The Classical (and Jazzy) Clarinet

Concert Notes

Suite No. 1 in C Major, BWV 106
- Johann Sebastian Bach
Born March 21, 1685 in Eisenach, Germany
Died July 28, 1750 in Leipzig, Germany

Although the Suite probably dates from between 1725 and 1740, the premiere date is unknown. The work is scored for two oboes, bassoon, strings, and continuo.

J.S. Bach was, above all, a working musician – an organist and teacher attempting to earn enough compensation through his craft to feed his family. The vast number of his compositions came from an immediate need for music in his workplace. Bach’s quest for sustenance led him to five cities and a variety of duties. His first position was in the town of Arnstadt in 1703, where he served as organist at the Neue Kirche. In 1707, Bach moved to Mühlhausen, accepting a position as organist in the church of St. Blasius, a job that held the same pay, but much more prestige. Before the year ended, he had married his cousin, Maria Barbara.

The following year, the couple moved to the city of Weimar, where Bach accepted his first court position, as organist to Duke Wilhelm Ernst – a job he would retain for nine years. At Weimar, he was promoted to the position of Kapellmeister in 1714. Of Bach and his wife’s six children born in Weimar, four of them survived infancy – two of which, Wilhelm Friedemann and Carl Philipp Emanuel, became composers.

In 1717, he accepted the position of court music director in Cöthen. It was here that Maria Barbara died unexpectedly in July of 1720, while Bach was out of town on business. He married again sometime before the summer of 1722, this time to Anna Magdalena Wilke , the daughter of the court trumpeter of the town of Zeiss. She was a gifted singer whose voice Bach must have known.

In 1723, the Bach family moved to Leipzig where Sebastian took on the grueling duties of Kantor at the Thomasschule – a position bestowed upon him by the city, for which he also directed civic musical activities. He was in charge of all music at four Leipzig churches – Thomaskirche, Nikolaikirche, Petrikirche, and Mattäeikirche – and answered to city council, which had the authority to demand music for any occasion they saw fit. Bach was also director of the choirs at all four churches – three of which sang polyphonic music. Conveniently, the Thomasschule provided choirboys, so recruitment was never a problem. In 1729, Bach assumed the duties of directing the collegium musicum, a group of university students and professional musicians who gave public concerts on a weekly basis, some of them at the local coffee house. He held this position periodically until 1741. Bach’s last years in Leipzig were marked by worsening eyesight, probably due to diabetes. He died in late July of 1750 in total blindness after failed surgery that no doubt expedited his decline. The same surgeon would later have the same effect of Handel. Besides his widow, Bach left an estate of much less value than would befit a person of his musical and cultural importance.

Musically, Bach’s choice of compositional genres followed the needs of his employers. In Arnstadt, Mühlhausen, and his earliest years at Weimar, he composed a large number of works for organ. Later in his Weimar tenure and in Cöthen, instrumental works prevailed, often showing the influence of various Italian composers in which Bach had taken interest – among them Vivaldi, Corelli, and Albinoni. In Leipzig, Bach’s responsibilities with the choir led to the cantata cycles and his large sacred choral works. Increasingly interested in large musical forms, he also composed some of his more important instrumental music in Leipzig – including the Musical Offering and his unfinished Art of the Fugue.

With a history reaching back to the French ballet suites of the late seventeenth century, Bach’s Orchestral Suites are the High Baroque continuation of a fine pedigree. Bach’s contribution to the genre is a series of four suites, dating from about 1725 to 1740 but not composed in numerical order. Recent scholarship shows that a large number of Bach’s instrumental music originally thought to be from the Cöthen years probably really dates from Leipzig.

Bach’s First Suite, like each of the Orchestral Suites, opens with a stately Overture that boasts sharply dotted rhythms. The second part of this movement is a delightful fugal diversion that returns to the opening material at the end .

