, Mercury! Come, hours of day,
Come, hours of day and night.
Eumolpus
Persephone is confused, and refuses All that is done to please her. But Mercury hopes That, remembering her mother, She will taste the fruit, A fruit he sees hanging From the branch that bends Above the fatal thirst of Tantalus. He plucks a ripe pomegranate And makes sure it is lit by a ray of sunlight.
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MAY FESTIVAL PROGRAM
He gives it to Persephone
Who marvels and is surprised
To find in the darkness
A reflection of the light of earth.
The bright colors of pleasure
Give her new confidence
And, smiling, she yields to desire.
Seizing the ripe pomegranate, she tastes it.
Then Mercury flies away, and Pluto smiles.
Persephone
Where am I What have I done
What sadness ails me
Help me, my sisters the pomegranate I
tasted Reawakened my longing for the earth I
left behind.
Chorus
If you should gaze on the bloom
Of the narcissus
You might see again
The fields you left behind, and your
mother
As it happened when on earth The mystery of the underworld appeared
to you.
Persephone
Surround me, protect me, faithful spirits, This flower of the field, most beautiful Only remnant of spring that I bring to
the underworld.
If I should bend over it to ask a question, What would it show me
Chorus Winter.
Persephone
Where then have you fled,
Perfumes, songs, accompaniments to love
I see nothing but dead leaves;
Flowerless meadows and barren fields
Tell the sorrow of the smiling seasons.
No more from the mountain slopes do
the country flutes
Fill the woods with their clear music. From everything there seems to come a
long groaning For everything awaits in vain the return
of spring.
Chorus
The spring is you.
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Persephone
Let us alternate the sound of our sorrowful voices.
Chorus
Tell us what you see
Persephone
Frozen rivers
Streams have ceased to flow, and their
voice
Is smothered under the ice. In the night forests I see my mother wandering, dressed in
rags, Calling everywhere for her lost
Persephone.
Chorus
Calling everywhere for her lost Persephone.
Persephone
Through the trackless, unmarked wood She walks with torch in hand, Thorns, sharp stones, winds, tangled
branches,
Why do you obstruct her sad journey Mother--seek no more. Your daughter who
sees you Lives in the underworld and is no longer
yours.
Alas!--ah--if at least my distracted voice Could--
Chorus
No. Demeter will hear no more the voice of Persephone.
Eumolpus
Poor, miserable spirits,
Winter shall no longer be eternal.
At the palace of Eleusis, when Demeter
arrives.
King Seleucus entrusts to her The care of a newly-born child Demophoon, who will become
Triptolemus.
Persephone
Above a cradle of embers and flames
I see Demeter bending over him.
Eumolpus
From his human destiny you think to divert him,
FIFTH CONCERT
Goddess; of a mortal you would make
a god.
You nourish him and feed him Not with milk, but with nectar and
ambrosia Thus the infant flourishes and smiles at
life.
Chorus
Thus hope is rebom in our desolate souls.
Persephone
On the shore, to the rhythm of the waves, My mother walks cradling him in her arms. The salt air already fresh in his nostrils, She exposes him naked to the sea-breeze. How beautiful he is! Radiant with sun
and health,
He arises, he takes the path to immortality. Hail Demophoon, in whom my soul hopes! Through you shall I see the earth in flower
again
You shall teach mankind the husbandry That was taught you by my mother.
Chorus
And thanks to your good work, done for love of her,
Persephone lives again and reappears by day.
Persephone
What then! I am to escape the subterranean
gloom My smile again cover the meadows with
flowers Shall I be queen
Chorus
Queen, Queen of earthly spring, no longer of the underworld.
Persephone
Demeter, you are waiting for me and your
arms are outstretched To welcome at last your reborn daughter In the bright sunlight that makes the
shadows beautiful. Come, come, let us force the gates of
death.
No, dark Pluto will not hold us back We shall soon see again, stirred by the
winds, The delicately-poised branches.
0 my earthly spouse, radiant Triptolemus, You call me, I am hastening.
1 am yours, I love you.
PART III
Persiphone Reborn. Part III depicts the return of Persephone from the tomb which has been erected in her memory. She emerges to join Demeter and Trip-tolemus, as roses spring up wherever she steps. Joy at the reunion is tempered by the knowledge that the course of the seasons is eternal, and that Persephone's destiny is to return eventually to the underworld.
EUMOLPUS
Thus Homer tells us How the labors of Demophoon Restored Persephone to her mother And springtime to the earth. Meantime on the hilltop that dominates
the present and the future The Greeks have built a temple to
Demeter
Who can see a happy throng assembling. Triptolemus is among them His sickle gleams And faithfully the group of nymphs are
following him.
Chorus
Come to us, Children of men,
Receive us, daughters of the gods,
We bring you our offerings
Of garlands,
Lily, saffron, crocus, cornflower,
Ranunculus, anemone,
Bouquets for Persephone
Ears of corn for Demeter.
The cornfields are still green
But the rye has turned gold.
Demeter, queen of summer,
Share with us your serenity.
O return to us, Persephone,
Break the doors of the tomb!
Archangel of death, relight your torch.
Demeter awaits you,
Triptolemus takes off the mourning cloak
That he is still wearing, and strews
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MAY FESTIVAL PROGRAM
Flowers around the bier.
Open, fateful doors,
Flickering torches, dying flames,
Blaze up again. It is time at last
For you to leave the abyss of night.
Spring not yet awakened,
Persephone, bewildered,
Leaves her sinister realm.
You advance as if in a dream
You think you are living in darkness
Still; and yet you are alive.
Shadows still surround you,
Trembling Persephone,
Like a bird taken in a net,
But everywhere your foot steps
A rose blooms
And a bird-song ascends.
With each movement you gather strength
And your dancing is a language
That speaks to us of happiness,
Freedom, confidence,
And the sunbeam is united
With the petal of the flower.
Everything in nature
Smiles, bathed in light.
You ascend to the day
But why so serious,
Remaining silent
While love calls to you
Speak Persephone
Tell us what winter hides from us
What secret ascends with you
From the depths of the yawning abyss
Tell what you saw
In the underworld
Persephone
Mother, your Persephone has returned at
your entreaty Your mourning cloak that made the winter
dark Has regained its flowers and its lost
splendor. And you, Nymphs, my sisters, faithful
companions Throng on new turf under the green
branches. O my earthly husband, tiller of the soil
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Triptolemus I Demophoon, already the
wheat you sowed Sprouts, prospers and smiles in fertile
harvest.
You cannot halt the course of the seasons Night follows day, and winter, autumn. I am yours, take me, I am your
Persephone,
But the bride as well of shadowy Pluto. You can never, with the strongest clasp, Keep me in your arms, charming
Demophoon.
I will escape your embrace and go In spite of love and my heart's regret To fulfill the destiny that calls me I shall go to the shadowy world where I
know there is suffering. Do you think it is possible to lean with
impunity over the gulf Of the sorrowful underworld with a heart
full of love I have seen what happens and what is
concealed by day
And cannot forget you, terrible reality. Here is Mercury to take me willingly back. I do not need an order and give myself
with good grace Where it is not all a law but my love
that leads me; And I see descending step by step the
pathway That leads to the depths of human misery.
Eumolpus
Thus toward the subterranean shadows
You take your way with slow steps
Bearer of the torch and queen
Of the vast lands of sleep.
If it is your task to bring to the spirits
A little of the brightness of day--
A respite for their sorrows without number
For their distress a bit of love.
Eumolpus, Chorus
It is necessary, for spring to return,
That the grain consent to die underground
So that it may reappear
In a golden harvest
For the future.
SIXTH CONCERT
Sunday Evening, May 3
COMPOSITIONS OF SERGEI RACHMANINOFF
Sergei Rachmaninoff was born April 2, 1873, in Novgorod; died March 28, 1943, in Beverly Hills.
The leafy blossoming present springs from the whole past, remembered and unrememberable.
--Carlyle
Rachmaninoff was born in the gloomiest period Russia had experienced for over a century. All the sublime efforts of the generation that had entertained such high hopes in the seventies, had ended in defeat. The great social reforms (including the abolition of serfdom in 1861) brought about by Alexander II were looked upon as grave mistakes. The reactionary elements that rallied around Alexander III, after the assassination of his liberal-minded father in 1881, tolerated no opposition. The new emperor counteracted the excessive liberalism of his father's reign by indicating that he had no intention of limiting or weakening the aristocratic power inherited from his ancestors. A feeling of hopeless despair was shared by the young "intellectuals" whose inability to solve problems of renovation or to break the inertia of the masses soon became tragically apparent. Their loss of faith in the future, the destruction of their illusions, was impressively reflected in the short stories of Vsevolod Garshin and in the nostalgic fiction and drama of Anton Chekhov.
The somber beauty and brooding melancholy that courses through Rach?maninoff's art marks him as one of the last of the Titans of musical romanticism, an artist who lived beyond the fulfillment of an era. He carried to an anticlimax the spirit of an epoch filled with the gloom and despair of man's struggle against relentless destiny. Like the other late Romanticists, he clung tenaciously to a dying tradition, regretful at its passing, nostalgic with its memories.
Virgil Thomson, writing in the New York Herald Tribune for Sunday, February 26, 1950, has summed up his position thus:
The career of Sergei Rachmaninoff was that of a major talent. His natural gifts of ear and hand were impeccable; his training was nowhere short of completeness; recognition in professional life came early. The only kind of success he never enjoyed was that of intellectual distinction. He would have liked being a popular musician, a conservative musician and an advanced one all at the same time. But as a young mod?ernist he suffered defeat at the hands of his contemporary, Alexander Scriabin, and there is reason to believe that later he entertained some bitterness about the impregnable position occupied in the intellectual world of music by his junior compatriot, Igor Stravinsky.
There is no question, however, about Rachmaninoff's mastery. He composed, as he played the piano, in complete fullness and control. The nature of his expression--
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MAY FESTIVAL PROGRAM
his passionless melancholy, his almost too easy flow of melody, his conventional but highly personal harmony, the loose but thoroughly coherent structure of his musical discourse--is often distasteful to musicians. They tend to find it a retreat from battle, an avoidance of the contemporary problem. But it is not possible, I think, to withhold admiration for the sincerity of the sentiments expressed or for the solid honesty of its workmanship. Rachmaninoff was a musician and an artist, and his expression through the clivers musical techniques of which he was master, seems to have been complete.
