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Home , Alexis Weissenberg, Anna Vinnitskaya, Concert piece, Franco Ferrara, Gilbert Varga, Harlequin

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The

Thursday, April 1212,, at 8:00 Friday, April 1313,, at 2:00 Saturday, April 1414,, at 8:00

Gilbert Varga Conductor

Mendelssohn Hebrides (“Fingal’s Cave”), Op. 26

Bartók Piano No. 2 I. Allegro II. Adagio—Presto—Adagio III. Allegro molto

Intermission

Stravinsky (1947 version) I. The Shrovetide Fair (First Tableau): The Magic Trick—Russian II. Petrushka’s Room (Second Tableau) III. The Moor’s Room (Third Tableau): Dance of the Ballerina—Waltz IV. The Shrovetide Fair, Toward Evening (Fourth Tableau): Dance of the Nursemaids—Dance of the Coachmen and the Stable Boys—The Mummers

This program runs approximately 1 hour, 50 minutes. , son of Hungarian violinist , studied under three very different and distinctive maestros: , , and Charles Bruck. In recent seasons Mr. Varga’s reputation in North America has grown swiftly; in the 2011-12 season he makes his debut with the and returns to other , including the Indianapolis, Colorado, Utah, and Nashville symphonies, and the Minnesota Orchestra, which he conducts every season. Other ongoing relationships continue with the Atlanta, Saint Louis, Milwaukee, and Baltimore symphonies. Mr. Varga made his debut in 2005. In he regularly conducts the major orchestras in , Leipzig, Frankfurt, Cologne, Budapest, Lisbon, , and Glasgow, among others.

In the earlier part of his career Mr. Varga concentrated on work with chamber orchestras, particularly the Tibor Varga Chamber Orchestra, before developing a reputation as a symphonic conductor. He was chief conductor of the Hofer Symphony between 1980 and 1985, and from 1985 to 1990 he was chief conductor of the Philharmonia Hungarica in Marl, Germany, leading its debut tour to with violinist . From 1991 to 1995 Mr. Varga was permanent guest conductor of the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra, and from 1997 to 2000 he was principal guest conductor of the Malmö Symphony. From 1997 to 2008 he was music director of the Basque National Symphony, leading it on tours across the U.K., Germany, Spain, and South America.

Mr. Varga’s discography includes recordings with various labels including ASV, Koch International, and Claves Records. His latest recording, released in January 2011, of by Ravel and Prokofiev with the Deutsches Symphonie Orchester Berlin and on Naïve Records was given five stars by BBC Music Magazine.

Pianist Yefim BronfmanBronfman’s 2011-12 U.S. season includes engagements with the orchestras of Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston, Toronto, Portland, and Kansas City; a residency with the Cleveland Orchestra; and a tour with the . A winter recital tour culminated in a performance at Carnegie Hall followed by the world premiere of Magnus Lindberg’s with the New York Philharmonic. In Europe Mr. Bronfman performs Bartók’s piano concertos with the ; visits Spain, , Denmark, and London with flutist Emmanuel Pahud; gives with the London Symphony; and tours with the Bavarian Radio Symphony. In recognition of the 75th anniversary of the Israel Philharmonic he joined that orchestra in two orchestral concerts and in a solo recital last December.

Mr. Bronfman’s discography includes a Grammy Award-winning recording of the three Bartók concertos with Esa-Pekka Salonen and the Los Angeles Philharmonic; the complete Prokofiev piano sonatas; all five of Prokofiev’s piano concertos, nominated for both Grammy and Gramophone awards; and Rachmaninoff’s Second and Third piano concertos. Mr. Bronfman’s most recent releases are Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No.1 with Mariss Jansons and the Bavarian Radio Symphony; a recital disc, Perspectives; and recordings of all the Beethoven piano concertos, as well as the with violinist Gil Shaham, cellist Truls Mørk, and the Tonhalle Orchestra under David Zinman for the Arte Nova/BMG label.

Mr. Bronfman was born in Tashkent, in the , in 1958 and immigrated to Israel with his family in 1973. In Israel he studied with pianist Arie Vardi, head of the Rubin Academy of Music at Tel Aviv University. In the United States he studied at the , the Marlboro Music School, and the Curtis Institute of Music, and with Rudolf Firkušný, Leon Fleisher, and Rudolf Serkin. Mr. Bronfman was a Carnegie Hall Perspectives artist in 2007-08, and in 2010 he was honored as the recipient of the Jean Gimbel Lane Prize from Northwestern University. In 1991 he was awarded the Avery Fisher Prize. Mr. Bronfman became an American citizen in 1989. He made his Philadelphia Orchestra debut in 1977.

