ORPHEUS @ MSM PROGRAM NOTES
Overture to A Midsummer Night’s Dream, op. 21
Felix Mendelssohn
In August 1826, when Felix Mendelssohn was only 17 years old, he completed his Midsummer Night’s Dream concert overture, inspired by a recent reissue of a German translation of the Shakespeare play. The piece did not immediately receive a public premiere; the Mendelssohn family arranged a private performance in their home. The public first heard the piece as a piano duet, arranged by Felix and his sister Fanny. In February 1827, Mendelssohn traveled to Stettin, Pomerania (modern-day Poland), where Carl Loewe conducted the public premiere of the overture.
The piece is constructed in a traditional manner—a sonata form can be easily imposed (an exposition at bar 1, a development beginning in bar 250, and a recapitulation at bar 394)—but more interesting to the composition of the piece are three appearances of four opening chords at bars 1, 394, and 682. These chords provide a sort of pivot point around which Mendelssohn could weave fantasia-like flights of fancy. Mendelssohn is said to have written these evocative chords after hearing an evening breeze rustling the leaves in his family’s garden.
Though it is constructed in a clear classical sonata form, the overture is also programmatic, suggesting images from the fairyland of Shakespeare’s play. Mendelssohn’s music mirrors many motives from the play: fairies singing and dancing; lovers chasing each other; rustic clowns frolicking in the woods; Titania, the fairy queen, gliding gracefully through the crowds; and Puck playing impish tricks on everybody. The overture invites the listener into a fantastic dream world filled with humor, refinement, and elegance.
Mendelssohn experimented a great deal with orchestral color, which is best illustrated by the contrast between the four ethereal chords in the woodwinds and brass, which give way to a quicksilver theme in the violins. It is interesting to note that the score calls for an Ophicleïde, a keyed brass instrument with a warm, dark sound, created around the turn of the 19th century. As the instrument has died out, the part is now played on the modern tuba.
Mendelssohn incorporated his concert overture into a suite of Incidental Music for a Midsummer Night’s Dream (Opus 61), which he wrote in 1842 on commission for Friedrich Wilhelm IV, the Crown prince of Prussia. The incidental music follows the overture so directly that a listener might never know that 16 years had passed between compositions.
–Jason Smoller
Concerto in D Minor for Flute and String Orchestra, H. 425 (W. 22)
C. P. E. Bach
Carl Philip Emmanuel Bach was born in 1714 in Weimar Germany to Johann Sebastian Bach and his first wife Maria Barbara Bach. Though his parents provided him music lessons at an early age, he chose to study law at both the University of Leipzig and Frankfurt Oder. Soon after graduation, however, he took a musical post at the court of Frederick II of Prussia (Frederick the Great).
C. P. E. Bach’s primary responsibility was to accompany Frederick’s nightly performances on the flute. While Bach remained in Frederick’s service for nearly 30 years, he was severely underpaid, a financial situation that must have been a source of tension between him, Frederick and the other court musicians. Frederick clearly favored the famous flutist Johann Joachim Quantz over Bach, both as a musician and as a composer. Quantz’s salary reached as high as 2000 thalers a year, while Bach’s was only 300 thalers. A typical nightly performance would include half a dozen compositions by Quantz, who wrote over 300 concerti for the flute while in the service of the king. Bach, by contrast, only wrote five. Frederick was a decent flutist but by no means a virtuoso. It is likely that C. P. E. Bach’s flute compositions were challenging for the king to play, thus only reinforcing the favoritism Frederick showed Quantz.
C. P. E. Bach’s compositions are characterized by quick mood changes and colorful harmonies. He provides very detailed performance explanations for his Flute Concerto in D Minor. Not only does Bach suggest direction for the fast and intricate articulation of the work, he also states his preference on individual embellishment and tempo fluctuation. Bach argued for tastefully expanding and contracting the tempo—or “violations of the beat”—as it was often musical and “exceptionally beautiful.”
–Elizabeth Schurgin
Symphonies of Wind Instruments
Igor Stravinsky (1882–1971)
“This music is not meant to ‘please’ an audience,” Stravinsky wrote of his Symphonies of Wind Instruments, yet it has remained an important part of the wind repertory for nearly ninety years. The piece is hardly recognizable as a traditional symphony: it is not a multi-movement work that features woodwind and brass solos emerging from a lush string texture. Instead, it derives its title from the Greek word symphonia, or “sounding together in harmony.” Stravinsky elaborated on the title, calling the work “an austere ritual, which is unfolded in terms of short litanies between different groups of homogenous instruments.”