Whether success in the world was a deep desire of Sergei Rachmaninoff I do not know, but success was his in a way that musicians seldom experience it. It came to him in his own lifetime, moreover, and through the practice of three separate musical branches. As a composer, as a conductor, and as a touring virtuoso of the pianoforte he received worldwide acceptance and acclaim. His domestic life, too, seems to have been remarkably satisfactory. A more optimistic temperament than his would probably have glowed with happiness.
Actually, his letters and recorded conversations are consistently gloomy. Like Tchaikovsky, whom he adored, and who usually wept a little on almost any day, he seemed to find his best working condition a dispirited state. Indeed, even more than in the case of Tchaikovsky, his depressive mentality has come to represent to the Western world a musical expression both specifically Russian and specifically attractive through the appeal of sadness. Whether this opulence of discontent is found equally present in the Soviet Union I do not know; but Rachmaninoff, in spite of his conservative political opinions, has been adopted since his death as a Russian classic master in Russia. This success is another that would have pleased him profoundly, I am sure, though he would no doubt have acknowledged it with a mask of woe.
There is probably some resemblance between contemporary Russia and the United States underlying Rachmaninoff's great glory in both countries. The official mood of cheer?fulness is in both cases a thin surface through which wells of rich blackness gush forth constantly, relieving the emotional poverty of sustained optimism and providing for accepted states of mind both a holiday and a corrective. Rachmaninoff's music is no toner-up of depressed nations. It is most heartily enjoyed in those countries where the national energies are strong enough to need a sedative.
Vocalise, Op. 34, No. 14
A "vocalise" in its generic meaning is a wordless technical exercise for the voice. It has acquired a derogatory connotation, identified with a vocal pedagogy no longer respected or with scores from the "golden age of singing" quite frankly meant to display vocal pyrotechnics. To consider the human voice purely as an instrument has fallen into disrepute. In this essentially instrumental age of ours, on the other hand, one seldom meets a comparable scorn vented on the numerous cadenzas that intrude upon violin and piano concertos, where the performer glories in the potentialities of his instrument and his own technical mastery of it.
The fact is that the absence of words in vocal music enables the singer to use his voice in a manner not possible with the variety of word sounds, that in many instances conspire against the emission of pure vocal tone.
Throughout the history of music, composers have recognized this fact. From the time of the vocal melismas in Gregorian chant, the textless tenor parts of thirteenth-century motets, and many of the extended passages of the ballades and madrigals of the fourteenth century, to a considerable literature of the
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sixteenth century, the publications of which were often inscribed with the words de cantare a sonare (to be sung or played), wordless song has soared above the mundane meaning of words. Bach and Handel scores are full of such wordless vocalizations that often take flight and thrill us with, as Richard Wagner once wrote, "the nameless joy of a paradise regained."
In recent history, composers have failed to utilize the human voice in this manner with any telling effect. Exceptions may be noted, however, in Debussy's "Sirenes," Medtner's "Sonata-vocalise," Op. 41a, and "Suite-vocalise," Op. 416, Ravel's "Vocalise en forme d'habanera," and Aaron Copland's more recent "Vocalise"--all stunning revivals of an old and still effective practice.
In 1912, Rachmaninoff composed a series of fourteen songs with piano accom?paniment. Upon the last of these, a wordless song, he lavished a haunt-ingly beautiful melody. In its expressive power it equals or surpasses anything that could be made more specific in meaning by the addition of a text. This wordless melody is as profound and poignant in its significance as any specific emotion that the addition of words might possibly evoke.
In 1915-16, Serge Koussevitzky was conducting concerts in Moscow. At that time he requested Rachmaninoff to make an orchestral version of the "Vocalise," giving the vocal melody to the first violins.
Concerto No. 3 in D minor for Piano and Orchestra, Op. 30
Rachmaninoff wrote four piano concertos; the first in F-sharp minor, Op. 1, was an immature product of his student days in Moscow, written when he was eighteen years of age. It was not a success at its premiere in 1891. Before leav?ing Russia in 1917, he made drastic revisions in the score, but it has remained the least performed of the four. The second in C minor, Op. 18, composed a decade later (1900-1901), was sensationally successful and was largely re?sponsible for disseminating his fame as a composer and performer throughout the world. It remains today the most popular and beloved of all. The third in D minor, Op. 30, heard on tonight's program was written for his American tour in 1909. It was completed in the summer of that year and performed for the first time at a concert of the New York Symphony Society, November 28; the composer was soloist and Walter Damrosch conducted. The fourth concerto, in G minor, composed in 1927, like the first never found a lasting place in public esteem.
Although the third concerto never achieved the tremendous acclaim of the second, it reveals unmistakably those qualities that have assured Rachmaninoff's place in the lineage of Tchaikovsky. In his notes for the New York premiere performance, Otto Kinkeldey observed that the new concerto was "Russian throughout, Russian in its melodic conception, in its rhythm, and in the robust, virile qualities even of its gentler passages."
The Slavic quality of the first theme of the first movement (Allegro ma non tanto) announced by the piano, accompanied by muted strings, pizzicato basses,
69
MAY FESTIVAL PROGRAM
and bassoon; the tender and melancholy opening theme of the second movement (Intermezzo) stated by the woodwinds, and continued in the strings and even?tually in the piano; and the throbbing, pulsatory drive of the last movement which continues without break with the second, all give point to Dr. Kinkeldey's observation. For all its Slavic color and feeling, this concerto, like all of Rach?maninoff's music, follows the dictates of his own individuality and artistic goal. He shrewdly steered his course between the extreme conservatism and the ultra-modernism of his time. Guided by a highly individualized conception of melody and harmonic structure, he put his personal stamp upon the Romantic style. His idiom is introspective without being morbid, marked by what Virgil Thom?son called "a passionless melancholy"; it can be serious and sober, yet full of warmth and surging vitality. Here there is no "grief that saps the mind," no oppressiveness, no feverish passion that marked the high Romantic style of Tchaikovsky.
Except for the cadenza at the end of the first movement, Rachmaninoff has written this concerto for the piano, not as an instrument on display, but as another color in the orchestral fabric, more prominent than others in exploit?ing its tonal possibilities, but still more often than not, embedded in the orches?tral texture. With broad rhapsodic sweep of melodic line, fully expanded so?norities and resonant harmonies, it joins forces with the other instruments rather than using them as a pedestal for the display of its own virtuosity.
Symphony No. 2 in E minor, Op. 27
Rachmaninoff, like so many young men living in Moscow at the turn of the century, suffered from the contagion of his times. His melancholy turn of mind and pessismistic outlook offered little protection against the disappointments and frustrations he met at the outset of his career as a composer. His first symphony, written in 1895 and produced in St. Petersburg, was a complete failure; it re?ceived one performance and was never heard again. This threw the young com?poser into the depths of despair from which he emerged only after the fabulous success of the Concerto No. 2 in C minor, Op. 18, in 1901.
Six years after the composition of the Second Concerto, Rachmaninoff again turned to the symphony with renewed confidence in his talent and in the fullness of his creative powers. In 1906, he left Moscow with his wife and young daughter to seek relief from his professional duties as pianist and con?ductor. Dresden offered an environment favorable to creative work, and in temporary seclusion he produced his most successful compositions for orchestra, The Isle of the Dead and the Second Symphony. The Symphony had its world premiere in St. Petersburg, February 8, 1908, and its first performance in Moscow, November 26, 1909. Success was immediate. Two months earlier it had been awarded the coveted Glinka Prize.
The work is dedicated to Sergei Ivanovich Taneyev, successor to Tchaikovsky as teacher of composition at the Moscow Conservatory. Tchaikovsky continued
70
SIXTH CONCERT
in an honorary position and Rachmaninoff came briefly under his guidance when he entered in 1885. The influence of the master upon the impressionable young composer is nowhere more evident than in the two major works on to?night's program. Their introspective melodies, rich dark harmonies, opulent instrumental colors, and especially their restless, shifting moods from quiet con?templation or brooding melancholy to rhapsodic fervor and impassioned elo?quence, are all in the Tchaikovsky idiom.
The reasons for the immense popularity of the Second Symphony and the Second and Third Concertos are obvious. They are melodious, sonorous, and eminently vital works. They do not perplex or attempt to say anything new. The forms are academic, the expression familiarly romantic. They are the prod?uct of an age that saw the fading of an ideal and the advance of the realistic, logical, and scientific ideas of the twentieth century; they are epilogues echoing from a vanishing world, increasingly remote, now irrecoverably lost.
71
NOTES ON THE PHILADELPHIA ORCHESTRA AND MAY FESTIVAL ARTISTS
THE PHILADELPHIA ORCHESTRA, with the six concerts of the 1964 May Festival, performs here for the twenty-ninth consecutive year. Organized in 1900 under Fritz Scheel, it followed for a dozen years under the strong leadership of Carl Pohlig, who was succeeded by the strikingly effective Leopold Stokowski. In 1940 Eugene Ormandy became the fourth Musical Director. No other orchestra has traveled so far (12,500 miles in an average season) or so often as the Philadelphia group, which has made history through its touring. In 1936 it made its first of six transcontinental tours; in 1949 the orchestra toured the British Isles in its first foreign pilgrimage; and in 1955 it made its first continental Euro?pean tour. In addition to the special tours, each season it plays regular schedules in New York, Baltimore, Washington, and other Eastern cities. The fame of the orchestra has further spread through its recordings. Since its first sessions at Camden in 1917, recordings have been an integral part of its activities. The Philadelphia Orchestra has recorded exclusively for Columbia Records since 1943 and now has a larger recorded repertoire than any other orchestra. Through its more than two million miles of travel and its untold number of records sold, it has certainly earned the title of the world's best-known orchestra.
EUGENE ORMANDY, Musical Director of the Philadelphia Orchestra, has appeared annually at these May Festival concerts since 1938. He began his prominent conducting career with sudden impetus in 1931 when he substituted for Toscanini, conducting the Philadelphia Orchestra. On that occasion a representative of the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra who was in the audience immediately signed Ormandy as guest conductor, which won for him the permanent post and where he continued until 1936. Ormandy's early musical training began at the age of five at the Royal Academy of Music in Budapest, Hungary. At nine he became the pupil of the great violinist Jeno Jubay, after whom he was named. He received his professor's diploma at seventeen and was given degrees in violin playing, composing, and counterpoint. He concertized, then taught, at the State Conservatory in Budapest before coming to the United States to seek his fame and fortune. He has been praised and honored the world over, receiving several honorary degrees, one of which was presented to him by The University of Michigan at the May Festival of 1952.
