Dec. 10-11, 2016, Page 1 Notes on the Program by Dr. Richard E

Dec. 10-11, 2016, page 1 Notes on the Program by DR. RICHARD E. RODDA Blumine (“Little Flowers”), Symphonic Movement GUSTAV MAHLER (1860-1911) Suite from the Incidental Music to Maeterlinck’s Pelléas et Mélisande, Op. 80 Composed in 1884. GABRIEL FAURÉ (1845-1924) Premiered in Budapest on November 20, 1889, conducted by the composer. Composed in 1898. Premiered June 21, 1898 in London, conducted by the composer. When Mahler conducted the early performances of his Symphony No. 1, in Budapest, Hamburg, Weimar and Berlin between 1889 and 1896, the work Gabriel Fauré was one of the great figures of French music at the turn of the was fitted with both a descriptive literary program and a fifth movement. twentieth century. A student of Saint-Saëns, a master organist, the teacher The program, derived principally from the novel Titan by Jean Paul, one of Ravel, Enesco, Koechlin and Nadia Boulanger, director of the Paris of Mahler’s favorite writers, divided the work’s five movements into two Conservatoire, and a composer of immense skill and refinement, Fauré was parts: Part I (“From the Days of Youth”): Spring and No End, Blumine best suited to composing in the small forms of song and chamber music. (“Little Flowers”), Under Full Sail; Part II (“Commedia Humana”): The Among the most successful of his handful of works for orchestra is the Hunter’s Funeral Procession, From the Inferno to Paradise. The program, beautiful suite he drew from his incidental music to Maeterlinck’s symbolist which Mahler fleshed out with details about “the awakening of nature ... play Pelléas et Mélisande, which he created for a production of the drama animals of the forest escorting the coffin of the dead hunter ... a deeply at the Prince of Wales Theatre, London in 1898. (Fauré generally disliked wounded heart” and so forth, was criticized as confused and unintelligible, writing for large ensembles, and often entrusted his most talented students a view with which he sufficiently agreed to first condense it, then delete it, with the orchestration of his pieces. Charles Koechlin was assigned the and finally instruct that it not be associated with the music at all, though original theatrical version of Pelléas; Fauré based his 1901 suite upon the the name “Titan” is still often attached to the Symphony. A similar process orchestration of his pupil.) of excision led to the eventual deletion of the work’s added movement, Blumine (whose title apparently refers to Jean Paul’s essay Herbst Blumine This haunting and haunted drama, which premiered in Paris in 1893, em- — “Little Autumn Flowers”), which Mahler seems to have considered too bodied the Symbolists’ philosophy that mood is more important than plot. sentimental for its symphonic context. Such dramatic incidents as occur often defy logical continuity, seeming rather to be isolated events intended to suggest associations and feelings Blumine originated as one of seven pieces of incidental music that Mahler to the audience through the use of language and setting. Robert Layton wrote for a dramatization of Joseph Viktor von Scheffel’s popular narra- summarized the drama’s plot: “Pelléas is set in mythical Allemonde, the tive poem Der Trompeter von Säkkingen (“The Trumpeter of Sachingen”) protagonists in the drama remain shadowy and we are left knowing little in June 1884 at the Court Theater in Kassel, where he was then assistant or nothing of their background. Prince Golaud out riding one day discovers conductor. Blumine, the only item from the incidental music that Mahler Mélisande, weeping and lost in the forest, and takes her under his protec- saved, accompanied the scene in which the trumpeter Werner plays a tion. Maeterlinck’s play charts her growing infatuation for his younger serenade “in the moonlit night to the castle across the Rhine where [his half-brother, Pelléas, and Golaud’s ensuing jealousy.” The play inspired beloved] Margareta lives,” hence the prominence given to the solo trumpet incidental music from Jean Sibelius for a 1905 production in Helsinki (in throughout the piece. Finnish!), a concert overture from Cyril Scott in 1912, and a vast symphonic poem from Arnold Schoenberg in 1903. It also proved to be the perfect Concert pour petit orchestre, Op. 34 subject for the wispy, Impressionistic idiom of Debussy, and was equally ALBERT ROUSSEL (1869-1937) well suited to the art of Fauré, whose incidental music preceded Debussy’s opera by four years. Composed in 1926-1927. Premiered on May 5, 1927 at the Concerts Straram in Paris, conducted Fauré’s musical style, though looking forward in some of its techniques by Walther Straram. to Impressionism, is more refined, classical and understated than that of Debussy, concerning itself with purity of line and precise formal balance Albert Roussel, a leading figure in French music during the years between