SEASON 2020-2021

Bizet and Ravel

July 8, 2021 Jessica GriffinJessica SEASON 2020-2021 The Philadelphia Orchestra Thursday, July 8, at 8:00 On the Digital Stage

Yannick Nézet-Séguin Conductor

Ravel Le Tombeau de Couperin I. Prélude II. Forlane III. Menuet IV. Rigaudon

Ravel Mother Goose Suite I. Pavane of Sleeping Beauty II. Tom Thumb III. Laideronnette, Empress of Pagodes IV. The Conversations of Beauty and the Beast V. The Fairy Garden

Bizet Symphony No. 1 in C major I. Allegro vivo II. Adagio III. Allegro vivace IV. Allegro vivace

This program runs approximately 1 hour, 10 minutes, and will be performed without an intermission.

Philadelphia Orchestra concerts are broadcast on WRTI 90.1 FM on Sunday afternoons at 1 PM, and are repeated on Monday evenings at 7 PM on WRTI HD 2. Visit www.wrti.org to listen live or for more details. Our World

Lead support for the Digital Stage is provided by:

Claudia and Richard Balderston Elaine W. Camarda and A. Morris Williams, Jr. The CHG Charitable Trust Edith R. Dixon Innisfree Foundation Gretchen and M. Roy Jackson Neal W. Krouse John H. McFadden and Lisa D. Kabnick The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Leslie A. Miller and Richard B. Worley Ralph W. Muller and Beth B. Johnston Neubauer Family Foundation William Penn Foundation Peter and Mari Shaw Dr. and Mrs. Joseph B. Townsend Waterman Trust Constance and Sankey Williams Wyncote Foundation SEASON 2020-2021 The Philadelphia Orchestra

Yannick Nézet-Séguin Music Director Walter and Leonore Annenberg Chair

Nathalie Stutzmann Principal Guest Conductor Designate

Gabriela Lena Frank Composer-in-Residence

Erina Yashima Assistant Conductor Lina Gonzalez-Granados Conducting Fellow

Charlotte Blake Alston Storyteller, Narrator, and Host

Frederick R. Haas Artistic Advisor Fred J. Cooper Memorial Organ Experience

First Violins Amy Oshiro-Morales David Kim, Concertmaster Yu-Ting Chen Juliette Kang, First Associate Jeoung-Yin Kim Concertmaster Christine Lim Joseph and Marie Field Chair Marc Rovetti, Assistant Concertmaster Violas Barbara Govatos Choong-Jin Chang, Principal Robert E. Mortensen Chair Ruth and A. Morris Williams Chair Jonathan Beiler Kirsten Johnson, Associate Principal Hirono Oka Kerri Ryan, Assistant Principal Richard Amoroso Judy Geist Robert and Lynne Pollack Chair Yayoi Numazawa Renard Edwards Jason DePue Anna Marie Ahn Petersen Piasecki Family Chair Larry A. Grika Chair Jennifer Haas David Nicastro Miyo Curnow Burchard Tang Elina Kalendarova Che-Hung Chen Daniel Han Rachel Ku Julia Li Marvin Moon William Polk Meng Wang Mei Ching Huang Cellos Second Violins Hai-Ye Ni, Principal Kimberly Fisher, Principal Priscilla Lee, Associate Principal Peter A. Benoliel Chair Yumi Kendall, Assistant Principal Paul Roby, Associate Principal Richard Harlow Sandra and David Marshall Chair Gloria dePasquale Dara Morales, Assistant Principal Orton P. and Noël S. Jackson Chair Anne M. Buxton Chair Kathryn Picht Read Philip Kates Robert Cafaro Davyd Booth Volunteer Committees Chair Paul Arnold Ohad Bar-David Joseph Brodo Chair, given by Peter A. Benoliel John Koen Dmitri Levin Derek Barnes Boris Balter Alex Veltman SEASON 2020-2021