WILLIAM SMITH has been the Assistant Conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra since 1961. He also serves as conductor of choirs and orchestra at the University of Pennsylvania. He founded the Philadelphia Orchestra Chorus a few years ago. Born in New Jersey, Smith came to his present post in 1953. A versatile musician, he understudies Mr. Ormandy in preparation of all concerts, conducts reading rehearsals of new works, assists in the preparation of all
72
NOTES ON FESTIVAL ARTISTS
choral groups and vocal soloists, and is the official pianist and organist of the orchestra. His concerts for children use his talents for both conducting and commentary. He also conducts the orchestra of the Curtis Institute of Music. This is his eighth conducting appearance at the May Festival.
THOR JOHNSON, Guest Conductor of the May Festival, has conducted the University Choral Union performances with the Philadelphia Orchestra since 1940, except for four years when he was serving with the United States Army. He recently has been appointed Director of the Interlochen Arts Academy and will take up these duties beginning August 1 of this year. Johnson lived most of his early life in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. He was graduated from the Uni?versity of North Carolina and later received a master's degree in music at The University of Michigan. In 1935, under a Beebe Foundation Scholarship, he studied in Europe with conductors Weingartner, Abendroth, Malko, and Bruno Walter. Upon his return he became conductor of the University Symphony Orchestra, organized and conducted the University Little Symphony which toured throughout the country, founded the Mozart Festival in Asheville, North Carolina, and also served as conductor of the Grand Rapids Symphony. During World War II, as Warrant Officer in the United States Army, Johnson con?ducted the first Army Symphony Band and taught for the Armed Services at Shrivenham, England. Upon discharge he conducted the Juilliard Orchestra for one year before accepting the directorship of the Cincinnati Sym?phony Orchestra, a position he held for eleven years. During that period he made special guest conductor appearances with the Symphony of the Air, including its Far Eastern tour. Since 1959 he has been head of orchestral activities at North?western University. As a member of the President's Advisory Committee on the Arts, he was sent to Iceland, Czechoslovakia, Korea, the Philippines, and Japan for guest conducting and surveys. He is also Director of the Peninsula Music Festival in Wisconsin, the Moravian Music Festivals, and the Chicago Little Symphony.
IGOR STRAVINSKY was born near St. Petersburg eighty-one years ago. He left Russia in 1910, settling first in Switzerland and then in Paris. Mr. Stravinsky came to this country in 1939 and is now an American citizen. He has composed works for small and large orchestras, chamber music, ballets, cantatas, and operas. Among his best-known compositions are "Le Sacre du printemps," "Petrouchka," "The Firebird," "The Nightingale," "Renard," "Pulcinella," "Symphony of Psalms," "Oedipus Rex," "Le Baiser de la fee," "Card Party," "The Rake's Progress," "Orpheus," "Apollon Musagete," the Symphony in Three Movements, and the Concertino for Twelve Instruments. Hundreds of thousands of words have been written about Igor Stravinsky, one of the twentieth century's most inventive, prolific, and versatile composers (see pages 53 to 55). Now a resident of California, he has appeared fre?quently as guest-conductor in concert halls and opera houses throughout this country and Europe. His guest conducting of Persiphone here is his first Ann Arbor appearance.
73
MAY FESTIVAL PROGRAM
ROBERT CRAFT was born in Kingston, New York. He was a student of philosophy at Columbia University and studied music at Juilliard School of Music. In 1946 he was awarded a graduate fellowship in conducting at Juilliard and continued this career at Tanglewood in Massachusetts. He be?gan conducting in New York with the Chamber Art Society which, with Igor Stravinsky and Serge Koussevitzky as sponsors, gave many significant concerts at Carnegie Hall and Town Hall. For the last four years he has conducted in California at the Ojai Festivals and the Los Angeles Monday Evening Concerts. Mr. Craft has conducted extensively in Europe, in Tokyo, and has recently lectured in Dartington, England, and at the Seminar for Advanced Musical Studies at Princeton. For many years he has been closely associated with Igor Stravinsky, and he has written three books of conversations with the com?poser, and another book, titled Avec Stravinsky, has been published in Paris. His participation in this May Festival is Mr. Craft's first appearance in Ann Arbor.
LESTER McCOY, Conductor of the University Choral Union since 1947, prepares the chorus in the works performed in the May Festival and each Advent season conducts the Choral Union, the University Symphony Orchestra, and guest solo artists in the traditional Messiah concerts. He received his Master of Music degree from The University of Michigan in 1938. Before com?ing to Ann Arbor he trained and taught at Momingside College in Sioux City, Iowa. He serves as Minister of Music of the First Methodist Church in Ann Arbor, and for the past six years conducted the Michigan Chorale, a group of Michigan high school seniors, which toured in Europe and South America during the summer as part of the Youth for Understanding Student Exchange Program, sponsored by the Washtenaw Council of Churches.
JOAN SUTHERLAND is a native of Sydney, Australia, where she received her early training and where, in 1947, she made her official debut. Two years later she won a contest with the title "Australia's best singer." After taking part in her first staged opera, the Australian premiere of Sir Eugene Goossen's Judith, in 1951, she went to London and enrolled at the Royal Academy of Music. A year later she joined the Covent Garden Company but did not achieve her international acclaim until 1959, when she starred in Lucia di Lammermoor. She made her New York debut in Town Hall with the American Opera Society. In the past few years she has become the leading opera star in Paris, at La Scala, and at the Metropolitan Opera Company. She appeared in La Traviata for the first time at the Met this season. Miss Sutherland is married to Richard Bonynge who, in addition to being her coach, is a con?ductor. They have a young seven-year-old son, Adam Carl, and call their permanent residence Locarno, Switzerland.
VAN CLIBURN was born in Shreveport, Louisiana, on July 12, 1934, to Mr. and Mrs. Harvey La van Cliburn. He first played in public at the age of four, and in 1946 made his orchestral debut with the Houston Symphony. The follow-
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NOTES ON FESTIVAL ARTISTS
ing year he made his Carnegie Hall debut. Van's mother remained his only piano instructor until after high school graduation in 1951, when he came to New York City to study with Juilliard's famed Mme Rosina Lhevinne. In 19S2, he won the G. B. Dealey Award in Dallas and the Kosciuszko Foundation Chopin Award. Other awards from the Olga Samaroff Foundation and the Juilliard Concerto Contest followed, and upon graduation at Juilliard, he received the Carl M. Roeder Memorial Award and the Frank Damrosch Scholarship. In 1954, he won the Leventritt Foundation award. He made his debut with the New York Philharmonic under Mitropoulos that same year and in the next season played thirty concerts, appearing with many orchestras and making his television debut. In 1957, he received a letter from Mme Lhevinne suggesting that he enter the Tchaikovsky International Piano Com?petition in Moscow. Van Cliburn was proclaimed winner of that competition, and since then he has received unprecedented acclaim throughout the world. Each year he plays extensively throughout this country, in Western Europe, and has twice appeared in Mexico and twice returned to Russia. When not concertizing, he divides his time between a Manhattan residence and a new home in Tucson, Arizona.
PHILIPPE ENTREMONT was born in 1934 in Reims in the province of Champagne, France. His mother, a Grand Prix winner, gave him his first piano lessons. In his early years, he went to Paris and studied under Mme Marguerite Long. Many awards followed as a student at the Conservatoire Nationale de Musique in Paris. Following his victory as First Laureate and Grand Prize winner of the Marguerite Long-Jacques Thibaud International Concourse, Entremont was invited to come to America where, in Washington, D. C, he made his debut on January 4, 1953. In the decade since, he has concertized throughout the world, in recital and concerto appearances with the foremost orchestras, and his recordings and television appearances have been numerous. His performance at this May Festival is his first appearance in Ann Arbor.
CHARLES TREGER, at twenty-six years of age, became the first American ever to win first place in the coveted Wieniawski Violin Competition in Novem?ber 1962. The two-week contest, which was established by the great Polish com?poser Henryk Wieniawski in 1937, is held in Poznan, Poland, and is recognized in the music world as the major international proving ground for violinists. Mr. Treger had already been recognized as a major talent by the American critics during the course of his many solo appearances throughout the United States. Soon after his triumphant return from Poland he was invited to perform at a special concert at the White House, and a major cross country tour of recitals and appearances with major symphony orchestras followed. He has just re?turned from a second extensive tour of Europe, including Poland. When not concertizing, Mr. Treger teaches at University of Iowa in Iowa City, where he makes his home with his wife and two daughters.
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MAY FESTIVAL PROGRAM
LOIS MARSHALL was born in Toronto of Scotch-Irish parentage. One of seven children, she was two years old when she was stricken with polio. In spite of this, at twelve years of age, she entered Toronto's Royal Conservatory and at fifteen, gave her first recital. Soon thereafter she sang with leading Dominion or?chestras. For the past ten years she has been in the greatest demand for oratorio engagements here and abroad under the most distinguished auspices. After her Soviet Union debut in 1958, she became the first North American singer to tour USSR exclusively as a recitalist. Immediately after this Festival appearance, she will make a fifth tour to Russia. She has previously appeared in Ann Arbor at the May Festivals of 1954, 1955, 1956, and 1959, and most recently at the Messiah concerts last December.
VERA ZORINA began her career at the age of ten in Max Reinhardt's pro?duction of A Midsummer Night's Dream in Berlin. She was a member of Colonel de Basil's Ballet Russe. After starring in London, she came to the United States for her first Hollywood film, The Goldwyn Follies. Miss Zorina commuted between Broadway and Hollywood, starring in the film versions of Louisiana Purchase and On Your Toes and was a frequent guest with Ballet Theatre. It was Miss Zorina's appearance as Ariel in The Tempest that led to a totally new career on the concert stage. She was invited by Artur Rodzinski to create the leading role in Honegger's cantata, Jeanne d'Arc au bUcher. Since her debut in this American premiere performance, she has become its leading interpreter, and has added ten more roles to her repertoire. An especially acclaimed exponent of Stravinsky's Persephone, Miss Zorina has danced as well as narrated in stage productions of the work and has recorded it with the composer conducting. This is Miss Zorina's third May Festival appearance.
ANSHEL BRUSILOW, concertmaster, joined the Philadelphia Orchestra in September, 1959. A native of Philadelphia, thirty-four years old, he began his study of the violin at the age of six. At eleven, he was accepted at the Curtis Institute of Music where he continued his training with the famous concert violinist and director of the school, Efrem Zimbalist. Further work on his in?strument continued under the guidance of Dr. Jani Szanto at the Philadelphia Musical Academy where Brusilow was a scholarship student. A winner of the Philadelphia Orchestra Youth Concert auditions, he made his debut at the Philadelphia Academy of Music at sixteen. Prior to his present position, Brusilow was associate concertmaster with the Cleveland Orchestra, and before that he was concertmaster and assistant conductor of the New Orleans Sym?phony. In the course of his career he has been engaged as soloist with the Philadelphia Orchestra on many different occasions, including several recent May Festivals.
