Notes on the Program by Dr

Notes on the Program by Dr. Richard E. Rodda

Symphony No. 6 in E minor..................... Ralph Vaughan Williams

(1872-1958)

Composed in 1944-1947.

Premiered on April 21, 1948 in London, conducted by Sir Adrian Boult.

“The Symphony, as a work of art, more than deserved the overwhelming applause it got, but I was no more able to applaud than at the end of Tchaikovsky’s Pathétique Symphony — less so, in fact, for this seemed to be an ultimate nihilism beyond Tchaikovsky’s conceiving: every drop of blood seemed frozen in one’s veins.” So wrote the noted critic Deryck Cooke of the shattering effect Vaughan Williams’ Sixth Symphony produced on its premiere audience in 1948. The physical and psychological wounds of the War were still achingly evident in Britain, and the unprecedented horror of nuclear destruction had first been unleashed above Hiroshima less than three years before, so it is not surprising that listeners heard in this chilling Symphony a depiction of the intense grief caused by the brutal War years that were still so fresh in memory.

Commentators suggested that the Sixth Symphony, and especially the finale, which the composer called “Epilogue,” represented “a dead continent,” “an impotent searching” or “the final mystery of death.” Frank Howes called it Vaughan Williams’ “War Symphony” in a review of the first recording for The Times, and this comment caused the composer to speak out with his view of the music. There was no program buried beneath the notes, he insisted; the Symphony did not depict “war” or “grief” or “nihilism,” but was simply an abstract instrumental work. “I suppose it never occurs to these people that a man might just want to write a piece of music,” he said flatly. Vaughan Williams was probably offering a foil to the many “explanations” of this Symphony. He knew, as does every sensitive musician and listener, that music can never be exactly translated into words or into any other medium. (If it could, what use would it be?) So he said that there was no extraneous “meaning” in this score, and that the listener’s attention should be focused on the musical experience and not on any tangential literary conjecture. He was trying to maintain, in the public conception of the Sixth Symphony, the fine balance of emotion and intellect — of heart and head — that fuels great music. Many writers were doing their share to center attention on the former; Vaughan Williams thought it his duty to concentrate on the latter.

In the best tradition of the symphonic genre since Beethoven, the Finale-Epilogue of the Sixth Symphony is the goal toward which the earlier movements progress, the solution to the musico/emotional riddle that they pose. Vaughan Williams emphasized the musical inter-relatedness of the movements by connecting one directly with the next, “its tail attached to the head of its neighbor,” in the composer’s words. Of the philosophical road Vaughan Williams traveled in this work, Olin Downes wrote, “The Symphony progresses deeper and deeper to the inmost recesses of the consciousness. We know of no other symphony whose finale is so sensitive and intimate in its nuances, so completely of the spirit.... It was as if the reveries of centuries had amassed themselves about his heart.” The intensity of expression in much of the work is achieved through the persistent use of some of the most affective devices in music: conflicting major-minor modes; juxtaposition of keys a half-step apart; use of the harmonically unsettled interval of an augmented fourth; febrile rhythmic structures contrasting with almost motionless stillness. Vaughan Williams’ Sixth Symphony is one of the most moving musical documents of the modern age.

The full orchestra opens the first movement with a fierce theme in rushing rhythms, filled with a violent energy, that is developed with an almost demonic fury. Above a galumphing 12/8 accompaniment, three complementary themes are given, and then treated in an elaborate development: the first is an ungainly melody presented by the trumpets; the second, a scalar tune harmonized with parallel chords in syncopated rhythm; the third, a broad, lyrical melody initiated softly by the flutes, English horn and violins. This section is climaxed by the brasses’ stentorian unison presentation of the broad, third motive, which leads to the return of the rushing, opening theme. The movement is capped by a magnificent presentation of the lyrical, third theme in the brighter, but not untroubled, key of E major. James Day wrote of this stirring moment in the Symphony, “It is as if the listener has been climbing a vast mountain slope towards a distant and only intermittently visible peak, when suddenly the clouds are lifted and the summit is revealed in all its power and grandeur.”

The second movement is constructed in a large three-part form whose outer sections are dominated by a dirge-like rhythmic ostinato of ambiguous tonality that is repeated some hundred times. The central portion of the movement, following a stern, loud brass outcry at its beginning, comprises soft presentations of solemn thematic material in unison statements and block chords. The rhythmic ostinato returns to support a sequence of searing climaxes before quiet is restored and the solo English horn and strings bring the movement to a somber close.

The third movement, labeled “Scherzo” though hardly light-hearted or dance-like in spirit, possesses a feverish, almost demented rhythmic frenzy. “The whole point of this movement is its futile activity,” wrote Hugh Ottaway. “The means are contrapuntal, and the method is one of structural parody and satire.... The brilliance of the Scherzo is the way in which chaos is presented within a framework of apparent order. Those who say this music ‘means’ war are setting their sights much too low; the vision is more generalized and more fundamental.” Deryck Cooke believed that the tenor saxophone tune on which the contrasting trio is based is “a critical stylization of the most depressingly moronic dance-hall music.” After another traversal of the Scherzo (with the theme, comprising mostly augmented fourths and half-steps, played in inversion), the banal dance-hall ditty returns in an inflated setting for full orchestra that sounds like some brutish military march.

