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Home , Henry Wood, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Serenade, Serenade to Music

PROGRAM NOTES by Daniel Maki

Serenade to by (1872 -1958)

Duration: Approximately 15 minutes First Performance: October 5, 1938 in London Last ESO Performance: These are the first ESO performances of the work

Little is known about Shakespeare’s own musical abilities and predilections but one thing is certain: his verbal art has over the centuries had an enormous impact on the related art of music. The vast amount of music generated by his work begins with the music meant to be heard as part of the plays themselves - there are reportedly some 300 stage directions for various types of music in the plays. We can then move on to so-called incidental music, i.e., music written to enhance the production without being part of the action itself. (’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream is perhaps the best known example.) These two categories mark only the beginning of the Shakespeare inspired music literature: they don’t count the many instrumental works that stand by themselves but were inspired by the Immortal Bard, or the hundreds of , ballets, and other stage works based on his works, or the literally thousands of songs and choral works that have been set to his words. A Shakespeare Music Catalog, published in 1991, listed more than 21,000 Shakespeare inspired works, and that number is surely substantially higher by now. Of Ralph Vaughan Williams’ several contributions to Shakespeareana, the best known is the to Music, a work that beautifully celebrates both the poet and the art of music itself. It is special occasion music, originally written to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the performance debut of conductor Sir , a major figure in English musical life. These days, Sir Henry is best remembered as the founding father of that uniquely English cultural institution popularly known as “”, and, more formally, as the BBC Henry Wood Promenade Concerts. The Proms, which present serious music in an informal atmosphere sometimes closer to that of a rock concert than of a traditional concert hall, trace their lineage back to 1895, when a 26 year old Henry Wood conducted the series for the first time. He would conduct the Proms until his death nearly half a century later in 1944. Although he was offered positions as conductor of both the and the Boston , he chose to stay in Britain, where he served as a major influence in raising performance standards and in developing the public taste for music. For the gala jubilee celebration held in in October of 1938 conducted by Wood himself, Vaughan Williams had the idea of choosing 16 leading English singers, hand picked by and conductor, who would sing Shakespeare’s words from sometimes together as a chorus but occasionally also as soloists. The composer went so far as to print the initials of each singer in the published score to indicate their separate parts. The was made up of players from three major London that Wood would have known very well. Incidentally, participating in the emotional event was Serge Rachmaninoff, who after performing his own music on the first half of the program, sat in a box with Lady Wood for the remainder. He was reportedly moved to tears by the Serenade and commented that he had never become so deeply emotional about a piece of music. The composer soon realized that it would be impractical for future performances to assemble 16 star singers, so he eventually prepared several other versions, including ones for chorus and orchestra, chorus and , and even orchestra alone. The text is a slightly adapted form of Lorenzo’s speech to Jessica in Portia’s garden from Act Five of The Merchant of Venice. As the lovers enjoy the beautiful, moonlit Mediterranean night, Lorenzo comments on the beauty of the scene and then moves on to a celebration of the power of music and its connection to celestial movements, i.e., a reference to the philosophical concept of the music of the spheres, a recurring theme in Renaissance thought. Setting the beautifully dreamy nocturnal atmosphere is the exquisite opening solo that introduces the chorus singing “How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank!” The mood changes and darker emotion intervenes as male voices describe celestial bodies. Horn calls announce the goddess Diana leading to a melancholy passage set to the famous words describing “the man that hath no music in himself”. Such a fellow, the Bard tells us, “is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils”, and is not to be trusted. Diana’s horns return once again and the music finally returns to the dreamy softness of the opening as the chorus sings, “Soft stillness and the night become the touches of sweet harmony.” The music gradually trails off into ethereal silence.

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Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen (Songs of a Wayfarer) by (1860 -1911)

Duration: Approximately 16 minutes First Performance: March 16, 1896 in Berlin Last ESO Performance: November, 2010; Hugh Russell, ; Stephen Squires, conductor