MASON JONES, principal horn player, joined the Philadelphia Orchestra in 1938 at the age of nineteen, while he was still a scholarship student at Curtis Institute. He has been a favorite solo player at these festivals for almost
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NOTES ON FESTIVAL ARTISTS
twenty-five years. Mr. Jones is a member of the Philadelphia Woodwind Quintet and the Philadelphia Brass Ensemble and teaches at the Curtis Institute, serving as assistant conductor of the Philadelphia Chamber Orchestra. This current season is the first year Mr. Jones has assumed the additional duties of orchestra personnel manager.
JOHN McCOLLUM, American tenor, was born and educated in California where by 1950 he was well established as a newspaperman when he decided to change to a singing career. His concert tours have taken him to practically every state in the Union, including Alaska, where he performed with the Rob?ert Shaw Chorale. Mr. McCollum annually sings a full quota of recitals from coast to coast and has been re-engaged repeatedly with many of the major or?chestras and musical festivals. He has scored with leading opera auspices, in?cluding the New England Opera Theatre, Washington Opera Society, Goldovsky Opera Theatre, Colorado's Central City Opera, among others. He excels also in oratorio and has been featured soloist with the New York Oratorio Society, Boston Handel and Haydn Society, Schola Cantorum, and the New York Concert Choir. In 1962, Mr. McCollum joined the faculty of the School of Music of The University of Michigan.. These will be his third and fourth appearances at the Ann Arbor May Festival.
RALPH HERBERT, born in Vienna, now resides in Ann Arbor where he directs operatic productions and serves on the voice faculty in the University School of Music. Since his move to Ann Arbor from New York in 1961, Mr. Herbert has continued his associations with major opera companies and orches?tras. He appears and directs with the Metropolitan Opera Company as well as the opera companies of Washington, D. C, New York City Center, Houston, and Fort Worth. His American debut was in Max Reinhardt's Rosalinda in 1942. One of his most recent performances was with the Philadelphia Orchestra in the Academy of Music in a concert version of Die Fledermaus. He has been heard locally in several productions and recitals under School of Music auspices. This is his first appearance at the May Festival.
GLENN D. McGEOCH. program annotator for the annual May Festival Program Book, has been associated with the University School of Music since 1931, and is at present Professor of Music Literature and chairman of the Department of Music Literature and History. He holds two degrees from the University of Michigan and has studied further at Peabody Conservatory, Balti?more; Cornell, New York, and Wayne Universities in this country; and at Cam?bridge, England, and Munich, Germany. He initiated the first extension courses in music literature in the early 1930's and has since lectured extensively through?out the state under the joint sponsorship of the University of Michigan and the Wayne University Adult Education division.
77
THE UNIVERSITY CHORAL UNION
Igor Stravinsky, Guest Conductor Thor Johnson, Guest Conductor
Lester McCoy, Conductor Thomas Warburton, Pianist
FIRST SOPRANOS
Ackerman, Tamara L. Arentz, Joan C. Berg, Donna Lea Bradstreet, Lola Mae Burr, Virginia A. Dettling, Mary Jane Dewsbury, Joyce R. Dorstewitz, Ellen M. Ecdestone, Marty J. Haefner, Barbara Lynn Hanson, Gladys M. Harrington, Rachel I. Hawk, Gloria Lee Henes, Karen Kay Huber, Sally Anne Isbell, Melinda O. Jerome, Ruth O. Julien, Charlotte J. Kaltschmidt, Monique Knighton, Daphne Lloyd, B. Loretta Luecke, Doris L. McDonald, Ruth M. Merritt, Mary L. Montgomery, Patricia Nauman, Marian C. Newcomb, Alice R. Pearson, Agnes I. Plekker, Judith E. Politis, Clara Ramee, Dorothy Ramee, Ellen K. Ramee, Joan C. Reddick, Bella G. Rulfs, Mary K. Sanford, Phyllis E. Sevilla, Josefina Z. Shimmin, Susan A. Sommerfeld, Martha L. Stevens, Ethel C. Upham, Joan B. Weeks, Barbara A. Weston, Lynda R. Whiting, Rolanda Wilkins, Shirley M. Young, Susan H. Zimmerman, Mary L.
7S
SECOND SOPRANOS Baum, Barbara J. Baumgartner, Rosemary T. Brown, Susannah E. Buchanan, Gale F. Burkholder, Mary Eva Caster, Carol Ann Danforth, Ruth E. Datsko, Doris R. Duckwitz, Dorothy J. Griffin, Pamela Lee Hall, Sara Jean Hendrickson, Marianne B. Hodges, Doris W. Hunter, Patricia Lee Jewell, Lois Ann Jones, Marion Anne Karapostoles, La Vaughn Kesler, Claudia Lee Kirtley, Carol Ann Kountz, Carol Lee Landman, Marguerite J. Lessner, Janet E. McAdoo, Mary C. Minyard, Lucille L. Minyard, Marjorie L. Nobilette. Dorothy M. O'Brien, Kathleen E. O'Neal, Carol K. Oppenneer, Diane V. Papke, Bonnie J. Poschel, Rose Marie Reading, Melissa M. Rosenbaum, Stephanie Lee Ruhl, Kathryn E. Schumm, Barbara L. Scott, Elaine Sleet, Audrey M. Smith, Nancy L. Sorensen. Carol A. Stid, Deborah 0. Teich, Carolyn D. Trumbull, Deborah J. Vig, Jeanne M. Vlisides, Elena Yoder, Edith Lee Zimmerman, Marlcne E.
FIRST ALTOS Abrams, Gloria S. Abrams, Rita Jane Ashby, Lynne Anne Bachman, Virginia A. Balysh, Pat Jane Birch, Nancy W. Bobbitt, Susan D. Brown, Marion W. Brown, Sue C. Evans, Daisy E. Hahn, Christel R. Hangas, Nancy Hodgman, Dorothy B. Invin, Elizabeth Ann Jenkins, Margaret R. Jones, Mary M. Kaufki, Susan Y. Lane, Rosemarie Manson, Hinda Markeson, Carole J. Marsh, Martha M. McCoy, Bernicc Mehler, HaUie J. Merena, Catherine W. Miller, Patricia J. Mitchell, Marilyn L. Neal, Marcella E. Otto, Carol A. Pearson, Bernadcne Plewes, Nancy A. Rehberg, Ruth Ann Reider, Linda H. Roberts, Claudia B. Royal, Betty L. Rubinstein, Sallie Swenson, Judith Ann Walter, Nessena Lee Wargelin, Carol G. Wentworth, Elizabeth B. Westerman, Carol F. Wheeler, Juanita L. White, Arlene R. Wiedmann, Louise P. Wolfe, Charlotte Ann Yonkers, Mary Barbara Zeeb, Helen R. Zeemering, Ina G.
UNIVERSITY CHORAL UNION
SECOND ALTOS Allen, Jeannette D. Arnold, Helen M. Blackman, Carol Lee Blake, Susan J. Bogart, Gertrude J. Breyfogle, Janet E. Cartwright, Patricia A. Chesler, Nancy Lee Clayton, Caroline S. Coppola, Lois Ann Crossley, Winnifred M. Eisenhardt, Elizabeth R. Enkemann, Gladys C. Fine, Karen Gault, Gertrude W. Griffin, Barbara J. Groth, Gaynelle Hondorp, Joan A. Jenkins, Bernice M. Johnson, Grayce E. Johnston, Theolia C. Kazarinoff, Margaret L. Knight, Mona J. Lidgard, Ruth M. Liebscher, Erika M. Lovelace, Elsie W. Luton, Jane E. Miller, Carol L. Miller, Joyce E. Miller, Rene S. Morrison, May Murphy, Rosalind E. Olson, Constance Kay Polleys, Mary M. Reynolds, Judith L. Schreiber, Sharon Ann Slater, Beverly N. Strupp, Mary D. Suess, Irene C. Sweeney, Ellen L. Tuers, Elizabeth R. Wendt, Christine Ann Westermann, Joan Lou Williams, Nancy P. Williams, Winefred L. Wissman, Mary C. Wolf, Mona G.
FIRST TENORS Baker, Hugh E. Balius, Louis M. Batch, Nicholas C. Bernstein, Paul Dallavo, William G. Greenberger, Allen J. Hendershott, Marcus Lowry, Paul T. Moore, George W. Ramee, Allan L.
Schell, Alden N. Traer, James F. White, Melvin A.
SECOND TENORS Aneff, James S. Bachman, Jerald G. Beyer, Hilbert Brown, Walter D. Clow, Allen S. DeVries, Robert L. Emmert, John J. Fellers, David A. Fidler, William F. Jr. Franklin, Lindsay D. Humphrey, Richard Irwin, Paul C. Kunsmann, Peter W. Pflieger, Ronald E. Raub, James R. Richardson, Robert J. Salsbury, Kent G. Selter, Lawrence F.
FIRST BASSES Anderson, Ronald D. Bartz, Gary L. Berzins, Janis T. Burr, Charles F. Clayton, Joseph F. Eisenhardt, G. Harris Fedchenko, Robert E. Ferrell, Winfred Garrels, Dennis E. Garrels, Robert F. Glenn, Steven N. Hadley, Don J. Herter, Joseph A. Hoffmann, Raymond E., Jr. Kays, J. Warren Kissel, Klair H. Mallen, Robert G. McCarty. Thomas G. McWilliams, Leslie G. Palmer, David W. Parsley, Bruce L. Pearson, J. Raymond Pickut, Guenther Smethurst, Everett W. Stine, Philip B. Swanson. Landon H. Walker, George L. Wolfe, John A. Wood, Robert E. Wood, Thomas Van Wagoner, Roger L.
SECOND BASSES Barton. Ben F. Bond, Howard
Eichenbaum, Daniel M. Forburger, Dean C. Herrmann, Lothar Huber, Franz E. Litow, Richard J. McAdoo, William P. Mead, Douglas A. Miller, Frederick C. Nauman, John D. Owen, Robert P. Parlette, Alan E. Patterson, Robert L. Peterson, Robert R. Petty, Mark A. Richard, Lyle E. Sorensen, Nels P. Steinmetz, George P. Stulberg, Michael V. Travis. Lawrence W. Vander Lugt, Bud Wall, Ralph J. Werner, Peter C. Wobst, Martin H.
