VARIATIONS ON A THEME OF HAYDN, Op.56a (Variations on the St. Anthony Chorale)
Johannes Brahms

This set of variations, perhaps Brahms’s most imaginative orchestral work, was composed in 1873 as homage to the classical tradition as epitomized by Haydn. Despite his humble birth, Brahms was by age 40 a musical force to be reckoned with. He had a significant number of piano and chamber works under his belt, as well as the German Requiem and the First Piano Concerto in d minor. Yet, feeling himself ever in the overwhelming shadow of Beethoven, it took him from 1862 to 1876 to produce his first symphony. The so-called “Haydn Variations” was his first purely orchestral work since the two youthful Serenades and the d minor Piano Concerto (all premiered in 1858-59) This new work demonstrated that he had reached the end of his “apprenticeship” and had completely mastered the orchestral palette.

The origin of the theme is obscure. A friend, organist and musicologist Carl Ferdinand Pohl, brought it to Brahms’s attention. Pohl had discovered it in a manuscript of six Feld-Parthien (partitas) for eight wind instruments, or Harmonie, allegedly by Haydn, but probably by his star pupil Ignaz Pleyel. The Harmonie, or wind band, was a traditional ensemble for dinner entertainment, often outdoors, consisting of pairs of oboes, clarinets, bassoons and horns. In the manuscript the movement is titled “Chorale St. Antonii,” indicating that Pleyel probably had taken it from a much older source. Brahms believed, however, that the theme was genuinely by Haydn, made his own copy – the partitas were only published in 1932 – and transformed an obscure theme into one of the best-known pieces in the classical repertoire. Originally, Brahms wrote the work for two pianos (designated as Op. 56b). He orchestrated it immediately, and published only two months after the original piano version.

The work consists of the theme, eight variations and a Finale. In the introduction of the theme, Brahms follows the original wind instrument scoring of the Feld-Parthie. The following examples illustrate the original instrumentation by Haydn – or whoever – and the second part of the theme as Brahms orchestrated it.   Note that Brahms adds pizzicato cellos and basses to the harmony.

Variation forms date back to the Middle Ages and, until Beethoven, were generally bravura pieces in which, as the variations progressed, a theme collected more and more embellishments – thereby requiring faster and faster finger work. Only Johann Sebastian Bach in the Goldberg Variations provided the exception that proved the rule. One of the legacies of Beethoven was to greatly expand the ways in which a theme could be changed. No longer a matter of decorative accretions bound by a standardized repeat structure, sets of variations could stretch, distort, re-harmonize, bury the theme in an inner voice, or even disguise it. Brahms retains the original phrase length of the theme but disguises the melody, retaining only the harmonic structure. Even in the original Feld-Parthie, Haydn re-used the harmonic chorale's structure and buried the tune in the inner voices for the Finale.

Brahms sometimes uses rhythmically distorted fragments of the theme to develop, as in Variation V. Most often he retains only the harmonic and formal structures. Nevertheless, it is possible to hum the theme with each variation, where it will nearly always fit into the harmony. The exceptions are Variation II, Variation IV and VIII, which are in the minor mode.

As was his practice in other variations, Brahms made the Finale the climax of the work, containing, in the manner of a passacaglia, 24 mini-variations on a five-bar ground bass derived from the beginning of the bass line of the original theme. The variations become increasingly involved, using ever-changing orchestral forces, rhythmic and melodic variety, culminating in grand restatement of the complete theme by the full orchestra.

VIOLIN CONCERTO IN A MINOR, Op.53
Antonín Dvorák (1841-1904)

The son of a Czech innkeeper and butcher from a small town in Bohemia, Antonín Dvorák showed his musical talent at a very early age. However, as a member of a minority in the Austro-Hungarian empire, he was looked upon as a second class citizen. He sensed condescension in the support and encouragement of the Austrian musical establishment and was resentful at being forced by economic necessity to accept government stipends. Beginning with the 1870s, influenced by the emerging Czech demand for self-rule and of Bedrich Smetana's nationalistic music, Dvorák applied a decidedly more nationalistic style to his musical language.

In 1875 Dvorák met and became a disciple of Brahms; the admiration was mutual. Brahms urged Fritz Simrock, the most famous music publisher in Berlin, to publish Dvorák’s Moravian Dances and the first set of the Slavonic Dances. At the same time, Vienna’s famous curmudgeon music critic, Eduard Hanslick, also encouraged Dvorák, giving him prominent billing in his reviews. The same year, Brahms and Hanslick also supported him when he entered – and won – the competition for the Austrian State Prize in music for young, poor and talented artists (Dvorák won the competition twice more.) The committee report stated that “...the applicant, who has never yet been able to acquire a piano of his own, deserves a grant to ease his strained circumstances and free him from anxiety in his creative work.”

By the time Dvorák started the Violin Concerto in the summer of 1879, prizes, honors and commissions were pouring in. The first set of Slavonic Dances, published a year earlier was a smash hit, securing his financial position. The suggestion to write a violin concerto came from Simrock, and Dvorák hoped to enlist the help of the famed violinist Joseph Joachim to evaluate and edit the concerto. Joachim, who had also helped Brahms and Max Bruch with their concertos, suggested after a trial rehearsal that the composer start from scratch. Dvorák rewrote the Concerto and destroyed the original version. He finally completed it in 1882, stating, “I have retained the themes, and composed some new ones too, but the whole concept of the work is different.” But still the two friends did not see eye to eye. Joachim, although the dedicatee, did not premiere the finished work.