The last movement, Epilogue, is one of the strangest and most deeply moving journeys in all music. It is played throughout at the softest possible dynamic, of which Vaughan Williams’ repeatedly reminds the players with the admonition senza crescendo (“without getting louder”). Dyneley Hussey described the movement as “the quietest piece of music imaginable, and has so little apparent movement that it might be described as stillness made audible.” There is little in the symphonic repertory to compare with it. “Saturn, the Bringer of Old Age” from The Planets by Gustav Holst and some of the wondrous curtains of sound created by György Ligeti are closest to it in technique, but vastly different in effect. The composer’s curt description of the Epilogue written for the work’s premiere — “the music drifts about contrapuntally with occasional whiffs of themes and with one or two short episodes on the horns” — offered no indication of the music’s import. It was not until years later that Vaughan Williams revealed that he associated the Epilogue with the lines of Prospero’s farewell in Shakespeare’s The Tempest:

The cloud-capp’d towers, the gorgeous palaces,

The solemn temples, the great globe itself,

Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,

And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,

Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff

As dreams are made on; and our little life

Is rounded with a sleep.

In this age of nuclear winters and Star Wars technology and enough horrific power to destroy ten earths, this magnificent, brooding Symphony by a seventy-year-old British musician written half a century ago is disturbingly modern in its message. The vision it provides, of an eerie, lifeless quiet seemingly outside of time, reminds us once again that it is the obligation of great music to be more than merely beautiful and diverting. It must make us realize how precious is the fragile spark that joins us all in a common humanity.

Prélude à “L’Après-midi d’un faune” ...................... Claude Debussy

(Prelude to “The Afternoon of a Faun”) (1862-1918)

Composed 1892-1894.

Premiered on December 22, 1894 in Paris, conducted by Gustave Doret.

Stéphane Mallarmé was one of those artists in fin-de-siècle Paris who perceived strong relationships among music, literature and the other arts. A number of his poems, including L’Après-midi d’un faune, were not only inspired, he said, by music, but even aspired to its elevated, abstract state. The young composer Claude Debussy had similar feelings about the interaction of poetry and music, and he and Mallarmé became close friends, despite the twenty years difference in their ages. When Mallarmé completed his L’Après-midi d’un faune in 1876 after several years of writing and revising, he envisioned that it would be used as the basis for a theatrical production. Debussy was intrigued at this suggestion, and set about planning to provide music to a choreographic version that would be devised in consultation with Mallarmé. The projected work was described as Prélude, Interludes et Paraphrase finale to L’Après-midi d’un faune. Debussy completed only the scenario’s first portion, perhaps realizing, as had others, that Mallarmé’s misty symbolism and equivocal language were not innately suited to the theater. The premiere, given at an orchestral concert of the Société Nationale in Paris on December 22, 1894, a few months after the score was finished, was meticulously prepared by the conductor Gustave Doret, with Debussy at his elbow giving instruction and inspiration, polishing details, retouching the scoring. So successful was the initial performance that the audience demanded the work’s immediate encore. L’Après-midi d’un faune was first staged by Diaghilev’s Ballet Russe at the Théâtre du Châtelet on May 29, 1912; Nijinsky created the controversial choreography and appeared in the title role.

Mallarmé’s poem is deliberately ambiguous in its sensuous, symbolist language; its purpose is as much to suggest a halcyon, dream-like mood as to tell a story. Robert Lawrence described its slight plot, as realized by Debussy, in his Victor Books of Ballets: “Exotically spotted, a satyr is taking his rest on the top of a hillock. As he fondles a bunch of grapes, he sees a group of nymphs passing on the plain below. He wants to join them, but when he approaches, they flee. Only one of them, attracted by the faun, returns timidly. But the nymph changes her mind and runs away. For a moment he gazes after her. Then, snatching a scarf she has dropped in her flight, the faun climbs his hillock and resumes his drowsy position, astride the scarf.” As the inherent eroticism of the plot suggests, the Debussy/Mallarmé faun is no Bambi-like creature, but rather a mythological half-man, half-beast with cloven hooves, horns, tail and furry coat, a being which walks upright and whose chief characteristic is its highly developed libido. Mallarmé’s poem is filled with the ambiguities symbolized by the faun: is this a man or a beast? is his love physical or fantasy? reality or dream? The delicate subtlety of the poem finds a perfect tonal equivalent in Debussy’s music.

The Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun is a seminal work in 20th-century music about which the eminent modernist Pierre Boulez noted, “The flute of the Faun brought new breath to the art of music.” Sinuous melodies, exquisite harmonies and a glowing range of orchestral colors were here combined with a jeweler’s precision to produce a limpid sensuality that had never before been broached in music. Like its phrasing and meter, the form of the Prelude is deliberately blurred, unfolding almost as a single, long, improvisational melody begun by the flute and caressed by the other instrumental colors — sometimes just a single tonal strand, sometimes enriched with parallel harmonies.