There is a popular notion, spurred on by many a novel, play, and Hollywood movie, that invariably simply pour the emotions of the moment into their work in a fit of wild despair or ecstasy as a kind of catharsis. That theory is easily refuted- many a musical masterpiece has been written in roughly the same frame of mind as that of a good carpenter crafting a bookcase or house for a client. Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky once captured this business-like attitude very well: “I sit down regularly at my desk at 9 o’clock and Mesdames les Muses have learned to keep the appointment.” On the other hand, it would be a great mistake to assume that personal emotion plays no role in artistic creation, and the career of Gustav Mahler stands as a particularly good example. Some composers have indeed striven for an objective approach to their music but Mahler’s mercurial temperament is well known and there is no doubt that many of his works reflect that quality and fully deserve the adjective “autobiographical.” Songs of a Wayfarer aptly proves the point. It is a young man’s music, perhaps his first truly mature masterpiece, completed in its first version at the age of 24 when he was involved in an unhappy love affair. As assistant conductor of the house at Kassel he had fallen in love with a coloratura soprano named Johanna Richter. It was the young artist’s first deep emotional attachment and seems to have caused a personal crisis. Matters apparently came to a head on New Year’s Eve of 1884. In a letter to a friend Mahler said that he had cried all night but had written her a group of songs. “She does not know them. What could they tell her beyond what she knows already? ..... The songs are planned as though a wandering journeyman who has suffered some sort of fate sets out into the world and wanders musingly and alone.” The exact genesis of the songs has been the subject of much scholarly debate. It is now generally agreed that work may have begun as early as 1883, but that they were whipped into shape in a fury of inspiration in the week before the above mentioned crisis and were completed in some form by January 1, 1885. This version was for voice and piano but it would not be until 1896 that Mahler would complete the version for orchestra. The skillfully written poems are by Mahler himself, showing influences of the German folk poetry that would serve as a strong influence throughout much of his work. It is important to note that the four songs form a unified whole known as a , a concept that had been an important part of since the beginning of the nineteenth century. Because cycles had traditionally been for voice and piano, Mahler’s orchestral cycles – he wrote several – belong to an entirely new and important genre. An important technical feature of the work is the use of so-called progressive tonality: i.e., the practice of ending a work or movement in a different key from that of the beginning. Here this untraditional technique produces the effect of “wandering” from song to song, exactly as our wandering wayfarer moves through his melancholy life. The opening song, “When my Darling has her Wedding Day”, begins with a chirpy sounding figure in the orchestra technically known to musicians as a gruppetto. (It is a commonly used ornament consisting of a note that is surrounded by its neighboring higher and lower notes and then returning to the original. Irving Berlin’s White Christmas begins with a gruppetto figure.) This figure will appear more than 20 times throughout the movement, quickly in the orchestra to portray the liveliness of the wedding but much slower in the solo voice to indicate his despair and isolation from the joyous event. After his declaration that he will weep alone in his room while his beloved is being married, the mood changes suddenly as our wayfarer finds solace in nature and we hear beautifully orchestrated bird calls and joyously colorful passage work. His happiness is short lived, however, as he tells birds not to sing and flowers not to bloom. “Spring is past”, and his sorrow returns. The second song, “I walked across the fields this Morning”, presents the highest spirits of the work. Listeners familiar with Mahler’s popular Symphony No. 1 will recognize this joyous nature music as the principal theme of the first movement of that work. Even here though, when at the end the wayfarer asks if his happiness will now begin, a quite roll answers: “No”. The wayfarer’s mood changes to blackest despair in the third song, “I have a Gleaming Knife.” To the wildest and most intense music of the cycle, he vents his emotion, likening his emotional pain to that of an actual knife piercing his flesh. He longs for death as he pictures himself “on my black bier.” The final song, “The Two Blue Eyes of my Beloved”, brings resigned resolution. The music is an early example of a type that would become one of Mahler’s signature devices: a somber funeral march that here depicts the wayfarer wearily trudging along trying to deal with his sorrow. Finally, in the fourth stanza the mood changes, as quietly radiant music in a major key represents the wayfarer finding solace under a linden tree, a traditional symbol in German poetry both for death and as a trysting place for lovers. Mahler connoisseurs will again recognize this passage as it appears in the funeral march movement of the First Symphony. The weary traveler seems at last able to accept his fate and find some measure of serenity in nature and in the dream world of sleep.

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Pictures at an Exhibition by (1839-1881) Orchestrated by (1875 -1931)

Duration: Approximately 35minutes First Performance: June 15, 1924 in Paris Last ESO Performance: November, 2012; Steven Jarvi, conductor