rather than with mood-painting through unconventional harmonies and the two world wars, was orphaned at an early age and raised first by his indistinct structures. Julien Teirsot described the elegant essence of Fauré’s grandfather, the mayor of his native town of Tourcoing, at the Belgian music in these words: “It is the spirit of Hellenism that is reborn in him.... border thirty miles from the North Sea, and later by a maternal aunt. He thrusts himself beyond the spheres to bring back pure beauty.” Such Though he showed musical promise as a boy, Roussel decided upon a terms as “taste,” “unerring judgment,” “delicacy,” “impeccable workman- naval career, and he was admitted to the École Navale as a cadet in 1887. ship” and “sensibility” attach themselves easily and appropriately to the The duty and travels of military life did nothing to diminish his interest in music of Fauré, and they certainly apply to this lovely Suite from Pelléas et music, however, and in 1894, he resigned his naval commission to devote Mélisande. The Prélude was intended to be played before the curtain rises himself to the study of composition. After several years of private tuition on Pelléas to evoke the play’s aura of melancholy and mystery. There is a and some tentative creative undertakings, he enrolled in 1898 in Vincent meditative quality about this music, a deep stillness that rises only briefly to d’Indy’s Schola Cantorum, recently formed as a rival to the venerable Paris peaks of tension before again subsiding. The horn-calls near the end invest Conservatoire, to begin an imposing ten-year curriculum that he saw to the music with a suggestion of the antique, sylvan setting of the drama. The completion. Roussel was appointed to teach the counterpoint class at the second movement (Fileuse) depicts Mélisande at her spinning wheel. The Schola beginning in 1902, and he remained in that post for the next dozen whirring of the wheel is portrayed by the steady rhythmic filigree in the years; Eric Satie and Edgar Varèse were among his pupils. By the time he strings, which serves as background for the heroine’s plaintive song, intoned finally completed his studies at the Schola, in 1908, Roussel had already by the oboe. The third movement, Sicilienne, is one of Fauré’s most famous written several large works, including his First Symphony. inspirations, though it was not originally composed for the incidental music for the play. Pressed for time during his preparations for the opening night In 1909, Roussel went on an extended tour of India and Southeast Asia. His of the London Pelléas, the composer borrowed this work from a chamber music was deeply affected by that exotic experience, and two of the works piece first written for cello and piano. In the London production, its qual- that first brought him wide attention (the orchestral suite Evocations and ity of bittersweet nostalgia was used to underline the touching love scene the opéra-ballet Padmâvatî) were based on Hindu legends and employed between Pelléas and Mélisande. The finale, The Death of Mélisande, is a Indian musical motifs. With the outbreak of World War I, Roussel sought mournful elegy of quiet intensity. re-admission to the armed forces, and after a period as an ambulance driver he was taken into the artillery corps. Following the war, he lived on the coast in Brittany and later in Normandy, where, despite persistent health Dec. 10-11, 2016, page 2 problems, he produced a succession of major scores. His eminent position in wrote to his brother Modeste from his sister’s country home in Kamenka French cultural life was recognized by a week-long festival of his music in on October 22, 1879. “I experienced a certain vague dissatisfaction with Paris in 1929 to celebrate his sixtieth birthday. He visited the United States myself, an over-frequent and almost irresistible desire to sleep, a certain the following year for the premiere of his Third Symphony, commissioned emptiness and ultimately boredom.... Finally yesterday it became fully for the fiftieth anniversary of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Roussel’s apparent to me what was the matter. I had to get on with something: I find life-long interest in music education was reflected in the composition that myself absolutely incapable of living long without work. Today I began to he left unfinished at his death, in 1937: a large theatrical piece involving create something, and the boredom vanished as if by magic. I have begun to workers’ choral groups. compose a piano concerto. I will work without hurrying, straining or tiring myself in any way.” Though he admitted to working on the new piece only Roussel’s earliest compositions reflect the academic style and cyclical forms in the mornings, devoting the rest of the day to reading and long walks, he advocated by d’Indy and the Schola Cantorum.

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