Basses Harold Robinson, Principal Trumpets Carole and Emilio Gravagno Chair David Bilger, Principal Joseph Conyers, Acting Associate Marguerite and Gerry Lenfest Chair Principal Jeffrey Curnow, Associate Principal Tobey and Mark Dichter Chair Gary and Ruthanne Schlarbaum Chair Nathaniel West, Acting Assistant Principal Anthony Prisk David Fay Duane Rosengard Trombones Some members of the string sections voluntarily Nitzan Haroz, Principal rotate seating on a periodic basis. Neubauer Family Foundation Chair Matthew Vaughn, Co-Principal Flutes Blair Bollinger, Bass Trombone Jeffrey Khaner, Principal Drs. Bong and Mi Wha Lee Chair Paul and Barbara Henkels Chair Patrick Williams, Associate Principal Tuba Rachelle and Ronald Kaiserman Chair Carol Jantsch, Principal Olivia Staton Lyn and George M. Ross Chair Erica Peel, Piccolo Timpani Oboes Don S. Liuzzi, Principal Philippe Tondre, Principal Dwight V. Dowley Chair Samuel S. Fels Chair Angela Zator Nelson, Associate Principal Peter Smith, Associate Principal Jonathan Blumenfeld Percussion Edwin Tuttle Chair Christopher Deviney, Principal Elizabeth Starr Masoudnia, English Horn Angela Zator Nelson Joanne T. Greenspun Chair Piano and Celesta Clarinets Kiyoko Takeuti Ricardo Morales, Principal Leslie Miller and Richard Worley Chair Keyboards Samuel Caviezel, Associate Principal Sarah and Frank Coulson Chair Davyd Booth Socrates Villegas Paul R. Demers, Bass Clarinet Harp Peter M. Joseph and Susan Rittenhouse Elizabeth Hainen, Principal Joseph Chair Librarians Bassoons Nicole Jordan, Principal Daniel Matsukawa, Principal Steven K. Glanzmann Richard M. Klein Chair Mark Gigliotti, Co-Principal Angela Anderson Smith Stage Personnel Holly Blake, Contrabassoon James J. Sweeney, Jr., Manager Dennis Moore, Jr. Horns Jennifer Montone, Principal Gray Charitable Trust Chair Jeffrey Lang, Associate Principal Hannah L. and J. Welles Henderson Chair Christopher Dwyer Jeffry Kirschen Ernesto Tovar Torres Shelley Showers SEASON 2020-2021 THE PHILADELPHIA ORCHESTRA

Jessica Griffin

The Philadelphia Orchestra is one of the world’s preeminent orchestras. It strives to share the transformative power of music with the widest possible audience, and to create joy, connection, and excitement through music in the Philadelphia region, across the country, and around the world. Through innovative programming, robust educational initiatives, and an ongoing commitment to the communities that it serves, the ensemble is on a path to create an expansive future for classical music, and to further the place of the arts in an open and democratic society.

Yannick Nézet-Séguin is now in his ninth season as the eighth music director of The Philadelphia Orchestra. His connection to the ensemble’s musicians has been praised by both concertgoers and critics, and he is embraced by the musicians of the Orchestra, audiences, and the community.

Your Philadelphia Orchestra takes great pride in its hometown, performing for the people of Philadelphia year-round, from Verizon Hall to community centers, the Mann Center to Penn’s Landing, classrooms to hospitals, and over the airwaves and online. The Orchestra continues to discover new and inventive ways to nurture its relationship with loyal patrons. SEASON 2020-2021 THE PHILADELPHIA ORCHESTRA

In March 2020, in response to the cancellation of concerts due the COVID-19 pandemic, the Orchestra launched the Virtual Philadelphia Orchestra, a portal hosting video and audio of performances, free, on its website and social media platforms. In September 2020 the Orchestra announced Our World NOW, its reimagined season of concerts filmed without audiences and presented on its Digital Stage. Our World NOW also includes free offerings: HearTOGETHER, a podcast series on racial and social justice; educational activities; and Our City, Your Orchestra, small ensemble performances from locations throughout the Philadelphia region.

The Philadelphia Orchestra continues the tradition of educational and community engagement for listeners of all ages. It launched its HEAR initiative in 2016 to become a major force for good in every community that it serves. HEAR is a portfolio of integrated initiatives that promotes Health, champions music Education, enables broad Access to Orchestra performances, and maximizes impact through Research. The Orchestra’s award-winning education and community initiatives engage over 50,000 students, families, and community members through programs such as PlayINs, side-by-sides, PopUP concerts, Free Neighborhood Concerts, School Concerts, sensory-friendly concerts, the School Partnership Program and School Ensemble Program, and All City Orchestra Fellowships.

Through concerts, tours, residencies, and recordings, the Orchestra is a global ambassador. It performs annually at Carnegie Hall, the Saratoga Performing Arts Center, and the Bravo! Vail Music Festival. The Orchestra also has a rich history of touring, having first performed outside Philadelphia in the earliest days of its founding. It was the first American orchestra to perform in the People’s Republic of China in 1973, launching a now-five-decade commitment of people-to-people exchange.

The Orchestra also makes live recordings available on popular digital music services and as part of the Orchestra on Demand section of its website. Under Yannick’s leadership, the Orchestra returned to recording, with nine celebrated releases on the prestigious Deutsche Grammophon label. The Orchestra also reaches thousands of radio listeners with weekly broadcasts on WRTI-FM and SiriusXM.

