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Madison Symphony Orchestra Program Notes
February 15-16-17, 2019
93rd Season / Subscription
Concert No.5
Michael Allsen
We open
this Madison Symphony Orchestra program with a work by
composer John Harbison, who spends each summer living in
nearby Token Creek. Harbison’s The Most Often Used Chords is a playful take on
the basic music theory primers often included in books of
music manuscript paper. Joining us as a soloist for these
concerts is James Ehnes, making his third appearance in
Overture Hall—he previously played Bartók’s second concerto
(2012) and the Bruch Scottish
Fantasy (2015) with the orchestra. At these programs Mr.
Ehnes performs the great Brahms concerto. To close this
program, we play the most famous of all musical depictions of
visual art—Mussorgsky’s Pictures
at an Exhibition, colorfully orchestrated by Maurice
Ravel.
John
Harbison (b. 1938)
The Most Often Used Chords (Gli
accordi più usati)
This work was composed in 1992-93 and
it was first performed by the Los Angeles Chamber
Orchestra on October 22, 1993. This is the first
performance of the work by the Madison Symphony
Orchestra. Duration 18:00.
John Harbison
stands in the first rank of today’s American composers. He
has composed in virtually every genre of art music from
opera to chamber works, and he also remains active as a jazz
pianist. Harbison’s style is notable for its
adaptability—freely adopting musical influences that suit
the context of the piece, and evolving substantially from
work to work—in his words, “to make each piece different
from the others.” Also active as conductor, he has led major
orchestras in performances of his own music, but his
interest extends to all
music, from championing neglected 20th-century works to Bach
and Monteverdi. Harbison spends most of the year in Boston,
and has been a member of the faculty of M.I.T. for nearly 40
years, where
he is Institute Professor, the highest distinction accorded
to resident faculty. But
there is a clear local connection as well. Harbison holds an
Honorary Doctorate from UW-Madison, and his wife, violinist
Rose Mary Harbison, grew up on a farm a few miles north of
Madison and is a UW-Madison graduate. The Token Creek farm
has long served as a summer retreat, where Harbison finds
the solitude to compose. Every summer since 1989, the
Harbisons have hosted the annual Token Creek Music Festival
in their barn. Harbison writes the following about The Most Often Used
Chords, one of his most frequently-performed pieces:
“I write most of my music in spiral-bound notebooks. I tend to buy many types to keep different pieces visually separate. Most of the notebooks contain, inside the covers, little instruction guides on the fundamentals of music. I had often contemplated them in a day-dreaming state, until one evening, in a notebook I had bought for my Third Symphony, my eye fell upon ‘Gli accordi più usati.’ This full page catalogue of the ten ‘most often used chords," listed first in C and then transposed up by half steps eleven times, was never meant to be played in sequence. But to my ear, it made an accidentally attractive, somewhat Italianate progression, and I realized with pleasure that these are chords I hardly ever use.
“Before I was really aware what was happening, I had composed a Passacaglia for small orchestra based on this Italian page, and had begun other movements based on bits from the instruction manuals, some of which I will quote below. The emerging piece seemed to express my delight in these Cagean found objects, my pleasure in rediscovering these simple patterns, and my enjoyment of the irresistible restricted vocabularies they proposed. [The Most Often Used Chords] is essentially a work of play, taking place in a realm where free fantasy and simple theory meet and find they can harmonize with each other.
“I. Toccata: 1. ‘Use these charts to form chords in any key. Major, minor, diminished, augmented. The construction of these chords involves simply raising or lowering one or more tones one half step.’ 2. ‘Here are the two scales you need: major and minor.’ 3. ‘There are seven modes; each begins on a different white key.’
“II. Variazioni: ‘The chord of chords is the triad (Ex. C-E-G).’ There are four variations within a frame. There is no sonority in the entire movement, except for a brief wayward bass line in the third variation, that is not a triad. In this peculiar restriction lies the voice of this brief movement.