FRAMING THE PROGRAM

The young recorded impressions of his European grand tour in vivid letters, beautiful drawings, and marvelous music. The time the 20-year-old composer spent in Scotland inspired several compositions, including the evocative Hebrides Overture (also known as “Fingal’s Cave”), which captures an experience he had in a stormy steamship crossing to the island of Staffa.

Béla Bartók emphasized that in his first two piano concertos he “wished to realize absolute equality between solo instrument and orchestra.” The Second Concerto is a brilliant and unusually demanding piece for a virtuoso pianist (Bartók premiered the work himself) while at the same time being a kind of “,” to invoke the title of the composer’s famous later work.

Petrushka was Stravinsky’s second ballet for Sergei Diaghilev’s legendary Ballets Russes, coming between the dazzling Firebird of 1910 and the revolutionary Rite of Spring of 1913. He originally conceived of the work as a piece for piano and orchestra. The piano is prominently featured in the ballet, which turned into a story concerning a puppet who comes to life, and that influenced Bartók’s later Concerto heard on the first half of today’s program.

Parallel Events 1829 MendelssohMendelssohnnnn Hebrides Overture Music Rossini William Tell Literature Balzac Les Chouans Art Turner Ulysses Deriding Polyphemus History Slavery abolished in Mexico

1911 Stravinsky Petrushka Music Strauss Der Rosenkavalier Literature Wharton Ethan Frome Art Braque Man with a Guitar History Chinese Republic proclaimed

1930 Bartók Piano Concerto No. 2 Music Hindemith Literature Hammett The Maltese Falcon ArtArtArt Wood American Gothic History Pluto discovered Hebrides Overture (“Fingal’s Cave”)

Felix MendelssMendelssohnohn Born in , February 3, 1809 Died in Leipzig, November 4, 1847

The 20-year-old Mendelssohn was a fully formed artist when he embarked in 1829 on what he called his “Grand Tour” of Europe. In addition to being a virtuosic prodigy on the piano, the precocious youth had already composed operas, symphonies, and concertos; chamber and piano music; and his first . It was his financially comfortable parents who insisted that he make an extended tour of the Continent, and during the subsequent three years Mendelssohn performed concerts and rubbed shoulders with Europe’s leading artistic and intellectual figures. He frequently found himself in the company of the most brilliant literary and musical figures of the day, including Goethe, Heine, Cherubini, Berlioz, Chopin, and Schumann. Perhaps just as important as whom he met and what he heard were the visual impressions of the sights he saw.

Musical Landscapes Mendelssohn recorded his impressions in a variety of artistic media: in marvelously vivid letters, in drawings, and, of course, in music. Some of his most famous works—such as the so-called “Scottish” and “Italian” symphonies—capture characteristics of the places he visited. In fact the composer already knew something of the music of Scotland even before he first visited there in August 1829 and began to sketch his Hebrides Overture. But it was not the Scottish music that left its mark on this brilliant piece, nor did his “sketch” only involve, as it usually did, jotting down musical ideas. The visual landscape captivated him, in this case the isolated coast and later the experience he had in a steamship crossing to the island of Staffa during a storm. There he saw Fingal’s Cave, which gave the Overture one of its several alternative titles.

Mendelssohn, who in addition to his musical talents could draw marvelously, made a pen- and-ink sketch of the coast, the mysterious branches of a large tree in the foreground, a castle in the distance, and far beyond the sea and its isles. He also set about trying to express this all in music. He informed his parents on August 7, “In order to make you realize how extraordinarily the Hebrides have affected me, the following came to my mind.” He then wrote out essentially the first 21 measures of the Overture, going so far as to specify instrumentation and dynamics. The opening indeed does create a vivid picture, with the constant motion of the water represented by a descending arpeggiated minor triad and subtle layering of instruments. A much more expansive second theme, first stated by the cellos, suggests broader visions.

It would take Mendelssohn some years to get the Overture into its final state. He continued work in Rome in 1830 and was still polishing it in two years later. As he wrote his parents, “The so-called development section smacks more of counterpoint than of train-oil, seagulls, and salt cod, and it should be the other way around.” The Overture received its triumphant premiere in London that year. A critic writing at the time for the music magazine the Harmonicon noted: “The idea of this work was suggested to the author while he was in the most northern part of Scotland, on a wild, desolate coast, where nothing is heard but the howling of the wind and roaring of the waves; and nothing living seen, except the sea-bird, whose reign is there undisturbed by human intruder. So far as music is capable of imitating, the composer has succeeded in his design.” Even Richard Wagner, no Mendelssohn lover (however much the older composer’s music influenced his own operas), conceded that Mendelssohn was a “first-class musical landscape painter” and that this work showed “wonderful imagination and delicate feeling, presented with consummate art.”