OUTH CHORUS
Adamson, Andy Blythe, Philip Bradley, Barbara Burges, John Cannell, Ted Carr, Carol Cates, Nancy Curby, David Datsko, Paula Dickinson, Tom Eschelbach, Michael Foelber, Richard Goode, Erica Gustine, Patricia Hansen, Jeffrey Hunt, Jeffrey Jones, Jeffrey Kitchenmaster, Kathy Marsh. Jill McCalla, JoAnn Mohler, Linda Morris, Kathleen Pickut, Randy Pillsbury, Curt Rainey, Brad Roth.Tom Schmerberg, Fred Schultz, Claudia Sexton, Mary Smith. Jacqueline Spencer, Pamela Steinhoff, Nonie Storm, Roper Tolles, Patricia White, Sherry
79
THE PHILADELPHIA ORCHESTRA
Eugene Ormandy, Music Director and Conductor William Smith, Assistant Conductor
Henry Peltier, Manager Joseph H. Santarlasci, Assistant Manager
VIOLINS Brusilow, Anshel
Concertmasler Madison, David
Associate Concertmaster Shulik, Morris Reynolds, Veda de Pasquale, William Lusak, Owen Ruden, Sol Saam, Frank E. Costanzo, Frank Arben, David Grunschlag, David Miller, Max Stahl, Jacob Goldstein, Ernest L. Steck, William Simkin, Meyer Gesensway, Louis Rosen, Irwin Schwartz, Isadore Wigler, Jerome Di Camillo, Armand Eisenberg, Irwin I. de Pasquale, Barbara Black, Norman Sharlip, Benjamin Tung, Ling Dreyfus, George Ludwig, Irving Roth, Manuel Lanza, Joseph Light, Herbert Miller, Charles S. Gorodetzky, Aaron
VIOLAS Schoen, William Iglitzin, Alan Mogill, Leonard Braverman, Gabriel Primavera, Joseph Jr. Ferguson, Paul Curtiss, Sidney Fawcett, James W. Bogdanoff, Leonard Granat, Wolfgang Segall, Irving Greenberg, William S.
VIOLONCELLOS Munroe, Lome Hilger, Elsa
80
Gorodetzer, Harry de Pasquale, Francis Druian, Joseph Brennand, Charles Stokking, William Jr. Belenko, Samuel Saputelli, William Farago, Marcel Caserta, Santo Phillips, Bert
BASSES Scott, Roger M. Arian, Edward Maresh, Ferdinand Eney, F. Gilbert Torello, Carl Lazzaro, Vincent Batchelder, WUfred Gorodetzer, Samuel Courtney, Neil
FLUTES
Panitz, Murray W. Scutt, Kenneth E. Terry, Kenton F. Krell, John C, Piccolo
OBOES
de Lancie, John Raper, Wayne Morris, Charles M. Rosenblatt, Louis, English Horn
CLARINETS Gigliotti, Anthony M. Montanaro, Donald Querze, Raoul Lester, Leon, Bass Clarinet
BASSOONS
Garfield, Bernard H. Shamlian, John Angelucci, A. L. Pfeuffer, Robert J., Contra Bassoon
HORNS Jones, Mason Fries, Robert M.
Hale, Leonard Fearn, Ward O. Janson, Glenn E. Mayer, Clarence Pierson, Herbert
TRUMPETS Johnson, Gilbert Krauss, Samuel Rosenfeld, Seymour Hering, Sigmund
TROMBONES Smith, Henry C. Ill Stewart, M. Dee Cole, Howard Harper, Robert S., Bass Trombone
TUBA Torchinsky, Abe
TIMPANI Hinger, Fred D. Bookspan, Michael
BATTERY Owen, Charles E. Bookspan, Michael Abel, Alan Roth, Manuel
CELESTA, PIANO AND ORGAN
Smith, William Farago, Marcel
HARPS
Costello, Marilyn Csonka, Margarita
LIBRARIAN Taynton, Jesse C.
PERSONNEL MANAGER Jones, Mason
STAGE PERSONNEL Barnes, Edward, Manager Hauptle, Theodore E. Sweeney, James
PHOTO PUBLICITY Siegel, Adrian
THE UNIVERSITY MUSICAL SOCIETY
PRESIDENTS
Henry Simmons Frieze, 1879-1881 and 1883-1889 Alexander Winchell, 1881-1883 and 1889-1891 Francis W. Kelsey, 1891-1927 Charles A. Sink (Executive Secretary, 1904-1927); 1927-
MUSICAL DIRECTORS
Calvin B. Cady, 1879-1888 Albert A. Stanley, 1888-1921 Earl V. Moore, 1922-1939
CONDUCTORS
Thor Johnson, 1939-1942 Hardin Van Deursen, 1943-1947 Thor Johnson (Guest), 1947-Lester McCoy, Associate Conductor, 1947-1956; Conductor, 1956-
ADMINISTRATORS
Ross Spence (Secretary), 1893-1896 Thomas C. Colburn (Secretary), 1897-1902 Charles K. Perrine (Secretary), 1903-1904
Charles A. Sink (Executive Secretary, 1904-1927); President, 1927-Gail W. Rector (Assistant to the President, 1945-1954); Executive Director, 1957-
THE UNIVERSITY MUSICAL SOCIETY, which this year observes its eighty-fifth season, was organized during the winter of 1879-80 and was incor?porated in 1881. Its purpose was to maintain a choral society and an orchestra, to provide public concerts, and to organize and maintain a school of music which would offer instruction comparable to that of the University in its schools and colleges. Ars longa vita brevis was adopted as its motto. In 1894, as a climax to its offerings, the "First Annual May Festival" was inaugurated. Gradually the number of concerts in the Choral Union Series was increased to ten, and the May Festival, from three to six concerts. In 1946, with the development of musical interest, a supplementary series of concerts was added-the Extra Concert Series. Handel's Messiah, which had been performed at in?tervals through the years, became an annual production and since 1946 has been heard in two performances each season. Since 1941 an annual Chamber Music Festival of three concerts has been held in Rackham Auditorium. Also in Rackham, since 1962, an annual Chamber Dance Festival of three events has been presented, in this current season the Chamber Arts Series of seven attractions was inaugurated, and this coming summer the first Summer Concert
The "Ann Arbor School of Music" was organized in 1S79 and in 1892 was reorganized as the "Univer?sity School of Music." In 1929 the University provided partial support, and students, and faculty were given University status. In 1940 the University Musical Society relinquished full control and responsibility for the School to The University of Michgan.
81
MAY FESTIVAL PROGRAM
Series is scheduled for July. Thus, at the close of its eighty-fifth year, the Musical Society will have presented throughout the season, forty-one concerts by distinguished artists and organizations from fifteen countries.
THE UNIVERSITY CHORAL UNION was an outgrowth of a "Messiah Club," made up of singers from several local churches. For a decade and a half, assisted by distinguished professional artists and organizations, it partici?pated in numerous Choral Union concerts. In addition to its Messiah concerts, since 1894, it has performed at the annual May Festivals, offering a wide range of choral literature over the years (see pages 84 and 85). The chorus membership numbers about three hundred singers, including both townspeople and students.
The YOUTH CHORUS, to perform in Persiphone with the Choral Union, under Mr. Stravinsky, was organized especially for this occasion. The thirty-five young singers are fifthand sixth-grade pupils from the Ann Arbor schools.
82
THE ANN ARBOR MAY FESTIVAL
Maintained by the University Musical Society and founded by Albert A. Stanley and his associates on 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-
GUEST CONDUCTORS
Gustav Hoist (London, England),
1923, 1932 Howard Hanson (Rochester), 1926,
1927, 1933, 1935 Felix Borowski (Chicago), 1927 Percy Grainger (Australia), 1928 Jose Iturbi (Philadelphia), 1937
Georges Enesco (Paris), 1939 Harl McDonald (Philadelphia),
1939, 1940, 1944
Virgil Thomson (New York), 1959 Aaron Copland (New York), 1961 Igor Stravinsky (Los Angeles) 1964 Robert Craft (Los Angeles) 1964
ORGANIZATIONS
The Boston Festival Orchestra, Emil Mollenhauer, Conductor, 1894-1904.
The Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Frederick Stock, Conductor, 1905-1935; Eric De Lamarter, Associate Conductor, 1918-1935.
The Philadelphia Orchestra, Leopold Stokowski, Conductor, Saul Caston and Charles O'Connell, Associate Conductors, 1936; Eugene Ormandy, Con?ductor, 1937, 1938; Eugene Ormandy, Conductor, Saul Caston, Associate Conductor, 1939-1945; Eugene Ormandy, Conductor, Alexander Hilsberg, Associate Conductor, 1946-1953, and Guest Conductor, 1953; Eugene Ormandy, Conductor, 1954-; William Smith, Assistant Conductor, 1957-.
Tlte University Choral Union, Albert A. Stanley, Conductor, 1894-1921; Earl V. Moore, Conductor, 1922-1939; Thor Johnson, Conductor, 1940-1942; Har-din Van Deursen, Conductor, 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; JuvaN. Higbee, 1940-1942; Marguerite Hood, 1943-1956; Geneva Nelson, 1957; Marguerite Hood, 1958.