For more information, please visit philorch.org. SEASON 2020-2021 MUSIC DIRECTOR

Jessica Griffin

Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin will lead The Philadelphia Orchestra through at least the 2025–26 season, a significant long-term commitment. Additionally, he became the third music director of New York’s Metropolitan Opera in 2018. Yannick, who holds the Walter and Leonore Annenberg Chair, is an inspired leader of The Philadelphia Orchestra. His intensely collaborative style, deeply rooted musical curiosity, and boundless enthusiasm have been heralded by critics and audiences alike. The New York Times has called him “phenomenal,” adding that “the ensemble, famous for its glowing strings and homogenous richness, has never sounded better.”

Yannick has established himself as a musical leader of the highest caliber and one of the most thrilling talents of his generation. He has been artistic director and principal conductor of Montreal’s Orchestre Métropolitain since 2000, and in 2017 he became an honorary member of the Chamber Orchestra of Europe. He was music director of the Rotterdam Philharmonic from 2008 to 2018 (he is now honorary conductor) and was principal guest conductor of the London Philharmonic from 2008 to 2014. He has made wildly successful appearances with the world’s SEASON 2020-2021 MUSIC DIRECTOR

most revered ensembles and at many of the leading opera houses. Yannick signed an exclusive recording contract with Deutsche Grammophon in 2018. Under his leadership The Philadelphia Orchestra returned to recording with nine releases on that label. His upcoming recordings will include projects with the Philadelphians, the Metropolitan Opera, the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, and the Orchestre Métropolitain, with which he will also continue to record for ATMA Classique.

A native of Montreal, Yannick studied piano, conducting, composition, and chamber music at Montreal’s Conservatory of Music and continued his studies with renowned conductor Carlo Maria Giulini; he also studied choral conducting with Joseph Flummerfelt at Westminster Choir College. Among Yannick’s honors are an appointment as Companion of the Order of Canada; an Officer of the Order of Montreal; Musical America’s 2016 Artist of the Year; and honorary doctorates from the University of Quebec, the Curtis Institute of Music, Westminster Choir College of Rider University, McGill University, the University of Montreal, and the University of Pennsylvania.

Todd Rosenberg SEASON 2020-2021 FRAMING THE PROGRAM

This all-French program begins with two beloved works by Maurice Ravel that he originally composed for piano and later orchestrated.

Ravel wrote Le Tombeau de Couperin as a piano suite in 1914. The idea of the tombeau (literally “tomb”) or “homage-piece” dates back centuries. In this case, Ravel offers a double tribute, first to his great French predecessor, the Baroque composer François Couperin. Written during the First World War, each of the movements as well honors friends of his who died in the horrific conflict.

In 1908 and 1909 Ravel composed a collection of four-hand piano pieces called Mother Goose for the children of some close friends. In 1911 he added a few more French fairy tales when he was asked to orchestrate the suite for performances as a ballet, which premiered in Paris the next year.

Georges Bizet is now best remembered for Carmen, one of the most frequently performed operas in the repertory. But during his short life (he died at age 36) he wrote a wide range of pieces. One of the earliest is his charming Symphony in C, which he composed at age 17, although it was only premiered some 80 years later, and that sparkles from start to finish.

The Philadelphia Orchestra is the only orchestra in the world with three weekly broadcasts on SiriusXM’s Symphony Hall, Channel 76, on Mondays at 7 PM, Thursdays at 12 AM, and Saturdays at 4 PM.

SEASON 2020-2021 PARALLEL EVENTS

1855 Bizet Symphony in C Music Smetana Piano Trio Literature Longfellow The Song of Hiawatha Art Courbet The Artist’s Studio History First US veterinary college incorporated, in Boston

1908 Ravel Mother Goose Suite Music Elgar Symphony No. 1 Literature Stein Three Lives Art Chagall Nu rouge History First Model “T” produced

1914 Ravel Le Tombeau de Couperin Music Stravinsky Le Rossignol Literature Joyce Dubliners Art Braque Music History Panama Canal opened SEASON 2020-2021 THE MUSIC

Le Tombeau de Couperin Maurice Ravel Born in Ciboure, Lower Pyrenees, March 7, 1875 Died in Paris, December 28, 1937

Like other composers of his day, Maurice Ravel felt all too keenly the challenge to his national identity that World War I presented. Dissatisfied with “mere” military service, he sought musical means to plant his personal and artistic roots firmly into French soil. By 1914 he had already established a notable reputation as a composer, with a brilliant String Quartet, orchestral works (the Rapsodie espagnole, Mother Goose, Daphnis and Chloé), and revolutionary piano pieces (Jeux d’eau, Miroirs, Gaspard de la nuit). At the beginning of the war he volunteered for service, risking his already fragile health to become a driver for the transport corps. But a composer he remained; despite his contribution to the battlefield he still sought a means of asserting his “Frenchness” musically. Le Tombeau de Couperin became this means, for several reasons.