“III. Ciaccona: The ten ‘most often used chords’ form a ground against which a melody takes shape. The melody presses to break free of the ground, to spin forward in historical time, which causes an interlude after the sixth chaconne statement. At the moment of greatest tension, the melody and the ground resume. The rarefied world of the exotic found object dissolves into another world of feeling, perhaps through the composer’s intervention.
“IV. Finale: ‘The Circle of Fifths is easy to memorize. Starting with F and moving clockwise, the keys can be learned by saying Fat Cats Go Down Alleys Eating Bread. The keys counterclockwise can be learned by repeating Boys Eat Aging Dogs Good Cold Food.’ I once learned the lines on the staff by remembering Every Good Boy Does Fine. My amusement at these newer rubrics is reflected in the tone of this movement. In addition to the increasingly crazed appearances of the Circle of Fifths, two other tables from the same notebook appear: the Table of Contracting Note Values (shades of Handel’s B-flat Concerto Grosso), and the
Table of Expanding Intervals (which leads inexorably to the use of all twelve tones).
“The piece is, of course, intelligible without any reference to this program note!”
Johannes
Brahms (1833-1897)
Concerto for Violin and Orchestra in D
Major, Op. 77
Brahms
composed this, his only violin concerto in the summer of
1878, and it was first performed at the Gewandhaus in
Leipzig, on January 1, 1879, with the composer conducting.
Joseph Joachim, to whom it is dedicated, played the solo
part at the premiere. It has been performed eight times by
the Madison Symphony Orchestra, in 1936 (George
Szpinalski), 1946 (Roman Totenberg), 1963 (Sidney Harth),
1975 (Dylana Jenson), 1991 (Itzhak Perlman), 2000 (Shlomo
Mintz), and 2008 (Sarah Chang). Duration 38:00.
“One enjoys getting
hot fingers playing it, because it’s worth it!”
- Joseph Joachim
In the summer of
1878, Brahms took up residence in the town of Pörtschach in
southern Austria to work on his violin concerto. (Pörtschach
apparently provided a fine creative environment for the
composer—he had completed his second symphony there during
the previous summer.) The concerto was dedicated to his
friend and colleague, violinist Joseph Joachim (1831-1907),
and the concerto was, in a limited sense, a collaboration
between composer and soloist. Brahms and Joachim
first met in 1853, beginning a lifelong friendship and
musical association. When he had completed the first three
movements in August of 1878, he sent a copy of the solo
violin part to Joachim with a letter:
“After copying it, I am not sure what
you can do with a mere solo part. Of course, I would like
you to make corrections; I had intended to leave you no
excuse whatsoever—neither that the music is too good, nor
that it isn’t worth the trouble. Now, I would be satisfied
if you write a letter to me or perhaps mark the music:
difficult, awkward, impossible, etc. I have just started the
fourth movement, so you can overrule the awkward passages at
once.”
Joachim promptly
replied with a marked copy of the part and a letter of his
own:
“It is a great, sincere joy for me that
you are writing a violin concerto (even one in four
movements!). I immediately studied what you sent to me, and
you will note a few remarks and notes for changes, but
without the score, one cannot appreciate it. Most of it can
be executed and some parts have a quite original violinistic
flair. I cannot say whether everything can be played with
ease in a hot concert hall until I have tried out the
whole.”
Brahms
incorporated several of Joachim’s suggestions into the final
version of the score, and rather than providing a cadenza
for the first movement, he used one written by Joachim.
The Violin Concerto
stands as one of the largest and most challenging works in
the solo violin repertoire. While his projected fourth
movement was not included in the final form of the concerto
(Brahms successfully used a four-movement design three years
later in his second piano concerto.), the concerto’s
traditional three-movement design nevertheless has symphonic
proportions. Indeed, there are several close ties between
the Violin Concerto and
the Symphony No.2,
written a year earlier (and in the same key). Brahms also
makes several subtle references to Beethoven’s violin
concerto, which is also in D Major. The concerto,
written with the talents of Joachim in mind, presents
formidable challenges for the soloist. One violinist,
Bronislaw Huberman, referred to the work—only half-
jokingly—as “...a concerto for violin against
orchestra—and the violin wins!”