83
UNIVERSITY CHORAL UNION REPERTOIRE
Bach: Mass in B minor (excerpts)--1923,1924, 1925 (complete), 1953
Magnificat in D major--1930, 1950
Sleepers, Wake (Cantata 140)--1964 Beethoven: Missa Solemnis in D major, Op. 123--1927, 1947, 1955
Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125--1934, 1942, 1945 Berlioz: The Damnation of Faust--1895, 1909, 1920, 1952 Buet: Carmen--1904, 1918, 1927, 1938 Bloch: "America," An Epic Rhapsody--1929
Sacred Service (Parts 1, 2, 3)--1958 Bossi: Paradise Lost--1916 Brahms: Requiem, Op. 45--1S99 (excerpts), 1929, 1941, 1949
Alto Rhapsodie, Op. 53--1939
Song of Destiny, Op. 54--1950
Song of Triumph, Op. 55--1953 Bruch: Arminius--1S97, 1905
Fair Ellen, Op. 24--1904, 1910
Odysseus--1910
Bruckner: Te Deum laudamus--1945 Carey: "America"--1915
Chabrier: Fete Polonaise from Le Roi malgre lui--1959 Chadwick: The Lily Nymph--190O Chavez, Carlos: Corrido de "El Sol"--19541, 1960 Delius: Sea Drift--1924 Dvorak: Stabat Mater, Op. 58--1906
Requiem Mass, Op. 89--1962 Elgar: Caractacus--1903, 1914, 1936
The Dream of Gerontius, Op. 38--1904, 1912, 1917 Finney. Ross Lee: "Still Are New Worlds"--1963 Fogg: The Seasons--1937 Franck: The Beatitudes--1918 Gabrieli: In Ecclesiis benedicto domino--1958 Giannini: Canticle of the Martyrs--1958 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
Solomon--1959 Hanson, Howard: Songs from "Drum Taps"--1935
Heroic Elegy--1927
The Lament for Beowulf--1926
Merry Mount--1933 Haydn: The Creation--1908,1932,1963
The Seasons--1909, 1934 Heger: Ein Friedenslied, Op. 19--1934t Holst: A Choral Fantasia--1932t
A Dirge for Two Veterans--1923
The Hymn of Jesus--1923t
First Choral Symphony (excerpts)--1927t Honegger, Arthur: King David--1930, 1935, 1942
"Jeanne d'Arc au bucher"--1961 Kodaly: Psalmus Hungaricus, Op. 13--1939 Lambert, Constant: Summer's Last Will and Testament--19Slt Lockwood, Normand: Prairie--1953
World premiere tAmerican premiere tUnited States premiere
84
UNIVERSITY CHORAL UNION REPERTOIRE
McDonald, Harl: Symphony No. 3 ("Lamentations of Fu Hsuan")--1939 Mendelssohn, Elijah--1901, 1921, 1926, 1944, 1954, 1961
St. Paul--1905
Mennin, Peter: Symphony No. 4, "The Cycle"--1950 Moussorcsky: Boris Godunov--1931, 1935 Mozart: Great Mass in C minor, K. 427--1948
Requiem Mass in D minor, K. 626--1946
"Davidde penitente"--1956 Orff, Carl: Carmina Burana--1955 Parker: Hora Novissima, Op. 30--1900 Pierne: The Children's Crusade--1915
Saint Francis of Assisi--1928,1931 Ponchielli: La Gioconda--1925 Poulenc: Sechcresses--1959
"Gloria"--1964
Prokofiev: Alexander Nevsky, Op. 7S--1946 Rachmaninoff: The Bells--1925, 1938, 1948 Respighx: La Primavera--1924t Rimski-Korsakov: The Legend of Kitesh--1932f Rossini: Stabat Mater--1897
Saint-Saens: Samson and Delilah--1896,1899, 1907, 1912, 1916, 1923, 1929, 1940, 1958 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 des psaumes--1932,1960
"Persephone"--1964 StrLLivAN: The Golden Legend--1901 Tchaikovsky: Episodes from Eugen Onegin--1911, 1941 Thompson, Randall: Alleluia--1941
Vasdell, Charles: Cantata, "The Inimitable Lovers"--1940 Vaughan Williams, Ralph: Five Tudor Portraits--1957
"Flos Campi"--1959
Dona nobis pacem--1962 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, 1960
Stabat Mater--1899
Te Deum--1947, 1963
Villa-Lobos, Heiter: Choros No. 10, "Rasga o corac,ao"--1949, 1960 Vivaldi-Casella: Gloria--1954 Wagner: Die jliegende 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
tAmerican premijre
85
1963-UNIVERSITY MUSICAL SOCIETY-1964 Resume of Concerts and Music Performed
Concerts--Forty events were presented as listed below. The total number of appearances of the respective artists and organizations, under the auspices of the University Musical Society, is given in parentheses.
85th Annual Choral Union Series
New York Philharmonic (4); Leonard Bernstein, Conductor (1) ...........September 11
Gyorgy Sandor, Pianist (3) .............................................September 24
Jerome Hines, Bass (4) ..................................................October 7
Bulgarian National Ensemble .............................................October 18
Cleveland Orchestra (21); George Szell, Conductor (14) ..................November 7
Don Giovanni (Mozart)--New York City Opera (5) ......................November 17
Philharmonia Hungarica, Miltiades Ciradis, Conductor,
Tossy Spivakovsky, Violin soloist (3) ..................................January 20
Mazowsze Dance Company (2) ...........................................January 30
Teresa Berganza, Coloratura-mezzo .......................................February 26
Chicago Opera Ballet ......................................................March 13
181 h Annual Extra Series
Tosca (Puccini)--Goldovsky Opera Theater (2) ............................October 10
Ballet Folklorico of Mexico .............................................November 1
Madama Butterfly (Puccini), New York City Opera (4) ..................November 17
Vienna Symphony Orchestra, Wolfgang Sawallisch, Conductor ..............February 20
Anna Moffo, Soprano ........................................................April 3
First Chamber Arts Series
Kimio Eto, Kotoist with Suzushi Hanayagi, Dancer ..........................October 13
Moscow Chamber Orchestra, Rudolf Barshai, Conductor ..................November 13
Julian Bream Consort ..................................................November 26
Sestetto Italiano Luca Marenzio .........................................December 10
Zurich Chamber Orchestra, Edmond de Stoutz, Conductor ..................January 25
Sahm-Chun-Li Dancers and Musicians...................................February 9
Orchestra San Pietro, Renato Ruotolo, Conductor ............................March 19
Christmas Concerts Handel's Messiah ...................................................December 7 and 8
Lois Marshall, Soprano (9) Beverly Wolff, Contralto (2) John Craig, Tenor (3)
Richard Cross, Bass (2)
Mary McCall Stubbins, Organist (35)
Lester McCoy, Chorusmaster (30)
University Choral Union University Symphony Orchestra Guest conductor for these performances was Harold Haugh.
Special Concert and Chamber Festivals La Boh&me (Puccini)--New York City Opera (3) ........................November 16
Chamber Dance Festival (Second Annual)
Marina Svetlova Dance Ensemble, Shanta Rao and
Company, Ballets "Bihari"..............................October 25, 26, and 27
Chamber Music Festival (Twenty-fourth Annual)
New York Pro Musica (4), Noah Greenberg, Conductor (4)___February 14, 15 and 16
86
UNIVERSITY MUSICAL SOCIETY REPERTOIRE
Seventy-first Annual May Festival--April 30, May 1,2,3
The Philadelphia Orchestra (176); Conductors: Eugene Ormandy (97)
Thor Johnson (52), William Smith (8); University Choral Union (248); Igor Stra?vinsky. Robert Craft; and soloists:
Joan Sutherland, Soprano Charles Treger, Violinist Philippe Entremont, Pianist Van Cliburn, Pianist (3) Anshel Brusilow, Violinist (3)
Mason J ones, Horn John McCollum, Tenor (7) Ralph Herbert, Baritone Lois Marshal], Soprano (10) Vera Zorina, Narrator (2)
The complete repertoire of the concerts this season includes music which represents a wide range of musical forms and periods. The compositions, classified into categories of (1) symphony and chamber orchestra, (2) instru?mental (by chamber music groups and virtuoso artists), (3) vocal (solo), (4) choral, (5) ballet, (6) opera, and (7) dance and folk song groups are listed below. Works presented here for the first time are denoted by asterisks.
SYMPHONY AND CHAMBER ORCHESTRA
Bartok Divertimento for String
Orchestra ....................Moscow
Roumanian Dance (encore) ......Zurich
Beethoven Overture to "Leonore,"
No. 3, Op. 72 ............Philadelphia
Symphony No. 7 in A major, Op. 92 ..................Philadelphia
BOCCHERINI
?Casa d'vole (encore) ........San Pietro
Borodin
Polovetzian Dances, from "Prince Igor" ......Philadelphia
BOTTESINI
?Tarantella for Contrabass
and Strings ...............San Pietro
Brahms
"Academic Festival" Overture,
Op. 80 ....................New York
Hungarian Dance in F-sharp
minor (encore) ............Hungarica
Symphony No. 4 in E minor,
Op. 98 ....................New York
Bruckner
?Symphony No. 3 in D minor .... Cleveland Cimarosa
?Sinfonia in D major ........San Pietro
Debussy Nocturnes: Nuages
and Fetes ................Philadelphia
Gemtniani ?Concerto grosso in G minor,
Op. 3, No. 2 ..................Zurich
Haydn Divertimento in F major,
Op. 3, No. 5 ..................Zurich
Symphony No. 44 (encore) .. .San Pietro Symphony No. 49 (encore) .. .San Pietro
KodAly
Marosszek Dances ............Hungarica
Locateixi
Concerto grosso, Op. 4, No. 10___Vienna
Mozart
MusikaIischer Spass, K. S22___San Pietro
?Symphony No. 11 (encore)......Moscow
Symphony No. 29 in A major,
K. 201 ......................Moscow
Symphony No. 41 in C major, K. SSI ("Jupiter") ..........Cleveland
MULLER-ZURICH
?Sinfonia in E for String
Orchestra and Flute ..........Zurich
Pergolesi
?Concertino No. 1 in G major .. San Pietro Prokofieff
?Visions fugitives ..............Moscow
Purcexl
?Suite for String Orchestra,
"The Married Beau" ..........Zurich
Rachmaninoff Symphony No. 2 in E minor,
Op. 27 ..................Philadelphia
Vocalise, Op. 34, No. 14 ___Philadelphia
Ravel "Alborada del gracioso"
(encore) ...................New York
S7
MAY FESTIVAL PROGRAM
Sacchdq
"Edipo a Colona" ............San Pictro
Satie
Trois gymnopedies .........Philadelphia
Scarlatti, Domexico
(Tommasini) Ballet Suite, "The Good Humored Ladies"___Philadelphia
SCHOICBERG
?Five Pieces for Orchestra ... .Philadelphia Schubert Symphony No. 8 in B minor,
("Unfinished") ...............Vienna
Schuiiait, William
Symphony No. 3 ............New York
Strauss. Eduard
Bahn Frei Galop, Op. 45 ........Detroit
Strauss. Johann, Jr. "The Blue Danube" Waltz
(encore) ......................Vienna
Overture to Die Fledermajts .... Detroit
New Pizzicato Polka ............Detroit
"Tales from the Vienna Woods"
Waltz........................Detroit
Unter Donner und Blitz Polka,
Op. 324 ......................Detroit
Strauss, Joseph
?Delirium Waltzes, Op. 212 .......Detroit
?Jockey Galop, Op. 278 ..........Detroit
Strauss, Richard
"Ein Heldenleben" .........Philadelphia
"Macbeth," Op. 23 ..............Vienna
Suite from "Der
Rosenkavalier"............Philadelphia
"Till Eulenspiegel's Merry
Pranks," Op. 28 ..........Philadelphia
Stravinsky ?Symphony in C ...........Philadelphia
Suppe, Franz Von ?Overture to Die schone Galatea. .Detroit
Tchaikovsky
Symphony No. 5 in E minor, Op. 64 ....................Hungarica
Vivaldi
Concerto in A minor for Two
Violins and Strings (encore) ..Moscow ?Concerto in B minor for Four
Violins, Cello, and Orchestra ..Moscow Concerto in D minor for Oboe
and Strings (encore) ..........Moscow
?Concerto for Two Oboes
(encore) ....................Moscow
Weberjt ?Six Pieces for Orchestra, Op. 6 ... .Vienna
INSTRUMENTAL
Allison, Richard
Allison's Knell ...........Bream Consort
The Bachelar's Delight .. .Bream Consort
Goe from My Window___Bream Consort
The Quadro Galliard......Bream Consort
Anonymous Spanish
?Pase el agna ................Pro Musica
Anonymous
?Woodycock .................Pro Musica
Bach, J. S.
