In the spring of 1933, Samuel Barber (1910-1981) completed his formal
studies at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. It was a relief
to him to leave there at last--he had studied at Curtis nine years. Luckily,
at about this time, his Overture to The School for Scandal won the Joseph
H. Bearns prize, $1500 which enabled him to live in Europe for a year.
It proved to be the first of a series of awards that allowed him to remain
in Europe for the next three years traveling and composing. In Italy in
1936, he started a string quartet, and in September of that year he wrote
to a friend, “I have just finished the slow movement of my quartet today--it
is a knockout!” Indeed it was. In its arrangement for string orchestra,
this movement would come to be performed the most often among Barber’s
works and would be considered one of the sublime masterpieces of twentieth-century
American music.
Debussy: Danses Sacrée et Profane for Harp and String Orchestra (1904)
Claude
Debussy (1862-1918), one of the great originals in the history of music,
broke all the rules of harmony and counterpoint in order to develop a style
at once beautiful, new and utterly French. The Danses, written in 1904,
were the first pieces he completed after the premiere of his groundbreaking
opera, Pelléas et Mélisande, in 1902. He wrote them in response to a commission
from the Pleyel company, which was attempting to market the new Chromatic
Harp. Since about 1810, the Pedal Harp had been the standard concert harp,
as it is today. Its strings are tuned to the seven-note diatonic scale,
and its pedals alter this tuning in order to obtain the other five pitches
of the chromatic scale. In contrast, the Chromatic Harp had no pedals and
was tuned solely to the chromatic scale. It embodied an experiment which
involved a novel method of construction, a completely different playing
technique and a very different sound. The experiment failed, however, as
the chromatic harp was manufactured for a mere 30 years or so. As a matter
of fact, Debussy detested it. Still, he wrote two major works for the instrument,
the Danses Sacrée et Profane for Harp and String Orchestra and the Sonata
for Flute, Viola and Harp, both of which are played on pedal harps today.
The central idea of the Danses is the opposition of the Sacred and the
Profane, considered from a purely aesthetic, “Debussyan” point of view.
The moderately slow Danse Sacrée summons a sacred atmosphere through the
use of Dorian and Lydian modal scales, as well as by the use of parallel
fifths. The latter is reminiscent of organum, a musical technique developed
in the tenth century for elaborating Gregorian Chant. The movement is laid
out in three-part form, in which the prayerful opening section is repeated
after a more urgent middle section. Though it sounds similar harmonically,
the Danse Profane suggests the profane through a contrast in rhythm, gamboling
along in waltz meter. It is arranged in a modified Rondo form with the
main theme recurring frequently after short intervening excursions.
Stravinsky: Concerto in D for String Orchestra (1946)
Igor Stravinsky
(1882-1971) is another of the great originals in the history of music,
who developed an entirely new musical language. His, however, was a truly
modern, twentieth-century language. Its harmony contains a high level of
dissonance. Its phrase structure, the antithesis of nineteenth century
German Romanticism and its flowing periods, is composed of short varied
repetitions of idea-fragments. This modern style makes use of some of the
harmonic practices of Stravinsky’s teacher Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and
was inspired by the aesthetic creed of the “World of Art” movement in Russia,
led by the impresario Sergei Diaghilev. The most famous of Stravinsky’s
early “Russian” pieces which incorporates these influences is his Rite
of Spring (1913), a piece which smashed to smithereens traditional notions
of what had hitherto constituted “good music”. By 1946, a great deal had
changed since he composed the Rite of Spring, both inside and outside of
Igor Stravinsky. In 1940, he had come to the United States as a refugee
from the war in Europe and declared his intention of becoming an American
citizen. He had begun to write music dubbed “Neoclassical”, still recognizable
as Stravinskyan in harmony and rhythm, but modeled on aspects of Mozart
and Haydn. He had already written, among many other things, the Symphony
in C and the Symphony in Three Movements. Now that he had accepted the
commission for a work for strings from Paul Sacher of the Basel Chamber
Orchestra, he was going to compose another work in a classical form, with
a classical sense of balance and restraint. The title of this work, Concerto
in D, conceals an important fact about it. “In D” usually means “in D major”.
Here, it means only “in D”; that is to say, D is the tonic note, but it
may be combined with F-sharp or F-natural or both, making D major, D minor,
or--both at once. D can also be D-flat, the key of the Second Theme of
the First Movement. D can even be a combination of C-sharp and D, the very
dissonant interval of a minor ninth which begins the final movement. All
of these various interpretations of “D”, this play with intervals, is not
only arch-Stravinsky, but also represents a kind of loving parody of Stravinsky’s
classical models: all is balanced, orderly, calm, restrained and graceful,
but the language is modern. The first movement, marked Vivace, begins with
a brief introduction in which the F-natural and F-sharp mentioned above
are combined to form a dissonance. Then, in the main theme, they follow
one another in a sort of teasing motive above a motoric accompaniment.