Mallarmé, who was delighted with Debussy’s musical realization of his poem, sent this laudatory verse to the composer:

Spirit of the forest,

If with your primal breath your flute sounds well,

Listen now to the radiance

Which comes when Debussy plays.

Violin Concerto No. 1 in G minor, Op. 26..................... Max Bruch

(1838-1920)

Composed in 1865-1866.

Premiered on April 24, 1866 in Coblenz, with Otto von Königslöw as soloist and the composer conducting.

Max Bruch, widely known and respected in his day as a composer, conductor and teacher, received his earliest music instruction from his mother, a noted singer and pianist. He began composing at eleven, and, by fourteen, had produced a symphony and a string quartet, the latter garnering a prize that allowed him to study with Karl Reinecke and Ferdinand Hiller. His opera Die Loreley (1862) and the choral work Frithjof (1864) brought him his first public acclaim. For the next 25 years, Bruch held various posts as a choral and orchestral conductor in Cologne, Coblenz, Sondershausen, Berlin, Liverpool and Breslau; in 1883, he visited the United States to conduct concerts of his own choral compositions. From 1890 to 1910, he taught composition at the Berlin Academy and received numerous awards for his work, including an honorary doctorate from Cambridge University. Though Bruch is known mainly for the three famous compositions for string soloist and orchestra (the G minor Concerto and the Scottish Fantasy for violin, and the Kol Nidrei for cello), he also composed two other violin concertos, three symphonies, a concerto for two pianos, various chamber pieces, songs, three operas and much choral music.

The G minor Violin Concerto brought Bruch his earliest and most enduring fame. He began sketching ideas for the piece in 1857, when he was a nineteen-year-old student just finishing his studies with Ferdinand Hiller in Cologne, but they only came to fruition in 1865, at the start of his two-year tenure as director of the Royal Institute for Music at Coblenz. The piece was not only Bruch’s first concerto but also his first large work for orchestra, so he sought the advice of Johann Naret-Koning, concertmaster at Mannheim, concerning matters of violin technique and instrumental balance. The Concerto was ready for performance by April 1866 with Naret-Koning slated as soloist, but illness forced him to cancel, and Otto von Königslöw, concertmaster of the Gürzenich Orchestra and violin professor at the Cologne Conservatory, took over at the last minute. This public hearing convinced Bruch that repairs were needed, so he temporarily withdrew the Concerto while he revised and refined it during the next year with the meticulous advice of the eminent violinist and composer Joseph Joachim (who was to provide similar assistance to Johannes Brahms a decade later with his Violin Concerto). Joachim was soloist in the premiere of the definitive version of the Concerto, on January 7, 1868 in Bremen; he received the score’s dedication in appreciation from Bruch. The Concerto was an enormous hit, spreading Bruch’s reputation across Europe and, following its first performance in New York in 1872 by Pablo de Sarasate, America. Its success, however, hoisted Bruch upon the horns of a dilemma later in his career. He, of course, valued the notoriety that the Concerto brought to him and his music, but he also came to realize that the work’s exceptional popularity overshadowed his other pieces for violin and orchestra. “Nothing compares to the laziness, stupidity and dullness of many German violinists,” he complained to the publisher Fritz Simrock in a letter from 1887. “Every fortnight another one comes to me wanting to play the First Concerto; I have now become rude, and tell them: ‘I cannot listen to this Concerto any more — did I perhaps write just this one? Go away, and play the other [two] Concertos, which are just as good, if not better.” Bruch’s vehemence in this matter was exacerbated by the fact that he had sold the rights to the G minor Concerto to the publisher August Cranz for a one-time payment, and he never received another penny from its innumerable performances. In a poignant episode at the end of his life, he tried to recoup some money from the piece by offering his original manuscript for sale in the United States, but he died before receiving any payment for it. The score is now in the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York.

The G minor Violin Concerto is a work of lyrical beauty and emotional sincerity. The first movement, which Bruch called a “Prelude,” is in the nature of an extended introduction leading without pause into the slow movement. The Concerto opens with a dialogue between soloist and orchestra followed by a wide-ranging subject played by the violinist over a pizzicato line in the basses. A contrasting theme reaches into the highest register of the violin, and is followed by scintillating passage work of scales and broken chords for the soloist. A stormy section for orchestra alone recalls the opening dialogue, which softens to usher in the lovely Adagio. This slow movement contains three important themes, all languorous and sweet, which are shared by soloist and orchestra. The music builds to a passionate climax before subsiding to a tranquil close.

The finale begins with eighteen modulatory bars containing hints of the upcoming theme before the soloist proclaims the vibrant melody itself, enriched with copious multiple stops. A broad melody, played first by the orchestra alone before being taken over by the soloist, serves as the second theme. A brief development, based on the dance-like first theme, leads to the recapitulation. The coda, with some ingenious long-range harmonic deflections, recalls again the first theme to bring the work to a rousing close. Though a true showpiece for the master violinist, the G minor Concerto also possesses a solid musicianship and a memorable lyricism that make it a continuing favorite with both performers and audiences. Sir Donald Tovey succinctly summarized the talent of the composer of this work by simply saying, “It is not easy to write as beautifully as Max Bruch.”