(Busoni) Chorale Prelude: Now comes the Gentile's
Saviour ......................Sandor
?(Bartok) Sonata No. 6 (Vivace) ..Sandor
Bartok ?Concerto No. 2 for Violin
and Orchestra........Spivakovsky and
Hungarica ?Etude No. 1 ....................Sandor
Bruch
Scottish Fantasy, Op. 46 .....Treger and
Philadelphia
88
Byrd, William
?Browning ...................Pro Musica
Earl of Oxford March
(encore) ..............Bream Consort
John Come Kiss Me Now ... .Pro Musica
?Mounsier's Almaine ......Bream Consort
Chopin Andante Spianato and
Polonaise, Op. 22 ..............Sandor
Barcarolle in F-sharp major,
Op. 60 ...................Danenbcrg
?Mazurka in C-sharp minor,
Op. 6, No. 2 ..................Sandor
Mazurka in A-flat major,
Op. 41, No. 4 ................Sandor
?Mazurka in C minor,
Op. 56, No. 3 ................Sandor
Scherzo in B-flat minor,
Op. 31 .........................Haig
Waltz in G-flat major, Op. 70,
No. I (encore) ................Sandor
Daixa Casa, Gkolamo Alix avoit ..................Pro Musica
UNIVERSITY MUSICAL SOCIETY REPERTOIRE
De Cabezon, Antonio Tiento......................Pro Musica
Debussy Etude (pour les degres
chromatiques) ................Sandor
Dowland, John
?Almand ....................Pro Musica
The Earl of Essex Galliard. .Bream Consort
?Fantasia ................Bream Consort
?Forlorne Hope...........Bream Consort
?Frogs Galliard (encore) . .Bream Consort
?Galliard ....................Pro Musica
?Lachrimae Pavin ........Bream Consort
?Pavane ....................Pro Musica
?Pavin and Galliard ......Bream Consort
DUFAY, GUTLLAUME
?Craindre vous ..............Pro Musica
?Vostre bruit ................Pro Musica
Encina, Juan Del ?Oy camamos y bebamos
y cantemos ..............Pro Musica
Falla
?Farruca ..........................Haig
?Ritmos ..........................Haig
Frescobaldi
?Canzon quinta ..............Pro Musica
?Canzon terza ...............Pro Musica
?Two Correntes ..............Pro Musica
?Toccata settima ............Pro Musica
Fujinaca
Yachiyo-Jishi .......................Eto
Gran ados
El Pelele .........................Haig
Quejas o la maja yeel
rusenor ..........Danenberg and Haig
Haydn
?Fantasia in C major .........Danenberg
Sonata in E minor ..............Sandor
Holborne, Anthony
?Pavan .....................Pro Musica
Kengyo, Matsuura
?Shiki No Nagame ..................Eto
Kikuoka
?Yagao ............................Eto
Rtneya Rokuzaemon ?Aki No Irokusa ...................Eto
Liszt
Funerailles (encore) ............Sandor
Sonata in B minor..............Sandor
Marcello ?Concerto for Oboe and Strings SanPictro
Miyagi, Michio Mizu No Hentai ...................Eto
Morley, Thomas
La Coranto ..............Bream Consort
?Joyne Hands ............Bream Consort
?Sola Soletta .............Bream Consort
?Two Fantasias: The Swallow,
The Turtle Dove ......Bream Consort
?La Volta ................Bream Consort
Ortiz, Diego ?Recercada .................Pro Musica
Phillips, Peter ?Pavin...................Bream Consort
Praetortus, Michael ? A Suite of Dances ..........Pro Musica
Rachmaninoff Concerto No. 3 in D minor
Op. 30 ..................Cliburn and
Philadelphia
Robinson, Thomas
?Fantasie ................Bream Consort
?Medicum (encore) ........Bream Consort
?A Toy .................Bream Consort
Satnt-Saens Concerto No. 2 in G minor,
Op. 22 ................Entremont and
Philadelphia
Scarlatti Sonata in C major (encore) .....Sandor
Scriabin
Etude in D-sharp minor, Op. 8, No. 12 ................Sandor
Strauss, Richard
Concerto No. 1 for Horn and Orchestra... .Jones and Philadelphia
SZYMANOWSKI
Etude in B-flat minor............Sandor
Yatsuhashi ?Midare ............................Eto
VOCAL
Bach
"Schlummert ein" from Cantata No. 82 ........................Hines
Barber, Samuel
?Daisies ..........................Moffo
?Nocturne ........................Moffo
MAY FESTIVAL PROGRAM
Beethoven
In questa tomba oscura ..........Hines
Song of the Flea .................Hines
Boito
?"Son lo spirito" from Mephistophele.Hines Brahms
?Lerchengesang ...................Moffo
Der Tod das ist die kiihle Nacht ..Moffo Cawssimi
"Vittoria" .......................Hines
Charles, Ernest When I Have Sung My Song
to You (encore) ...............Moffo
Debussy
Green, from "Ariettes
oubliees" (Verlaine) ............Moffo
Fantoches from "Fetes galantes" ..Moffo Donizetti Mad Scene from Lucia di
Lammermoor .........Sutherland and
Philadelphia Ne omera la brona chioma ....Berganza
Una lagrima ..................Berganza
Falla, Manuel De
?Polo (encore) ................Berganza
Gounod Aria, Waltz from Romeo
and Juliette ...................Moffo
Granados E1 tra la la y el punteado
(encore) ......................Berganza
Handel
?"Verdi prati" from Alcina .....Berganza
Haydn
?Lamento d'Arianna ............Berganza
?Lindora's Song from
L'sola incantata ............Berganza
Heubercer ?"Im chambre separee" from
Der Opernball ......Schwarzkopf and
Detroit Hines, Jerome
?Twenty-third Psalm ..............Hines
Lehar, Franz ?"Vilia" from
The Merry Widow ... Schwarzkopf and
Detroit Mac Gimsey
?Down to the River (encore) ......Hines
Mendelssohn ?"Is Not His Word Like A Fire"
from Elijah ....................Hines
90
MONTSALRATCE, X.
?Cancion de cuna bara dormir a un
negrito (encore) ............Berganza
Moussorcsky
Scene from Boris Godunov .......Hines
Mozart "Deh vieni alia finestra"
from Don Giovanni ............Hines
"Finch han dal vino"
from Don Giovanni ............Hines
"Madamina" from Don Giovanni .. Hines
"Alleluia" from Exultate .........Moffo
Obradors
?Aquel sombrero de monte......Berganza
Coraz6n, porque pasais ........Berganza
?Dos cantares populares ........Berganza
E1 Vito ......................Berganza
Peri, Jacopo
?Invocazione di Orfeo .............Hines
Poulenc
Ce ..............................Moffo
Ce doux petit visage ............Moffo
Puccini "O mia babbino caro" from
Gianni Schicchi (encore) ........Moffo
"Un bel di" from
Madama Butterfly (encore) .......Moffo
Qutlter, Roger ?Love's Philosophy ...............Moffo
Rossna "La calumnia" from The
Barber of Seville (encore) ......Hines
"Nacqui all 'affano" from
La Cenerentola .............Berganza
"Una voce poco fa" from The Barber of Seville ..............Moffo
Scarlatti, Alessandro "Caldo sangue" from Sedecia ...Moffo
Se Florindo e fedele..............Moffo
Still, William Grant
I Am a Black Pierrot..............Hines
If You Should Go ...............Hines
Strauss, Johann, Jr. Csardas from Die
Fledermaus .........Schwarzkopf and
Detroit ?Waltz Song from
Wiener Blut..........Schwarzkopf and
Detroit Strauss, Richard
Morgen .........................Moffo
Standchen .......................Moffo
UNIVERSITY MUSICAL SOCIETY REPERTOIRE
Thomas
"Le Tambour major" from Le Caid (encore) ..............Hines
TQLDRA
Cantarcillo....................Berganza
Madre Unos ojuelos vi........Berganza
La Zagala alegre .............Berganza
Turina
?Cantares .....................Berganza
E1 Fantasma .................Berganza
Farruca ......................Berganza
?Saeta ........................Berganza
Verdi
"Ah! Fors' e lui" from
La Traviata ..........Sutherland and
Philadelphia
"Sempre libera" from
La Traviata ..........Sutherland and
Philadelphia Zexler, Carl "Sei nicht b6s" from
Obersteiger ..........Schwarzkopf and
Detroit
?"Schenkt man sich Rosen in Tirol" from Der
Vogelhdndler ........Schwarzkopf and
Detroit Zandonai I Due Tarli .....................Hines
CHORAL
Anonymous AUe Psallite cum Luya .. Sestetto Italiano
Dadme albricias ............Pro Musica
E la don, don...............Pro Musica
Oy camaos .................Pro Musica
?The Poor Soul Sat Sighing ...ProMusica
?Riu, riu, chiu ..............Pro Musica
Si la noche .................Pro Musica
?Vesame y abracame..........Pro Musica
Bach, J. S. ?Sleepers, Wake
(Cantata 140) ......Choral Union and
Philadelphia Banchieri
La Pazzia Senile........Sestetto Italiano
Bartlett, John ?Whither runneth my
sweetheart................Pro Musica
Campion, Thomas ?It Fell on a Summer's
Day ..................Bream Consort
?Shall I Come, Sweet Love,
to Thee .............Bream Consort
COSTELEY, GUHXAUME
?Allons, Gay, Gay,
Bergeres .............Sestetto Italiano
DE RrVAFLECHA
?Salve Regina ...............Pro Musica
Dowland, John ?Flow my tears ..............Pro Musica
DUFAY, GUHXAUME
?Bon jour, bon mois ........Pro Musica
?Gloria ......................Pro Musica