An Homage Not Only to Couperin The concept of the tombeau or “homage-piece” dates back at least as far as the Renaissance. French composers of the 17th century commonly wrote sets of chamber or keyboard pieces—which they called tombeaux (literally “tombs”) or occasionally apothéoses—to pay musical tribute to a dead colleague. In Le Tombeau de Couperin, six piano pieces composed from 1914 to 1917, Ravel indulged not only his increasing Neo-Classical tendencies but also his nationalistic reverence of the supreme artistry of one of France’s most prominent sons. In the Parnassus of musical deities of the Baroque, François Couperin le grand (the great)—as he was called to distinguish him from the other members of his musically gifted family—joins the elite of Bach, Handel, Rameau, Vivaldi, and Alessandro Scarlatti. He is perhaps the least well appreciated of all these luminaries, and many concert-goers know his name solely through Ravel’s title.

Couperin himself (1668–1733) wrote sets of homage-pieces, too, including apothéoses for two early Baroque masters, Jean-Baptiste SEASON 2020-2021 THE MUSIC

Lully and Arcangelo Corelli. Ravel’s set of pieces thus paid tribute not only to a French master but also to a distinctly French tradition of musical tribute. At the same time the work took on another dimension related specifically to the war: Each of the six piano movements is dedicated to a friend or colleague lost on the battlefield. (In the composer’s original piano manuscript, he has drawn a small picture of a funeral urn.) Thus the tombeau was not just for Couperin: Ravel paid tribute to a great Frenchman and simultaneously expressed his grief over fallen comrades.

The pianist Marguerite Long, who later was to play the premiere of the composer’s G-major Piano Concerto, presented the first performances of the piano version of the Tombeau in Paris on April 11, 1919. As he often did with his keyboard works, Ravel created orchestrations of four of the six, which were performed in Paris in February 1920 and made into a very popular ballet by the Swedish Ballet the same year.

A Closer Look The first piece of the orchestral suite, a Prélude featuring effervescent and ornate wind solos, alludes clearly to the harpsichord works of Rameau and Couperin. The Forlane is derived from a typically quirky 6/8 dance of northern Italian origin. The Menuet draws upon a dance type familiar to most through the middle movements of Classical-period symphonies; it features a piquantly spiced central Trio featuring instrumental color that is distinctly 20th century. The Suite’s final dance is the vigorous Rigaudon, juxtaposed with a more pastoral section of vivid contrast.

—Paul J. Horsley

Le Tombeau de Couperin was composed from 1914 to 1917 and was orchestrated in 1919.

Leopold Stokowski conducted the first Philadelphia Orchestra performances of Ravel’s Tombeau suite, in February 1921, only a year after its world premiere. The most recent appearance on a subscription performance was in November 2016, with Yannick Nézet-Séguin on the podium.

The Orchestra recorded the work in 1958 with Eugene Ormandy for CBS.

Ravel scored the work for two flutes (II doubling piccolo), two oboes (II doubling English horn), two clarinets, two bassoons, two horns, trumpet, harp, and strings.

Performance time is approximately 18 minutes. SEASON 2020-2021 THE MUSIC

Mother Goose Suite Maurice Ravel

It was not until the first decade of the 20th century that Maurice Ravel’s career as a composer, which had suffered fitful starts, finally took flight. He had failed several attempts to win the coveted Prix de Rome at the Paris Conservatory, partly because his daring experiments with color and harmony did not fit easily into a conservatory mentality. Finally he abandoned his studies altogether, becoming involved instead with “Les Apaches,” the vaguely disreputable collection of Parisian aesthetes who met to discuss art, literature, painting, music, history, and any other topic that might arise. Ravel tried out many of his new works at meetings of Les Apaches—often for groups that included such notables as Manuel de Falla.

Despite critical aspersions, his reputation grew steadily. Around 1900 the Parisian publisher Demets had started to print several of the composer’s early works, such as the Pavane for a Dead Princess, the String Quartet, and the piano piece Jeux d’eau. They were received by the public with astonished enthusiasm. Buoyed by these successes, Ravel produced, in rapid succession, a string of brilliant works that secured his position as more than just Debussy’s also-ran—including several of the works for which he is best known, such as the Sonatine (1905), the five Miroirs (1905), Rapsodie espagnole (1907), Gaspard de la nuit (1908), Mother Goose (1908–11), and Daphnis and Chloé (1909–12).