The orchestral
introduction to the first movement (Allegro non troppo)
presents nearly all of the movement’s thematic material in a
single dramatic phrase. Musical material is disengaged from
this phrase—like single strands from a larger thread—as the
movement continues. The violin’s opening music presents a
fiery variant of a melody fully introduced later in the
movement above the orchestra’s presentation of the lyrical
main theme. Throughout the movement, Brahms restlessly
develops his themes, even in the short coda that follows the
cadenza.
The second
movement (Adagio)
presents a theme and several variations, a form that
interested Brahms throughout his life. The theme is
presented by the oboe, and then picked up by the soloist in
variations that exhaustively develop the theme and its
component parts. There is an abrupt contrast between the
reserved close of this movement and the spirited opening of
the rondo-form finale. The main theme of the third movement
(Allegro giocoso, ma
non troppo vivace) is presented immediately by the
violin: a Hungarian-flavored melody spiced with double
stops. A second section, presenting a stormy dotted figure,
drifts gradually back to a restatement of the main melody. A
more lyrical central episode, which refers subtly to the
opening melody gives way to a restatement of the second
section. The movement closes with a long and dramatic coda,
in which both soloist and orchestra develop the main theme.
Modest Mussorgsky (1839-1881)
Pictures at an
Exhibition (orchestrated by Maurice Ravel)
Mussorgsky’s piano suite
Pictures at an Exhibition was completed in June of
1874, and was published posthumously in 1886 with a
dedication to Vladimir Stassov. The orchestration by Ravel
dates from early 1923: it was commissioned by Serge
Koussevitsky, who conducted the premiere in Paris in May of
that year. The work has been performed five times at these
concerts between 1979 and 2007. Duration 33:00.
When the Russian architect Victor Hartmann
died at age 39 in 1873, writer Vladimir Stassov and several
other of Hartmann’s friends and associates arranged a memorial
exhibition of some 400 drawings and paintings by the
architect. One of the visitors to the gallery was Mussorgsky,
who had long admired Hartmann’s work. Within a few months of
the exhibition, Mussorgsky had composed a suite of piano
pieces based upon some of his favorites among Hartmann’s
drawings. The form of this programmatic suite was unusual: it
portrays the composer himself walking through the gallery,
standing before several pictures and forming his own musical
impressions of each one.
Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition
remained relatively obscure until 1923, when Ravel completed
an orchestration of the suite for Serge Koussevitsky Ravel’s
scoring was not the first attempt to transform Pictures into an
orchestral piece, nor was it the last—there have been at least
a dozen arrangements of Pictures,
beginning with an orchestration by Mikhail Tushmalov in 1891,
and orchestral versions by Sir Henry Wood, Ravel, Leonidas
Leonardi, Leopold Stokowski, Lucien Caillet, Walter Goehr, and
Sergei Gorchakov. There have also been scorings for other
groupings of instruments, including Elgar Howarth’s brass
ensemble version, a guitar version by Yamashita, Tomita’s
electronic scoring, and even a fancifully-staged version by
the 1970s prog-rock band Emerson, Lake, and Palmer. Ravel’s
masterful orchestration is better known than any other,
including Mussorgsky’s own piano suite!
Here is a movement-by-movement “walking
tour” of Pictures:
Promenade - This
most familiar of Mussorgsky melodies, appearing between
several of the movements, is used to bind the work together.
In Stassov’s descriptive notes for the first published edition
of Pictures , he
writes: “Mussorgsky has represented himself roving right and
left, sometimes hesitantly and sometimes briskly, in order to
get close to pictures that have caught his attention.” The
uneven 5/4-6/4 meter gives a characteristically Russian feel
to this passage.