Each Orchestral Suite concludes with a set of dance movements. The First Suite proceeds with a French Courante, a lively dance that also uses dotted rhythms . The two Gavottes that follow are heavy-footed derivatives of French Renaissance peasant dances . Lively and energetic, the Forlane is a festival dance from Venice . The courtly French Menuet is a graceful and stately dance that was especially popular at Versailles . Bach provides a second Menuet which is sandwiched between statements of the first. A pair of energetic Bourées follows . Two majestic Passepieds round off the First Suite with an air of grandeur befitting Bach .

Clarinet Concerto
— Aaron Copland
Born November 14, 1900 in Brooklyn, New York
Died December 2, 1990 in North Tarrytown, New York

This work was premiered on November 6, 1950, on a radio broadcast of the NBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Fritz Reiner with Benny Goodman as soloist. It is scored for solo clarinet, harp, piano, and strings.

In 1947 the jazz clarinetist Benny Goodman contacted Aaron Copland about composing a new work for clarinet and orchestra. Described as the “King of Swing,” Goodman and his band took the country by storm in the 1930s and 1940s, presenting their famous Carnegie Hall concert on October 6, 1939 – shaking the foundations, possibly literally, of that august bastion of the cultural elite. Few listeners knew that just two years earlier, Goodman had commissioned a work from Béla Bartók (Contrasts for clarinet, violin, and piano). He was also responsible for Hindemith’s Concerto, also commissioned in 1947. Copland was aware of Goodman’s wide range of interests and abilities and wanted to reflect them in his work.

Goodman recalled:

“I made no demands on what Copland should write. He had completely free rein, except that I should have a two-year exclusivity on playing the work. I paid two thousand dollars and that's real money. At the time there were not too many American composers to pick from – people of such terrific status – as Hindemith and Bartók. I recall that Aaron came to listen when I was recording with Bartók. Copland had a great reputation also. I didn’t choose him because some of his works are jazz-inspired. In my mind, the Clarinet Concerto was related to the ballet because of the ¾ time in the first movement. We never had much trouble except for a little fracas about the spot before the cadenza where he had written a repetition of some phrase. I was a little sticky about leaving it out- it was where the viola was the echo to give the clarinet a cue. But I think Aaron finally did leave it out... Aaron and I played the concerto quite a few times with him
conducting, and we made two recordings."

Perhaps the best description of the work is from the composer in the second volume of his autobiography, Copland: Since 1943:

“The first movement of the Clarinet Concerto is a languid song form composed in ¾ time, rather unusual for me, but the theme seemed to call for it . The second movement, a free rondo form, is a contrast in style – stark, severe, and jazzy . The movements are connected by a cadenza , which gives the soloist considerable opportunity to demonstrate his prowess, while at the same time introduces fragments of the melodic material to be heard in the second movement. The cadenza is written fairly close to the way I wanted it, but it is free within reason – after all, it and the movement that follows are in the jazz idiom. It is not ad lib as in cadenzas of many traditional concertos; I always felt that there was enough room for interpretation even when everything is written out. Some of the second movement material represents an unconscious fusion of elements obviously related to North and South American popular music: Charleston rhythms, boogie woogie, and Brazilian folk tunes. The instrumentation being clarinet with strings, harp, and piano, I did not have a large battery of percussion to achieve jazzy effects, so I used slapping basses and whacking harp sounds to simulate them . The Clarinet Concerto ends with a fairly elaborate coda in C major that finishes off with a clarinet glissando - or "smear" in jazz lingo.”

Symphony No. 40 in G Minor, K. 550
– Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Born January 27, 1756 in Salzburg, Austria
Died December 5, 1791 in Vienna, Austria

Although completed on July 25, 1788, this work was possibly preformed on April 16 1791, in Vienna, with Antonio Salieri conducting an orchestra of 180 members, but the story is probably apocryphal. It is scored for flute, pairs of clarinets, bassoons, and horns, with the usual complement of strings.