The fairly elaborate working-out of this opening material becomes more
and more fragmented at the end of the first section and dissolves finally
into silence, out of which arises the D-flat Second Theme, a kind of blandishing
hymn with little rhythmic feints and harmonic sweetnesses in chords. This
section follows an A-B-A form within the A-B-A of the movement as a whole.
After the repeat of the D-flat theme, some athletic, strongly marked music
leads us back to a repeat of the motoric first theme. The whole first section
is then recalled, if not actually repeated, with the D-flat theme now sounding
in abbreviated form in D-major (again the play on different forms of D).
A brief coda recalls the introduction and ends on a seventh chord in the
basses and cellos. After the second movement, Arioso, a piece of gentle
lyricism with a touch of irony, the third movement Allegro enters without
a break. The form is laid out in an A-B-A-C-A pattern, whose A-idea is
a rhythmically driven game of half-step clashes and fragmented chromatic
scales. (Jerome Robbins, who choreographed this music in 1951, found it
evocative of the life of bees.) After the two-part melodic B-section, the
main idea is recalled, followed by a duet for violins (the C-section).
The final statement of the bee-music concludes in rousing chords.
Elgar: Serenade in e for Strings (1892) Edward Elgar (1857-1934)
is
considered to be the greatest English composer since Henry Purcell (1659-95).
His music, particularly in his larger orchestral and choral works, is known
for a uniquely Victorian English character that one cannot fail to recognize,
even if unacquainted with what Englishness in music might be. His best
known orchestral works are the Enigma Variations, two symphonies, the overture
Cockaigne and the “symphonic study” Falstaff. Elgar grew up in Worcester,
where his father, William, ran a music shop and where Edward was something
of a wunderkind violinist and composer. His youthful accomplishments and
undeniable talent helped form in him the high ambition to be a composer,
an ambition frustrated in young adulthood by his financial circumstances.
He was forced to fall back repeatedly on private teaching and playing in
local orchestras in Worcester. These frustrations preyed upon his somewhat
depressive turn of mind, and Elgar sometimes despaired of bringing to fruition
the talent he knew was in him. Then, in 1892, two things happened to cheer
him up and advance his career. First, he was commissioned by the Three
Choirs Festival at Worcester to write an overture, a commission he fulfilled
by composing Froissart, named for the great 14th century French chronicler.
Froissart was well received by critics and audience alike and, what cheered
Elgar even more, it was published by the English firm Novello. Later that
year, he was roused from the doldrums again by an invitation to go to Bayreuth,
Germany, to attend the great festival of Wagnerian opera. But it was not
the music of Wagner which influenced the composition he began at this time,
but rather some Sketches for string orchestra that Elgar himself had written
several years previously. He succeeded at reworking them into some of the
most beautiful and finely crafted music he had written up to that time.
The first movement of the Serenade for String Orchestra contains two signal
ideas. The first is the lilting staccato figure of repeated E’s in the
violas at the beginning of the piece. The second idea is the melody of
the middle portion of this three-part movement, which sweeps upward with
the leap of a seventh and wends its way down again, lingering here and
there on nodes of the E-major scale. Largetto, the second movement, opens
with a kind of halting lyricism that yields to a flowing song. Finally,
the third movement, while recalling the rhythm of the first, strikes a
note of tenderness and delicacy, and in the coda, finds repose in returning
to music heard when the piece began.
Mozart: Eine Kleine Nachtmusik (1787)
Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, one
of Mozart’s most popular works, is probably the most famous serenade ever
written. This genre was extremely popular throughout the eighteenth century
and huge numbers of them were produced. The serenade was originally a song
accompanied by guitar, offered by a lover to his beloved, typically under
her window. In Salzburg, where Mozart was born and spent much of his life,
the serenade took on a special form. It was used as an instrumental tribute
to a person of importance on a signal day, such as graduation, homecoming,
leave-taking or wedding. It opened with a march, during which the instrumentalists
would process to the home of the honoree at about 9 in the evening. The
ensemble processed in reverse direction during another march at the end
of the piece. In between were played a series of dances alternating with
slower lyrical movements. The latter were typically accompanied by strings
played pizzicato--that is, with the strings being plucked--simulating the
guitar, the original serenade instrument. The forms of the various movements
were relatively loosely constructed and their emotional content was lighthearted
and suggestive of idyllic pastoral scenes and moods. Most serenades were
orchestral compositions written for a mixture of winds and strings. Ironically,
Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, which literally means “A Little Serenade”, has
no strumming pizzicato and no marches. It might better be called “A Little
Symphony for Strings”. Indeed, it has as much in common with serenades
of the nineteenth century as it does with those of its own time. The serenades
of Dvorak, Tchaikovsky, Suk and Elgar, all of which were written after
1850, while they share the idyllic pastoral associations of their eighteenth
century ancestors, are more passionate than celebratory and are scored
for strings or winds alone. Although our appreciation is aided by an understanding
of the historical context in which a piece is written, it must be said
that the enduring fame and popularity of Eine Kleine Nachtmusik clearly
transcends any question of genre or influence. It remains a gem of Classical
grace and balance, an fine example of the art which Mozart brought to every
form he touched.