Gnomus - The first
of Hartmann’s drawings to be interpreted by Mussorgsky is of a
nutcracker carved in the shape of an ugly, grinning gnome.
Stassov’s notes suggest that this contorted figure
“...accompanies his droll movements with savage shrieks.”
Mussorgsky’s music is suitably gruesome, with awkward, limping
lines.
Promenade
Il vecchio castello
(“The old castle”) - This was Hartmann’s watercolor study of a
medieval castle, painted when he was a student in Italy. A
troubadour standing by the gate gives a sense of the castle’s
size. This movement gives the impression of the troubadour’s
lute quietly strumming in support of a melancholy melody
played by the alto saxophone.
Promenade
Tuileries - This
sketch shows children playing in the famous public gardens of
the Tuileries in Paris. There is an argument and a chase after
some high-spirited play, all portrayed in Mussorgsky’s
light-footed music and Ravel’s transparent orchestration.
Bydlo - A sketch
made by Hartmann in the Polish town of Sandomierz shows a
wagon with enormous wheels being pulled by oxen (Bydlo is a Polish
word for “cattle.”). In Ravel’s orchestration, this evocative
melody has been given to the tuba.
Promenade
Ballet of the chicks in
their shells - This was Hartmann’s costume design for
one of the scenes in Trilbi
, a ballet presented in St. Petersburg in 1871. In this scene,
children dance as baby canaries trying to break out of their
shells.
Samuel Goldenberg and
Schmuyle - This movement is based upon two of Hartmann’s
drawings of Sandomierz: one showing a rich and well-dressed
Jew wearing a fur hat, and the other showing an poor Jew in
threadbare clothes. In Mussorgsky’s inventive setting, the two
characters have been joined in a conversation. Ravel scored
the pompous tones of Goldenberg for unison strings and winds,
while the whining Schmuyle is portrayed by muted trumpet. At
the end, Goldenberg’s music become even more imperious, ending
with an abrupt dismissal.
The market-place at
Limoges - There are several surviving Hartmann drawings
made during a visit to the French town of Limoges, but the
specific picture that inspired this movement has apparently
been lost. According to a marginal note in Muussorgsky’s
manuscript, this movement shows the “good gossips of Limoges”
exchanging the most important news of the day: Monsieur de
Puissangeout’s lost cow, Mme. de Remboursac’s new false teeth,
and Monsieur Panta-Pantaleon’s excessively large nose.
Catacombs - This
sketch shows the artist peering into the catacombs of Paris by
the light of a lantern, which reveals several skulls. Ravel’s
orchestration brings out dark sonorities from the brasses and
woodwinds.
Cum mortuis in lingua
mortua (“With the dead, in the language of the dead”) -
This rather spooky version of the Promenade theme is
based not upon a Hartmann picture, but rather on Mussorgsky’s
reaction to Catacombs
. In the margin of his manuscript, the composer wrote: “The
creative spirit of the dead Hartmann leads me to the skulls
and calls to them; they begin to glow with a soft light.”
The hut on fowl’s legs
(Baba Yaga) - Baba Yaga was a witch who terrified
generations of Russian children at bedtime. Her hut, hidden
deep in the forest, was perched on chicken legs so that it
could turn to face anyone who chanced to find it. No
broomstick for this lady: she rode cackling through the woods
in a huge wooden mortar propelled by an equally formidable
pestle (no doubt in search of naughty children to eat).
Ravel’s orchestration is at its most colorful in this section.
This movement leads directly into the finale.
The great gate of Kiev - After Czar
Alexander II narrowly escaped assassination in Kiev in 1866,
the city council of Kiev asked Hartmann to produce a design
for a monument to commemorate God’s intervention on behalf of
the Czar. Hartmann’s design (which was never built) was a
fanciful and immense arch surmounted by the Russian imperial
eagle, and other symbols of the Czar’s authority. This picture
was a great favorite of Mussorgsky’s, and he commented on it
with a massive and powerful hymn of thanksgiving.
________
program
notes ©2018 by J. Michael Allsen