?Je ne vis onques la pareille ..Pro Musica
Kyrie ......................Pro Musica
?Malheureux cueur ...........Pro Musica
Supremum est mortalibus .... Pro Musica
Falcone, Achille ?Sfidi tu forse a bachi___Sestetto Italiano
Gibbons, Orlando ?London Street Cries ........Pro Musica
Gombert, Nicholas Dezilde.....................Pro Musica
Handel
Messiah ..............Choral Union and
University Orchestra
Hume, Tobias Tobacco ....................Pro Musica
Jones, Robert In Sherwood Lived Stout
Robin Hood..............Pro Musica
JosQUDf Des Prez ?Planxit autem David ........Pro Musica
Leoni, Leone Dimmi Clori gentil......Sestetto Italiano
Marenzio ?Cruda Amarilli .........Sestetto Italiano
Monteverdi
Ah, dolente partita ..........Pro Musica
?Angelus ad Pastores .... Sestetto Italiano
?Cantate Domino ............Pro Musica
Ch'io t'ami ............Sestetto Italiano
Deh! bella e cara........Sestetto Italiano
?Entrata and Balletto ........Pro Musica
Hor ch'el ciel e la terra......Pro Musica
Laetaniae della Beata Vergine . .Pro Musica
Ma tu piu che mai......Sestetto Italiano
?Nisi Dominus ...............Pro Musica
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MAY FESTIVAL PROGRAM
Morley, Thomas
About the Maypole..........Pro Musica
?Clorinda, false ..............Pro Musica
It was a lover and his lass .... Pro Musica
Lo, she flies ................Pro Musica
O Mistress Mine ........Bream Consort
?Phyllis, I fain would die now . .Pro Musica Vhat saith my dainty darling . Pro Musica
MUDARRA, ALONSO
?Triste estava el rev David .... Pro Musica
Palestrdja ?Exultate Deo ..........Sestetto Italiano
?Gloria ..........Choral Union, Marshall,
and Philadelphia
Praetorius Psallite (encore) ............Pro Musica
BAI
Cake Walk (Debussy). .Barrera (Svetlova)
Carmen (Bizet) ___Chicago Opera Ballet
Chopiniana (Chopin from
"Les Sylphides") ............Svetlova
?Cigany filet (Axin) ..............Bihari
Don Quixote (Pas de deux--
Minkus) .....................Svetlova
?The Dying Swan (Saint-Saens) . .Svetlova ?Die Fledermaus (Johann
Strauss) ........Chicago Opera Ballet
?Kallai Kettos (Kodaly-Axin) ___Bihari
?Kard Tanc (Bartok) ............Bihari
Raven scroft Wce be three poore mariners . .Pro Musica
SCHEEN, JOHANN HERMANN
Da Jakob vollendet hatte ... .Pro Musica
Vende dich. Herr............Pro Musica
Zion spricht: der Herr hat
mich verlassen ............Pro Musica
Schutz, Heinrich
Anima mea liquefacta est ... .Pro Musica
?Der Herr ist meia Hirt ......Pro Musica
Stravinsky
?Persephone ......Choral Union, Zorina,
and Philadelphia Vecchi, Orazio
?Tiridola non dormire ... .Sestetto Italiano White, Robert
?Lamentations of Jeremiah ... .Pro Musica
,ET
Nutcracker Suite--Pas de deux
(Tchaikovsky) ..............Svetlova
?Ostor Tanc .....................Bihari
?Pas de "Pastorale" (Bart6k) .....Bihari
?Grand pas de deux: "Rhapsody"
(Liszt) ........................Bihari
?The Ribbon Dance
(Khatchaturian) ...Briansky (Svetlova) ?Sleeping Beauty (Tchaikovsky) .. Chicago
Opera Ballet ?Tokaji Lakoda (Axin-Hubay) .... Bihari
OPERA
Mozart, W. A. Don Giovanni ... .New York City Opera
Puccini
La Boheme ......New York City Opera
Madama Butterfly. .New York City Opera Tosca ........Goldovsky Opera Theater
DANCE AND FOLK SONG
Bulgarian
?Country Festival in Thrace......Koutev
Bulgarian National Ensemble
?Folk Melodies from the Sofia District ?Folk Songs
Come, Girls and Dance
Dilmano Dilbero
Jelka
Oh, My Dream
Stanka's Bethrothal
Stojan Returns
Sunset
92
Todora's Dream
The Two Radas
Vasa, Give Me Your Heart
The Wild Flowers
?Improvisations on Folk Tunes for Bagpipe ?Kukeri
?Macedonian Suite ?The Moon Is Shining ?Puppets ?Rucheniza ?The Shepherds ?Shinitzite ?Shopsky Dance for Girls
UNIVERSITY MUSICAL SOCIETY REPERTOIRE
?Typon Zaresan ?Yana
Hungarian
?Ballada .........................Bihari
Hallgat6 es Friss Csardls ?Pasztor es e Babaja ?Verbunkos es Kurucz N6ta
Indian
Bhama Sutram .............Shanta Rao
?Chollukattu, Ramayana
Folk Dance of Andhra
?Folk Dance of Malabar
Kunti-Karna
?Satyabhama's Letter to Lord Krishna
Tillana
?Thana Varnam
Japanese
Echigo Jishi............Hanayagi (Eto)
Kanegami-Saki ?Kurokami
Korean ?Buddhist Lantern
Festival ...............Sahm-Chun Li
Choon-Aeng Jun-Mu
Chuhyong-Mu
Ku-Ko-Mu
Kum-Mu
Kumoongo Sanjo and Pyungchang
Mudang Choom
Nong-ak
Pan-Sori
Sal-Pu-Ri
?Taegeum Solo
Mexican Boda en La Huasteca
Potosina ............Ballet Folklorico
Boda en El Istimo de Tehuantepec ?Danza del Venado de Los Yaquis ?Fiesta Veracruzana ?Navidad en Jalisco Los Quetzales de Puebla Sones Antiguoide Michoacan ?Los Tarascos Polish ?Carnival Wilamowice .........Mazowsze
Chodzony: Round and Round
Cieszyn Song
Cracow Dances and Songs
Dances from Biskupizna Wieklopolska ?Dance from Kurpie Region
Dances and Songs from the Tatras
Dances and Songs from Warmia and Mazury
Dances and Songs from Wielkopolska ?Get Married, Mary
Here Come the Guests
Jokes and Dances from Podegrodzia
Kaszuby Dances and Songs
Krakowiak
Kujawiak
The Lowicz Maiden ?Matthew Is a Lucky Man ?Mazurka
Oberek
Oberek from Opoczno ?Polka from Warsaw Suburbs ?Polonaise, Goodbye to Homeland
Polonaise from Zywiec
"Spindle" Polka from Sieradz ?Wooers Spanish
?Viva Navarra........Barrera (Svetlova)
?Zapateado ...........Barerra (Svetlova)
SUMMARY
Classification Number of Compositions First Performances at these Concerts Composers Represented Foreign Artists
Symphony and Chamber Orchestra ....... 53 75 63 61 22 58 39 57 34 36 36 29 5 3 2 2
Instrumental .......
Vocal ,
Choral ............
Ballet ...................... 16 13 12 2
Opera .... 4 84 4 68 2
Dance and Folk Song........ 7
Totals . 356 261 149 21
Less duplications --33 __2
116 19
Undetermined
93
UNIVERSITY MUSICAL SOCIETY
Presentations for the 1964-1965 Season
CHORAL UNION SERIES
Chicago Symphony Orchestra........Friday, September 25
Jean Martinon, Conductor
Antonio and The Ballets de Madrid.....Thursday, October 8
Warsaw Philharmonic..........Wednesday, October 14
Leonid Kogan, Violinist, from Moscow .... Wednesday, November 4 Raduga Dancers, from six Soviet Republics . . . Saturday, November 14 Faust (Gounod) New York City Opera Company . Sunday, November 22 Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra......Monday, February 8
Stanislaw Skrowaczewski, Conductor
Rosalyn Tureck, Pianist...........Monday, March 1
Robert Merrill, Baritone...........Friday, March 12
National Ballet of Canada.........Saturday, April 3
EXTRA SERIES
London Symphony Orchestra.........Friday, October 2
Georg Solti, Conductor Irina Arkhipova, Mezzo-soprano, from Russia . . Monday, November 9
(American debut)
Merry Widow (Lehar) New York City Opera . (2:30) Sunday, November 22 Berlin Philharmonic..........Saturday, January 30
Herbert von Karajan, Conductor Polish Mime Theatre, from Warsaw......Saturday, March 6
CHAMBER ARTS SERIES
Societa Corelli, from Italy........Wednesday, October 28
New York Chamber Soloists........Tuesday, November 17
Segovia, Guitarist............Wednesday, January 20
Paris Chamber Orchestra (with Bach trumpeter
Adolf Scherbaum), Paul Kuentz, Conductor . . Sunday, February 14
Netherlands Chamber Choir........Saturday, February 27
Chicago Little Symphony..........Sunday, March 7
Thor Johnson, Conductor Solisti di Zagreb and Antonio Janigro, Cellist . . . Tuesday, March 30
94
UNIVERSITY MUSICAL SOCIETY
ANNUAL CHRISTMAS CONCERTS
Messiah (Handel) (Two Performances).....Saturday, December 5
(2:30) Sunday, December 6
Soloists:
Helen Boatwright, Soprano
Jean Saunders, Mezzo-soprano
Charles Bressler, Tenor
Howard Nelson, Bass
The University Choral Union
The University Symphony Orchestra
Mary McCall Stubbins, Organist
Lester McCoy, Conductor
FESTIVALS
Chamber Dance Festival
Paul Taylor Dance Company.......Friday, October 23
Jean Leon Destine Dance Company .... Saturday, October 24 First Chamber Dance Quartet . . . (2:30) Sunday, October 25
Chamber Music Festival (five concerts)
Budapest String Quartet (Beethoven Cycle) . . February 17, 18, 19,
20, (2:30) 21
Ann Arbor May Festival (Six Concerts).......May 6, 7, 8, 9
The Philadelphia Orchestra, Eugene Ormandy, Musical Director guest conductors and soloists
1964 SUMMER CONCERT SERIES
(Rackham Auditorium)
Gyorgy Sandor, Pianist............Thursday, July 2
Daniel Barenboim, Pianist...........Tuesday, July 7
Eugene Istomin, Pianist............Monday, July 20
Ralph Votapek, Pianist...........Wednesday, July 29