One of the most intriguing aspects of writing about music is the constantly increasing awareness the writer develops of the place of music in society. As listeners, we are acutely aware of what music means to us. However, we must also try to develop a sense of how musical pieces and composers were viewed in their own moment in time. Nowhere is this more crucial than in the period between the Baroque and Romantic periods in music. Commonly called the Classical period, this brief moment in musical history has come under increasing scrutiny in recent years. Covering a span of no more than forty years, Classical musical style was most prevalent in Vienna. No other period in music is so limited in time and location. This has caused scholars to ask an important question. Was there really a Classical period in music, or was it merely a lengthy transition from Baroque polyphony to Romantic emotion?

The answer depends on where you look and whom you ask. Some feel that the period is self-contained pocket of musical influence that stands alone as a viable and unique musical entity. Others point to Haydn’s early experiments with sturm und drang (storm and stress) in the 1770s to move the date of Romanticism's onset earlier than is customary. They often mention that the harpsichord, probably the most Baroque of all instruments, was still an active part of opera orchestras until the 1790s. By that time, Beethoven had begun his Viennese career, which would produce a number of undeniably Romantic pieces within the decade. Regardless of the side on which one may find adherence, the works produced by Haydn, Mozart, and the numerous lesser-known composers in the Viennese court and theatres, speak for themselves as brilliant pieces of crystalline beauty.

To have been such a gifted composer, recognized across Europe during his younger years as a musician par excellence, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart entered his thirties as a fading star. The young prodigy was now a full-fledged adult. He was no longer a precocious youth with abilities beyond his years. Mozart was expected to hold his own against more famous composers, such as Porpora, Dittersdorf, Vanhal and Salieri. In order to counter the fickle public's harsh judgment, Mozart simply tried harder, producing some of his most enduring works in his early thirties. The last four piano concertos, the Kegelstatt Trio, Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, the opera Don Giovanni, and the final four symphonies all date from the years 1786-1788, when Mozart was between thirty and thirty-two years old.

Along with public rejection came personal problems. Financially, Mozart was in the direst of straits – which would continue to worsen until his death in 1791. Probably the lowest moment during this time was the sudden death of his six-month-old daughter, Theresia, on June 29, 1788. It was during the very time of Theresia Mozart's death that her father was feverishly composing his last three symphonies. Written in a span of ten weeks in May, June and July, they seem almost a summary of different aspects of Mozart’s personality. The 39th is joyful, almost flippant, with a finale that is especially robust. His final symphony, commonly called the Jupiter is more pedantic, with a meticulous fugal finale.

The middle of the three, the 40th, is introspective and subtly tinged with darker hues. One of only two symphonies in minor keys (the other is the 25th, also in G minor), Mozart explores the poignant territory he normally reserved for his operas – his greatest love and probably his compositional forte. Foregoing the customary slow introduction, Mozart begins the opening movement with a soft murmur in the violas. Without ceremony, the sighing violin melody seems to materialize from nowhere . From the outset, this is unmistakably headier than an ordinary symphony of the Classical period. There are bursts of volume, chromatic harmonies, and an approach to melodic writing that centers on short motifs – not long arching melodies. Such a description may bring to mind the early works of Ludwig van Beethoven, from which this music is not far removed.

The second movement is a graceful Andante, also using a sigh motif to great effect . Here is Mozart at his most adventurous (a trait he explores to an even fuller extent in the final movement). Chromatic lines pull against each other, taking listeners of the late eighteenth century along hitherto uncharted paths .

Stern and aggressive, the third-movement Minuet is far removed from the courtly dance for which it is named . Accents are harsh, almost severe, but a somewhat gentler trio provides a worthy foil .

If the Andante was adventurous, the finale is brilliantly progressive. Built upon a rising arpeggiation, a gesture known in the period as the Mannheim Rocket , this churning powerhouse seems to build momentum until the final measures. The almost feral development section features modulations through many keys, making the grim G minor seems like a welcome refuge after daunting trials of the preceding measures. Many scholars refer to this symphony as a precursor to Romanticism, but our ears tell us, at least for Mozart during a brief moment in 1788, that Romanticism was in full force.