Mendelssohn’s Concert Overtures In fact, Mendelssohn helped to create a new kind of music—the “concert overture”—which became one of the leading vehicles for Romantic musical expression. Earlier overtures, in their typical 17th- and 18th-century incarnations, had introduced theatrical events of various sorts. Operas, oratorios, and more modest vocal genres usually began with a purely instrumental piece. (This also served, of course, the eminently practical purpose of getting people’s attention, telling them to sit down and be quiet.) After a while it was not uncommon to call an overture “sinfonie,” thus pointing to the increasingly shared features with the emerging genre of the symphony and, ultimately, of the symphonic poem. The overture was reinvented in the 19th century, or at least considerably expanded in its conception, first by Beethoven and Weber, and then by Mendelssohn and Berlioz.

Mendelssohn was the first leading composer to produce a series of concert overtures. He started in 1826, at age 17, with his Shakespearean miracle, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Op. 21. (Only eight years later did he write the other incidental music to the play that made it more feasible for theatrical use.) In 1828 he composed Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage, a musical sea portrait inspired by two short Goethe poems. (Goethe was a close friend of the Mendelssohn family and mentor to the young composer, who studied with Carl Friedrich Zelter, Goethe’s musical counsel and preferred composer.) Mendelssohn began the Hebrides the next year, even though it had the most protracted genesis (as well as the most names, called at various times “Overture to a Lonely Island,” “The Isles of Fingal,” “Fingal’s Cave”). He intended these three works be published as a set. While each of them (as well as the somewhat later Fair Melusine Overture) displays Mendelssohn’s astounding ability to paint vivid musical landscapes or stories, the Hebrides is the most independent, taking its inspiration neither from a play nor a poem, but from his own experience.

—Christopher H. Gibbs

The Hebrides Overture was composed from 1829 to 1832.

Fritz Scheel conducted the first Philadelphia Orchestra performances of the Overture, in November 1902. The work has only been performed about two dozen times since. The most recent subscription performances were in April 2002, under ’s baton.

The Philadelphians recorded the work in 1979 for RCA with .

The score calls for pairs of flutes, oboes, clarinets, bassoons, horns, and trumpets, timpani, and strings.

The Hebrides Overture runs approximately 10 minutes in performance. Piano Concerto No. 2

Béla Bartók Born in Nagyszentmiklós, Hungary (now Romania), March 25, 1881 Died in New York, September 26, 1945

Of the three essential composers of the first half of the 20th century—Schoenberg, Stravinsky, and Bartók—it is the last-named whose imprint on subsequent music is the most difficult to assess. , who devised a potent and widely imitated system for atonal composition, remains the most influential intellectual figure of the last century; even though his music is seldom played today, his example came to be viewed as the inevitable conclusion of the “breakdown of tonality” (discussions of which often echoed the similarly apocalyptic musings on the “decline of the West”). Stravinsky, ostensibly the most accessible composer of the three, has become a household name, and many of his works are as familiar as music of Bach, Haydn, or Brahms.

Bartók—less cosmopolitan than Stravinsky and less intensively systematic than Schoenberg—forged a peculiar style that was more personal and more specifically “national” (which is not to say, nationalistic). While Stravinsky became the darling of the Parisian avant- garde, Bartók made arduous travels through villages in Hungary, Romania, Slovakia, and , meticulously inscribing thousands of folk tunes, the melodic substance of which would slowly seep into his own music. While Schoenberg played the piano in cabarets and gloried in the life of the starving visionary, Bartók taught piano like a well-behaved schoolboy and concertized with works of Beethoven and Liszt. He was, in many ways, a more conventional artist than either of his towering contemporaries—yet at the same time he became one of the most original thinkers of the era.

BarBartók’tók’tók’ss VarieVariedd Piano Concertos Bartók’s three piano concertos present good examples of the paradoxes of his art, of the tension between tradition and revolution, folk song and iconoclasm. Despite attempts to drag these works, kicking and screaming as it were, into the repertoire, they still resist easy access. Yet they remain the most important contribution to the genre of piano concerto in the 20th century—the nearest challenge coming, perhaps, from the first three concertos of Prokofiev.

