| THE ROMANTIC SOUL | ||||||||||
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Overture to Tannhäuser In the history of musical style, instrumental music changes; opera is reformed. No musical genre has elicited such passion, polemics and partisanship as opera. In eighteenth-century Paris, the adherents of French opera fought duels with the devotees of the Italian style. The birth of opera itself was midwived by a storm of polemical treatises. The reason behind such intensity goes back to the first operas at the dawn of the seventeenth century. The "inventors" of the genre believed that sung drama, the perfect combination of music and poetry - in imitation of the presumed style of ancient Greek tragedy - would transport the listener to the highest level of aesthetic transcendence. And for this reason, the earliest opera composers chose the myth of Orpheus, whose singing was able to move the gods of the underworld to return to him his dead wife Eurydice. Richard Wagner bought into operatic ideology with a vengeance. He conceived of his music drama as a Gesamtkunswerk (all-inclusive artwork) that would combine all the arts, in effect rendering him a new Orpheus. Wagner shattered all the rules and conventions of opera, virtually abandoning formal recitatives and arias and replacing them with through-composed vocal lines over sumptuous orchestration containing thematic "commentary" on the action. His revolutionary musical style Balkanized critics and public into pro- and anti-Wagner camps, with the music of Brahms and Verdi as the principal foils. By the early 1840s, with the success of the early and more conventional Rienzi and The Flying Dutchman, Wagner had become a force in German music. His next – and more doctrinaire – opera, Tannhäuser, based on medieval legends about an actual Minnesinger, or poet-musician, who died c. 1265. The opera premiered in Dresden in 1845 and quickly became enormously popular throughout Germany. Its protagonist, who has been living it up for a year with Venus and is, incidentally, also a singer-composer, wins a contest with a song extolling profane love. Condemned to clean up his act before he can claim the hand of his pure betrothed, Elisabeth, he makes a pilgrimage to Rome where the pope refuses to grant him absolution. Tannhäuser returns to Germany carrying his withered staff, symbol of his continued state of sin, in time to witness Elisabeth's funeral. He collapses and dies in remorse as his staff blooms, symbolizing his redemption through love. In 1861 Wagner had planned a production for the Opera in Paris but refused to add the "obligatory" ballet in the second act. The production was a failure, disrupted by catcalls from the Jockey Club, never to return to the Paris stage for another 34 years. Nevertheless, he retained the revisions for Paris into what is now the standard version. In 1859 it became the first Wagner opera to be performed in America. The Overture, from the original 1845 version, adheres to a formula, adopted particularly in Germany, of "previewing" the story through principal themes of the upcoming drama. It begins with the famous Pilgrim's chorus,  passing to the swirling music of the hedonistic pleasures of Venusberg, Tannhäuser's prize-winning song to Venus, his expulsion from Wartburg Castle and his return, once again to the music of the Pilgrim's chorus. Wagner himself viewed his opera as representing the battle between profane and sacred love and the Overture emphasizes this dichotomy rather than introducing themes associated with the characters. There's nothing, for example of poor Elisabeth – although Wagner includes a sensuous clarinet riff for Venus herself. The composer's complex system of Leitmotifs, utilized to its limits in The Ring of the Nibelungen, was several years in the future. | ||||||||||
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Piano Concerto No. 2 IN f minor, Op. 21 The son of a French father and Polish mother, Frédéric Chopin was born and grew up in Poland; but after the collapse of the Polish revolution against Russia in 1831, he went into exile to France. He settled in Paris, which was then the center of Polish émigrés. Chopin's chosen medium was the piano as a solo instrument. Although in his late teens he tried to combine the piano with the orchestra, creating the two piano concertos, the Variations Op. 2, Fantasia Op. 13, Concert Rondo Op. 14 and the Grand Polonaise Op. 22, he was uncomfortable with the medium and after age 20 never again wrote for a large ensemble. In all these works, the orchestral scoring is so light that during the nineteenth century it was fashionable to re-orchestrate and "improve" it. Be that as it may, Chopin probably intended the orchestra to serve as a delicate background for the soloist, especially since he himself was known to have had a rather light touch on the piano; heavy orchestration would have drowned him out. The f minor Concerto, although listed as No. 2, was the first composed (1829-30) but was the second published. It was premiered in March 1830 in Warsaw with the composer at the piano. As was so often the case with composers in the Romantic Era, the inspiration for the Concerto came to Chopin as the result of unrequited love. The object of his ardor was a voice student at the Warsaw Conservatory. But by the time the Concerto was published six years later, he had long forgotten her and dedicated it instead to his pupil, Countess Delphine Potocka, a gifted singer and close friend. Although Chopin has the reputation for musically "wearing his heart on his sleeve," he was also gifted and innovative in his use of harmony and phrase structure. The Concerto capitalizes on all the pianistic qualities that were to catapult him to fame in Paris. It opens in a gruff mood, followed by a more lyrical second theme introoduced by the solo oboe. When the piano enters in a standard double exposition, it inserts its own second theme before taking up the oboe theme. The development section of the first movement is a major departure from true development as understood by Beethoven. Chopin's music never argues; rather, his development could be described as a commentary on the themes and on what had gone on before, his customary tendency is to embellish and decorate the pianistic line. This long section is almost serpentine