In August of 1873 Mussorgsky was devastated by the untimely death at the age of 39 of his close friend, the brilliant painter and architect Victor Hartmann. The two had known each other for about five years, and shared a strong interest in developing a distinctively Russian style of art. Hartmann had given the composer two of his paintings as a gift. In February and March of 1874, Vladimir Stasov, an influential writer and critic who had introduced the two men, helped to organize an exhibition of about 400 of Hartmann’s works as a memorial at the Imperial Academy of Arts in St. Petersburg. Mussorgsky loaned his two paintings to the exhibition and of course attended it himself. In June of that year Mussorgsky threw himself into a composition for piano that would be a memorial to his friend and perhaps serve as therapy for the composer’s deep depression at the loss. The work attempted to capture in sound the spirit of the exhibition, depicting a viewer strolling through the museum and contemplating a number of Hartmann’s works. The work was competed in the short space of a month but would not be published until 1886, five years after the composer’s death. Although it was slow to capture the interest of pianists, perhaps at least in part because of its fiendish difficulty, it would eventually establish itself as one of the staples of the piano repertoire, and serves today as a litmus test of the highest level of virtuosity. It is not as a piano work, though, but as an instrumental one that Pictures has found its largest audience. The coloristic possibilities inherent in the work have attracted many composers and arrangers over the years, including such as the above mentioned English conductor Henry Wood, the conductor , and even rock groups such as Emerson, Lake, and Palmer, and Mekong Delta. The arrangement that has pride of place, however, is unquestionably the one made by one of the greatest of all masters of the art of orchestration, Maurice Ravel. Although some have objected to the liberties that he took with the original, Ravel’s orchestration, which was made in 1922 for a commission by the conductor Serge Koussevitsky, has proven to be one of the most successful such collaborations in music history and has long been the standard version. Mussorgsky selected eleven of Hartmann’s works, some of which have unfortunately been lost, which include pictures that Hartmann made on his travels through Europe. Serving as an introduction and then as unifying device is the famous Promenade theme which depicts a viewer strolling at an uneven pace (the meter is deliberately slightly irregular) as he contemplates the paintings. According to the composer, the rather ponderous movement of the theme illustrates his own bulky physique. After the introduction, the music unfolds in the following ten movements. As the dedicatee of the work, Stasov contributed his own brief characterizations, which are given below in quotes. Bracketed comments are by this author.

Gnomus “A sketch depicting a little gnome, clumsily running with crooked legs.” [This is thought to be a nutcracker in the shape of a gnome. The movement is followed by the Promenade theme, played this time quietly and meditatively.]

The Old Castle “A medieval castle before which a troubadour sings a song.” [Ravel gives the solo to an alto . The Promenade follows again.]

Tuileries (Children’s Quarrel after Games) “An avenue in the Garden of the Tuileries, with a swarm of children and nurses”. [The Tuileries are the gardens near the Louvre in Paris.]

Bydlo “A Polish cart on enormous wheels, drawn by oxen.” [Ravel’s orchestration begins quietly, gets louder and then quiets again to illustrate the coming and passing of the cart. The Promenade is heard in a somber minor key.]

Ballet of the Chicks in their Shells “Hartmann’s design for the décor of a picturesque scene of the ballet Trilby.” [Trilby was a ballet with music by Julius Gerber, choreography by Marius Petipa, and décor by Hartmann.]

Samuel Goldenburg and Schmuyle “Two Jews: Rich and Poor.” [These were the two paintings owned by the composer, here conflated into one picture. Ravel depicts the prosperous man with rich string sound and the entreaties of the poor man with the whining sound of a muted .]

Limoges “French women quarreling violently in the market.” [The reference is to the city in central France. This movement leads without pause into the next.]

Catacombs Cum mortuis in lingua mortua “Hartmann represented himself examining the Paris catacombs by the light of a lantern.” [The movement is in two sections, the first comprising slow block chords that a set a macabre tone and seem to capture the echoing acoustics of the gloomy place. The second part introduces a somber minor key version of the Promenade theme. The composer penciled into the score the text which translates as “With the dead in a dead language.”

The Hut on Hen’s Legs “Hartmann’s drawing depicted a clock in the form of Baba Yaga’s hut on fowl’s legs. Mussorgsky added the witch’s flight in a Mortar.” [Baba Yaga is the famous witch of Slavic folk legend who lives in the forest and flies about in a mortar, wielding a pestle. Sounds of the clock are heard in the slow middle section. This movement leads directly into the finale.]

The Great Gate of Kiev “Hartmann’s sketch was his design for city gates at Kiev in the ancient massive Russian style with a cupola shaped like a Slavonic helmet.” [Hartmann designed the gate for Tsar Alexander II to commemorate his escape of an assassination attempt. His design won a national competition but plans for construction were canceled. This movement serves an apotheosis of the Promenade theme, played here with the utmost possible grandeur. The contrasting somber sections make use of a Russian Orthodox chant.] * * *