Each of the three offers insight into a crucial aspect of Bartók the musician. The First (1926), with its “barbaric” rhythms and martellato (hammered) effects, suggests the lasting importance of irregular rhythms and percussive sonorities in Bartók’s music. The Third, written in his last year, underscores the “neoclassical” tranquility and resignation of his final years in exile in New York.

Sandwiched between these two, chronologically and conceptually, is the Second Concerto, which has come to be viewed as a masterpiece partly by virtue of its synthesis of the dominant trends of Bartók’s (and of the 20th century’s) interests: folk song and rhythm, orchestral tone-painting, Baroque counterpoint, relentless motivic development, and the use of the piano as an instrument of percussion. It was composed in 1930-31 and first performed in Frankfurt on January 23, 1933, with the conductor .

This would be the composer’s last performance in Germany: What had dawned as a decade of artistic hopes for Bartók was to turn into a nightmarish front row seat at Europe’s downhill slide into war and destruction. At the same time, the 1930s would see Bartók blossom into a truly international figure: By the end of the decade he had duly secured this status with masterworks like the Music for Two and Percussion, the Divertimento, the Second Concerto, and the Sixth String Quartet.

If the use of more “singable,” folk-like tunes made the Second Concerto more accessible, its Bachian counterpoint brought it into a neoclassical mainstream established in the 1920s by Stravinsky and Hindemith. In a program note he wrote in 1937, Bartók attempted to clarify the difference between his first two concertos: “I composed my First Piano Concerto in 1926. I consider it a successful work, although its writing is a bit difficult—one might even say very difficult!—as much for the orchestra as for the audience. That is why some years later (1930-31), while writing my Second Concerto, I wanted to produce a piece that would contrast with the first: a work that would be less bristling with difficulties for the orchestra and whose thematic material would be more agreeable. This intention explains the rather light and popular character of most of the themes of my latest concerto: a lightness that sometimes almost reminds me of one of my youthful works, the First Suite for Orchestra, Op. 3 (1905).”

A Closer Look Bartók cast the Second Concerto in what might best be described as a sort of bilateral symmetry, similar to that used in the Fourth and Fifth quartets, which flank the Concerto chronologically. The writing for piano is ferociously difficult. The opening Allegro, which more than one commentator has likened to Bach’s busily contrapuntal Brandenburg Concertos, is scored for winds and brass only. The slow movement (AdagioAdagioAdagio) is for the accompaniment of strings and percussion, and contains a dazzling and percussive scherzo within (PrestoPrestoPresto), sandwiched between symmetrically balanced outer sections consisting of austere, chorale-like open fifths in the strings. The finale (AllegroAllegro moltomolto), scored for full orchestra, is a reiteration of the first movement—a “recap” that ingeniously completes the symmetry. Bartók’s own description continues thus:

In general outline, the Second Piano Concerto is written in classical sonata form. First movement: exposition, development, recapitulation. Third movement: rondo (though it should be noted here that only the exposition has the character of a rondo). A few other observations about the form: (1.) The thematic unity of the first and third movements: except for a single new theme, the third movement represents a free variant of the first, which serves as a “framework” (to hold together the parts of the third movement that are built on those of the first). (2.) In the recapitulation of the first and third movements, the themes are inverted. In the respective codas of both movements, the first theme appears cancrizans — that is to say, the notes of the theme are played backwards. The second movement is a Scherzo with an Adagio , or, if you prefer, an Adagio containing a Scherzo. The Adagio itself is divided into various equally important but mutually contrasting sections; one of them, the first, is constructed out of overlapping fifths in the strings. The other is a unison melody in the piano, with a glissando accompaniment from the drums.

As a whole, the composition is thus symmetrically designed: First movement, Adagio , Scherzo (center), Variation of the Adagio , Variation of the first movement. I have used this same scheme in my fourth and fifth string quartets. … I scored the first movement for winds and percussion, the Adagio for muted strings and timpani; the Scherzo calls for strings and a group of wind and percussion instruments; and only the third movement brings in the full orchestra.

I would further point out that neither of my two piano concertos is written for piano with accompaniment from an orchestra, but for piano and orchestra. In both works, I wished to realize absolute equality between solo instrument and orchestra.

—Paul J. Horsley

Bartók composed his Piano Concerto No. 2 from 1930 to 1931.