in the way it slides in and out of new keys and deftly manipulates phrasing and the themes themselves. In this regard, the Concerto foreshadows the composer's future, even more adventurous writing. The slow movement is intense and still lyrical, with the ornamentation of the main theme gradually becoming an integral part of it. With its seemingly endless, fluid lines, elaborate ornamentation and recitative-type passages, this movement has led scholars to compare Chopin with the contemporaneous Italian bel canto style of opera composer Vincenzo Bellini, whom Chopin greatly admired. Chopin provides a brief orchestral introduction where embellishment now becomes an integral part of the first theme with the entrance of the piano. After all the trills and decorations, however, Chopin gets down to the real meat of the movement in what has become one of the most quoted of his melodies. The finale is a rondo, although unusual in that it is a waltz. Not surprisingly, it provides the pianist with glittering runs and pyrotechnics to show off against a largely superfluous orchestra. The rondo is never played quite the same way twice. The third episode is in mazurka rhythm. The mazurka became one of Chopin's signature rhythms, an expression of his nationalistic feeling. It originated as a Polish folk dance in triple meter from the Mazovia district near Warsaw. But mazurka became an umbrella name for a number of related dances: the fiery mazurek, the lively oberek or the slower and more sentimental kujawiak. All three dances originated from the older polska, a dance in which a strong accent falls on the second or third beat of the measure, accompanied by a tap of the heel. Chopin composed nearly 60 mazurkas for piano solo, as well as several that have been lost. A horn fanfare heralds a spectacular coda. Oddly, there is not a single cadenza in this piece. Even the youthful Chopin had some sense of decency. The Concerto was received enthusiastically at the premiere, but Chopin had his doubts as to whether the audience actually understood it: "The first allegro...received, indeed, the reward of a 'Bravo,' but I believe this was given because the public wished to show that it understands and knows how to appreciate serious music. There are people enough in all countries who like to assume the air of connoisseurs!" | ||||||||||
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Symphony No. 5 in e minor, Op. 64 Throughout his creative career, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's inspiration went through extreme cycles, tied to his frequent bouts of deep depression and self-doubt. In mid-May 1888 he wrote to his brother Modest that he was convinced that he had written himself out and that he now felt neither the impulse nor the inclination to compose. By the end of the month, however, he set about "...getting a symphony out of my dulled brain, with difficulty." Inspiration must have started to flow, for by the end of August, the massive Fifth Symphony was finished. As was the case with most of Tchaikovsky's compositions, the premiere of the Symphony – in St. Petersburg, with the composer conducting – earned mixed reactions. The audience liked it, critics panned it and fellow-composers were envious. Modest believed that the problem with the critics lay with his brother's lack of confidence as a conductor. Tchaikovsky himself, however, was never at ease with the Symphony, and wrote to his benefactress, Nadeja von Meck: "Having played my symphony twice in St. Petersburg and once in Prague, I have come to the conclusion that it is a failure. There is something repellent in it, some exaggerated color, some insincerity of construction, which the public instinctively recognizes. It was clear to me that the applause and ovations were not for this but for other works of mine, and that the Symphony itself will never please the public." For the rest of his life he felt ambivalent about its merits, although after a concert in Germany, where the musicians were enthusiastic, he felt more positive. The mood of the entire Symphony is set by the introduction, a somber motto in the clarinets that reappears throughout the work and hints at some hidden extra-musical agenda, a quote from a trio in Mihail Glinka's opera, A Life for the Tsar, on the words "Turn not into sorrow," Perhaps the motto reflects the melancholy and self-doubt Tchaikovsky experienced when he started composing the Symphony; certainly its mood is maintained throughout most of the work, where it casts a pall over whatever it touches. Some biographers have identified it with the Fate motive that appears throughout the Fourth Symphony, which is unrelentingly pessimistic. In the Fifth, the reincarnation of the motto from e minor to E major at the end of the Finale suggests the composer's reversal to a more positive frame of mind. The first theme is a resolute march, almost a grim procession through adversity. A second beautifully orchestrated theme reveals how many ways there are to represent a sigh in music. The second movement, marked Andante cantabile, contains one of the repertory's great horn solos, followed by a more animated theme for solo oboe. The middle section of this ABA form features the clarinet in yet another poignant theme, broken up by the tragic motto before a return to an embellished version of the opening themes. The third movement, a waltz based on a street melody the composer had heard in Florence ten years before, also has an undertone of sadness, and towards the end the somber motto is again heard, & the mood continuing into the Finale. The last movement presents the motto as the focal point of a final struggle between darkness and light, symbolized by the vacillation between its original e minor and E major. The stately introduction mirrors the opening of the piece, although in an ambiguous mood and mode. With the Allegro, the key returns decidedly to the minor, but the tempo picks up into a spirited trepak, a Russian folkdance. Finally, following a grand pause, the key switches definitively to E Major – with great pomp and fanfare – for a majestic coda based on the motto and a final trumpet blast of a version in E major of the first movement march. | ||||||||||
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| Copyright © Elizabeth and Joseph Kahn 2008 | ||||||||||