Although the piece is scored for a full complement of woodwinds and brass (3 flutes, 2 oboes, English horn, 3 clarinets, 3 bassoons, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, and tuba), Symphonies of Wind Instruments invites the listener into a harsh and angular soundscape. Rich, stabilizing violin and cello lines are nowhere to be found, and the resulting atmosphere is at times stark and unsympathetic.
The piece is written in four episodes, which are related in tempo and by recurring fragments of thematic material. The first is composed of quirky Russian folk melodies, played by the high woodwinds. The flutes, bassoons, and low clarinets characterize the second section’s flowing pastoral theme. The third episode is marked by sharp fortissimo chords in all of the winds and brass; its fierce dance rhythms and its heavy texture and harmonic language are reminiscent of The Rite of Spring, which was written only seven years earlier. The piece concludes with a poignant and cathartic brass chorale.
Stravinsky published this chorale in 1920, prior to the premiere of the entire work. It appeared in a special issue of La revue musicale dedicated to the memory of Claude Debussy, who died in 1918. Although it was originally published as a piano score, the reverent Chorale is orchestrated for brass alone, with woodwinds joining in to end the piece with a C major chord. The juxtaposition of this chord with the simultaneous G major chord creates an eerie and open final tonality.
This work was conceived not as an audience-pleaser, but rather as an introspective homage “to the memory of Claude Achille Debussy,” whom Stravinsky greatly admired. In 1936, Stravinsky wrote, “I did not, and indeed I could not, count on any immediate success for this work. It lacks all those elements that infallibly appeal to the ordinary listener, or to which he is accustomed.”
–Jason Smoller
Overture to Le nozze di Figaro, K. 492
Wolfgang Amadé Mozart (1756–1791)
When the thirty-year-old Mozart finished conducting the dress rehearsal of Le nozze di Figaro in May 1786, “the orchestra… never…ceased applauding by beating the bows of their violins against the music desks,” according to the Irish tenor Michael Kelly, who sang at the premiere; “the little man acknowledged by repeated obeisances his thanks for those distinguishing marks of enthusiastic applause bestowed upon him.” At the public opening the next night, the applause caused five numbers to be encored.
The overture does not introduce any thematic material from the opera; instead, it serves to create an atmosphere and to prepare the audience for the intrigue they are about to see. The piece does not follow tradition; one would expect a slow introduction followed by a longer, animated piece to open an opera. Originally, Mozart had composed an Andante middle section, but he rejected it before the premiere and united the outer Presto sections to create a more compact and unified movement that maintains a playful character throughout.
–Jason Smoller
“Classical Symphony,” op. 25 (Symphony No. 1)
Sergei Prokofiev (1891–1953)
Russian composer, conductor, and pianist Sergei Prokofiev was born in 1891 and began composing at the age of five. At thirteen, he entered the St. Petersburg Conservatory as a pianist, and it was here that his interest in composition blossomed. Before long, he began taking lessons with Rimsky-Korsakov.
It wasn’t until Prokofiev studied Haydn symphonies under the tutelage of conductor Tcherepnin in 1916 that he was inspired to write his first symphony. “I thought that if Haydn were alive today, he would compose just as he did before, but at the same time would include something new in his manner of composition,” Prokofiev wrote. He composed his “Classical Symphony” between 1916 and 1918 and personally conducted its premiere in Petrograd on April 21, 1918. This premiere was almost two years before Stravinsky’s Pulcinella, a work often regarded as the start of the neoclassical movement.
Prokofiev employs several classical compositional elements. To begin, the proportion of the symphony is typical of that during the classical period. The score calls for timpani and two each of the flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, horn and trumpet. It is traditionally played with a smaller string section, making the piece particularly suitable for the Orpheus Institute at MSM. The opening Allegro and Finale are written in sonata form, while the third movement, interestingly enough, is titled “Gavotte,” a type of dance from the Baroque period. In addition to the structure of his movements, Prokofiev chose classically inspired melodies based on triadic intervals.
It is Prokofiev’s choice of harmony that makes the work “neoclassical.” The composition has a remarkable tendency to skirt keys. For example, while the beginning of the first movement starts in D major, by the eleventh measure, the orchestra somewhat precociously modulates to C major. Prokofiev flirts with C for a brief moment before returning back to D major. The fourth movement, saturated with Prokofiev’s sarcastic humor, is particularly interesting harmonically as Prokofiev seeks to use primarily major chords. As such, he modulates frequently and often abruptly. Prokofiev uses this harmonic jauntiness to highlight the ebullient character of the movement.
–Elizabeth Schurgin