György Sándor was the pianist in the first Philadelphia Orchestra performance of the Second Concerto, in May 1958 at the Ann Arbor Festival, with William Smith conducting. He was also the soloist in the first Orchestra subscription performances, in March 1960, with Eugene Ormandy on the podium. Since then the work has been played by such as Alexis Weissenberg, Maurizio Pollini, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Keith Jarrett, Yefim Bronfman, and most recently, Garrick Ohlsson in April 2006, with conductor Herbert Blomstedt.

The Orchestra recorded the Concerto in 1969 for RCA, with Weissenberg and Ormandy.

Bartók scored the work for three flutes (III doubling piccolo), two oboes, English horn, two clarinets, bass clarinet, three bassoons (III doubling contrabassoon), four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion (triangle, tambourine, cymbals, side drum, bass drum), and strings, in addition to the solo piano.

Performance time is approximately 30 minutes.

Petrushka

Igor Stravinsky Born in Lomonosov, , June 17, 1882 Died in New York, April 6, 1971

Fresh from the Parisian successes of his score for Sergei Diaghilev’s 1910 production of The Firebird, Stravinsky wished to compose a lighter piece for orchestra before plunging into the next large-scale ballet for Diaghilev’s troupe (the work that would become The Rite of Spring ). While summering in Lausanne, Stravinsky conceived of an orchestral work with concertante piano, “a sort of Konzertstück, ” as he later wrote in his Autobiography . “In composing the music I had in my mind a distinct picture of a puppet, suddenly endowed with life, exasperating the patience of the orchestra with diabolical cascades of arpeggi. The orchestra, in turn, retaliates with menacing trumpet-blasts … and ends in the sorrowful and querulous collapse of the poor puppet.” The seeds were planted for Petrushka. When Diaghilev visited Stravinsky later that summer, expecting to find work on The Rite of Spring underway, he was surprised and not a little perturbed to discover that the composer had set a different project into motion. But when Stravinsky played passages of Petrushka for him, it was Diaghilev who enthusiastically suggested that the composer turn the work into a ballet.

Surprising Success With the aid of Alexandre Benois, an expert on the puppet theater, Diaghilev and Stravinsky worked out a detailed scenario. The action centered on Petrushka, the -like folkloric figure in the tradition—a sort of a mischievous loafer. In Stravinsky’s and Benois’s rendering, Petrushka is a puppet who comes to life and annoys everyone, including the Columbine-like ballerina, with whom he falls desperately in love. “In April 1911,” Stravinsky said to Robert Craft, “my wife returned to Russia with the children, while I joined Diaghilev, the painter Serov (who designed the bear in the last tableau), [Michel] Fokine, and Benois in Rome. These, my collaborators, were enthusiastic (except Fokine, of course).” Completing the music in early 1911, Stravinsky gave the work to the difficult Fokine, who created the choreography. Vaslav Nijinsky danced the title role in the work’s premiere in Paris on June 11 of that year; Pierre Monteux conducted the performance, which took place at the Théâtre du Châtelet. The work’s revolutionary musical language, which still has the power to astonish, made a deep impression.

Petrushka ’s success came as somewhat of a surprise even to its creators. “We were all afraid that its position on the program would be ruinous,” Stravinsky later said. “Everyone said that it could not succeed at the beginning of a program.” Petrushka was also crucial in Stravinsky’s development. “The success was good for me,” he said, “in that it gave me the absolute conviction of my ear just as I was about to begin Le Sacre du printemps. ”

In 1947 Stravinsky reworked the instrumentation “with the dual purpose of copyrighting it and of adapting it to the resources of medium-sized orchestras,” as he said later. “Ever since the first performance of the score, I had wanted to balance the orchestral sound more clearly in a few places, and to effect other improvements in the instrumentation. The orchestration of the 1947 version is, I think, much more skillful.”

A Closer Look Petrushka is divided into four “tableaux,” or scenes. The FirstFirst Tableau depicts the Shrovetide Fair in St. Petersburg in the early 19th century, and features by various groups of villagers and circus performers. A show-master (or “Charlatan,” as he is called in Benois’s scenario) produces a small theater containing three puppets, and as he plays the flute, the three dolls come to life and begin to dance. The Second Tableau takes place in Petrushka’s room or cell, where the boy rails against his awkwardness and his total dependence upon the puppet-master’s will. It is in this tableau that Stravinsky’s famous “dual tonality” (C against F-sharp) makes its most piquant appearance, “as Petrushka’s insult to the public,” in the composer’s words.