There is no specific information regarding Joachim’s objections to Dvorák’s Concerto. On the surface, it shares many elements with the concerti of Brahms, Bruch and Mendelssohn, frequently performed by Joachim. Unlike these works, however, the Concerto strays from the more conventional forms in the first and second movements, in which Dvorák reveals an intensely emotional, almost elegiac side of his musical personality.

The Concerto is in the conventional three movement form, but the first two are played without interruption. A short orchestral fanfare followed by a lyrical melody on the solo violin present the material from which this extensive first movement is built, although a second theme is introduced much later. All in all, the movement combines elaborate virtuosity with moments of intense pathos. A brief passage over pulsing tympani recalls two famous predecessors of the violin concerto repertory, Beethoven and Max Bruch. There is no real recapitulation, only a six bar fragment that leads to the transition to the second movement.

The slow movement is in the customary ABA’ song form of so many slow movements, but Beethoven had opened up vast possibilities for elaborating on the two or three themes that normally make up the form. In this vein, Dvorák opens with a gentle melody on the solo violin, accompanied by the oboe. But the initial folk-like simplicity of the melody is deceiving; starting from the second phrase, he suddenly darkens it. And as he spins out the theme, it becomes increasingly passionate. It is true that Dvorák produces intense emotional affect by the soaring violin line, but the “catch in the throat” comes with the abrupt and surprising harmonic shifts under a simple melodic line. In the middle (or “B”) section, he again ramps up the emotional intensity. Listeners familiar with the later and better known Cello Concerto will perceive the same tragic sensibility the composer used there to pour out his grief upon hearing of the death of his old love. The movement is largely a personal conversation between the violin and the upper winds; in one case, the oboe “suggests” a new harmonic variation on the principal theme. The movement also presents the soloist with an opportunity for some delicate figurative passages, but always subdued, in keeping with the wistful mood.

In the Finale, it’s time to put the handkerchiefs away. Dvorák’s Bohemian roots appear more distinctly, with the soloist introducing a lively dance, a furiant, that recurs as a rondo throughout the movement, each time with a different instrumental mix. The violin also introduces and develops a second theme.

SYMPHONY NO. 3 IN F MAJOR, OP. 90
Johannes Brahms ( 1833-1897)

Unlike Beethoven, Johannes Brahms allowed not a trace of his compositional process to be revealed to the public. Any sketches, drafts or pre-orchestrations were consigned to flame, along with early works the composer considered inferior. We know, therefore, virtually nothing about the genesis of the Symphony No.3, only that it was composed during the summer of 1883 in the German town of Wiesbaden, some six years after the Second Symphony. There has been some discussion of one of the composer’s many infatuations, this time with a talented young contralto, Hermine Spies, with whom the fifty-year-old composer kept up an intense – but almost certainly chaste – relationship for several years. He apparently spent the fruitful summer in Wiesbaden because of her, but the extent of her influence on his creative output of that period, beyond a number of vocal works, is impossible to ascertain.

The Symphony, premiered on November 9, 1883 in Vienna, was a stupendous success, far greater than anything Brahms had ever experienced. Apparently, he was more than a little unnerved by the acclaim, remarking,. “The reputation [it] has acquired makes me want to cancel all my engagements.”

The Third is the shortest of Brahms’s symphonies, containing thematic interrelationships among the movements that to some degree determine its compact structure. It is unusual also in the fact that three of its movements are in sonata form, in the absence of a scherzo/trio and in the general uniformity of tempo of all but the final movement.

One cannot discuss the Symphony without spending some time on the dramatic opening measures whose major-minor ambiguity pervades the entire work. The dramatic opening measures with their major-minor ambiguity pervade the entire work. The opening three-note motive in the horns, F-A-flat-F (an f minor third), is followed by a sharply descending melody line in the violin, first in F major, then immediately revised in f minor, the rest of the theme finally clarifying the major. Brahms biographer Jan Swafford, notes the strong similarity, especially in rhythm, between the theme and the opening theme of Schumann’s Symphony No 3; and, given the close personal relationship between the two composers during Brahms’s youth, Swafford considers the thematic relationship as probably deliberate. The second theme, presented by the clarinets, is a mini-variation form, stating the opening phrase three times in a more elaborate form.

In the second movement Andante, Brahms continues to play with the major-minor ambiguity. The movement, like the first, is in sonata form, but the first theme in C major is followed by a second in A minor, the reverse of the key order that would be expected. And in the recapitulation, Brahms omits repeating the second theme altogether, saving it for the Symphony’s last movement.

The third movement was the “hit” of the entire Symphony and was frequently encored at performances in Brahms’s time, when such concert etiquette as applause between movements and internal encores were acceptable. This melancholy waltz with its triple meter and only slightly contrasting middle section are all that remain of the traditional classical minuet or scherzo and trio.

Certainly the darkest and most tempestuous movement in the Symphony, the finale begins clearly in F minor, accentuating the major/minor ambiguity that Brahms set up from the start. Immediately after the fluid opening theme, Brahms brings back in slightly altered form the second theme from the second movement that he had omitted in the recapitulation, this time also in F minor. Sections of minor storminess are resolved with a C major “heroic” theme first heard in the horns and cellos. But this symphony is not a Beethoven’s Ninth nor even a Brahms’s First. Rather than ending in a resounding climax, the darkness and ambiguity dissolve the final measures when Brahms brings back the opening bars of the Symphony, with their clear-cut transformation into F major, but now serene, pianissimo.

Copyright © 2007 by Elizabeth and Joseph Kahn