In the Third Tableau, the ballerina visits the third puppet, the “Blackamoor” (another stock figure of the Punch and Judy shows, of whom Popeye’s nemesis Bluto is perhaps a pop- culture poor cousin), and she finds herself strangely attracted to his coarse masculinity. Petrushka breaks in on their little love scene and throws himself about the room in a jealous fit. The Fourth Tableau returns to the Shrovetide Fair, with a varied array of dances; in the midst of the commotion, the puppets come to life again, and the Moor is seen chasing Petrushka. He strikes the boy down with his scimitar, and as Petrushka dies, the Moor steals away with the ballerina. The show-master assures the public that Petrushka is only a doll, and the crowd disperses.

But in a final, brilliant coup de théâtre, Petrushka’s ghost is seen on the rooftop, sharply mocking the show-master and the audience as well. (Or is it the real Petrushka, truly alive after all?) Stravinsky insisted that this resurrection was his idea, not Benois’s. “I wanted the dialogue for trumpets in two keys at the end to show that [Petrushka’s] ghost is still insulting the public,” he said. “I was, and am, more proud of these last pages than of anything else in the score. Diaghilev wished to have me change the last four pizzicato notes in favor of ‘a tonal ending,’ as he so quaintly put it, though two months later, when Petrushka was one of the Ballets [Russes’s] greatest successes, he denied he had ever been guilty of his original criticism.”

—Paul J. Horsley

Petrushka was composed from 1910 to 1911 and was revised in 1947.

Stravinsky himself conducted the first Philadelphia Orchestra performances of Petrushka, in January 1925. The revised version was most recently performed on subscription concerts in January/February 2008, under the baton of Rossen Milanov.

The Philadelphians have recorded the work four times: in 1937 for RCA with Leopold Stokowski; in 1954 and 1964 for CBS with Eugene Ormandy; and in 1981 for EMI with .

Stravinsky scored the piece for three flutes (III doubling piccolo), two oboes, English horn, three clarinets (III doubling bass clarinet), two bassoons, contrabassoon, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion (bass drum, cymbals, side drum, tam- tam, tambourine, triangle, xylophone), harp, piano, celesta, and strings.

Petrushka runs approximately 35 minutes in performance.

Program notes © 2012. All rights reserved. Program notes may not be reprinted without written permission from The Philadelphia Orchestra Association.

GENERAL TERMS Arpeggio: A broken chord (with notes played in succession instead of together) Atonality: A term used to describe music that is not tonal, especially organized without reference to key or tonal center Cadence: The conclusion to a phrase, movement, or piece based on a recognizable melodic formula, harmonic progression, or dissonance resolution Cadenza: A passage or section in a style of brilliant improvisation, usually inserted near the end of a movement or composition Chorale: A hymn tune of the German Protestant Church, or one similar in style Chord: The simultaneous sounding of three or more tones Coda: A concluding section or passage added in order to confirm the impression of finality Concertante: A work featuring one or more solo instruments Counterpoint: A term that describes the combination of simultaneously sounding musical lines Development: See sonata form Divertimento: A piece of entertaining music in several movements, often scored for a mixed ensemble and having no fixed form Glissando: A glide from one note to the next Op.: Abbreviation for opus, a term used to indicate the chronological position of a composition within a composer’s output. Opus numbers are not always reliable because they are often applied in the order of publication rather than composition. Pizzicato: Plucked Rondo: A form frequently used in symphonies and concertos for the final movement. It consists of a main section that alternates with a variety of contrasting sections (A-B-A-C-A etc.). Scherzo: Literally “a joke.” Usually the third movement of symphonies and quartets that was introduced by Beethoven to replace the minuet. The scherzo is followed by a gentler section called a trio, after which the scherzo is repeated. Its characteristics are a rapid tempo in triple time, vigorous rhythm, and humorous contrasts. Sinfonia: A short introductory instrumental piece Sonata form: The form in which the first movements (and sometimes others) of symphonies are usually cast. The sections are exposition, development, and recapitulation, the last sometimes followed by a coda. The exposition is the introduction of the musical ideas, which are then “developed.” In the recapitulation, the exposition is repeated with modifications. Symphonic poem: A type of 19th-century symphonic piece in one movement, which is based upon an extramusical idea, either poetic or descriptive Tonality: The orientation of melodies and harmonies towards a specific pitch or pitches Triad: A three-tone chord composed of a given tone (the “root”) with its third and fifth in ascending order in the scale

THE SPEED OF MUSIC (Tempo) Adagio: Leisurely, slow Allegro: Bright, fast Presto: Very fast

TEMPO MODIFIERS Molto: Very