Children’s Duets Ravel composed Mother Goose as a set of pieces for piano duet, originally intending them for Mimie and Jean, the young children of the composer’s close friends Xavier and Ida Godebski. He wrote the work mostly in 1908 at La Grangette, the Godebski’s summer home near Fontainebleau, but he didn’t complete the set until SEASON 2020-2021 THE MUSIC

early 1910. Although he made the piano writing as simple and straightforward as possible, in the end it proved too difficult for the Godebski children (the youngest of whom was only eight). The piece was premiered, in this initial piano version, in Paris in April 1910, by Jeanne Leleu and Geneviève Durony—themselves only children at the time. The following year the composer transcribed the work for full orchestra, and this version is the one heard on this concert. He also expanded it into a full-length ballet score, adding two movements and rearranging the order of the pieces; this last version received its premiere in January 1912 at the Théâtre des Arts in Paris.

A Closer Look Ravel’s delightful evocation of childish pleasures takes its inspiration from three different versions of the Mother Goose tales, giving the version by Charles Perrault (1628–1703) the most credence. It is the first story from Perrault’s Contes de ma Mère l’Oye (Mother Goose Stories, 1697), for example, that supplies the opening piece of Ravel’s Suite, Pavane of Sleeping Beauty—a slow-moving dance of melancholy charm. Ravel himself inscribed the second piece (Tom Thumb), with the following excerpt from Perrault: “Tom Thumb [who was lost in the woods] believed that he would easily be able to find the way by means of the bread that he had scattered wherever he passed—but he was surprised to discover not one single crumb. The birds had come and eaten it all!”

The brilliant, coloristic atmosphere of the third piece is a reflection of its subject, Laideronnette, Empress of Pagodes. Again Ravel heads this quick march with a passage from the tale as told in Marie-Catherine d’Aulnoy’s Serpentin vert: “She disrobed and entered her bath. At once the pagodes and pagodines began to sing and play on instruments. Some had archlutes made of walnut shells, others played on viols made from the shells of almonds, for they were obliged to proportion their instruments to their stature.” (A pagode is a fairy creature made of jewels and precious metals.)

The fourth piece is a delicate and sad waltz, a sort of dreamy depiction of The Conversations of Beauty and the Beast. Ravel inscribes the score with a dialogue between the couple, taken this time from a version by Marie Leprince de Beaumont: SEASON 2020-2021 THE MUSIC

When I think how good-hearted you are, you do not seem so ugly. Yes, I have indeed a kind heart, but I am a monster. There are many men more monstrous than you. If I had wit I would invent a fine compliment to thank you, but I am only a beast.

Beauty, will you be my wife? No, Beast. I die content since I have had the pleasure of seeing you again. No, my dear Beast, you shall not die; you shall live to be my husband!

The beast suddenly disappeared, and she saw at her feet a prince more beautiful than love, who thanked her for having broken his enchantment.

The clarinet tune at the beginning of this movement seems to represent Beauty, while the growling contrabassoon stands for the Beast; after a heartfelt discussion, the Beast’s theme is transformed, finally, into a “beautiful” violin melody. The fifth piece, The Fairy Garden (marked slowly, seriously) brings the set to a plaintive, subtly-shaded close.

—Paul J. Horsley

Ravel composed the Mother Goose Suite from 1908 to 1910 and orchestrated it in 1911.

Artur Rodzinski was on the podium for the first Philadelphia Orchestra performances of the piece, in January 1926. The most recent subscription performances were in April 2010, with Charles Dutoit conducting.

Ravel scored the work for two flutes (II doubling piccolo), two oboes (II doubling English horn), two clarinets, two bassoons (II doubling contrabassoon), two horns, timpani, percussion (bass drum, cymbals, glockenspiel, tam-tam, triangle, xylophone), harp, celesta, and strings.

The Suite runs approximately 15 minutes in performance. SEASON 2020-2021 THE MUSIC

Symphony in C

Georges Bizet Born in Paris, October 25, 1838 Died in Bougival, June 3, 1875

Long before Georges Bizet composed Carmen or any of the other music for which he is best known today, he wrote a symphony that he never heard performed and that languished in obscurity until long after his early death. Bizet completed his Symphony in C, his first important composition, when he was 17 years old and still a student at the Paris Conservatory. It remains an astonishing first foray into Classical symphonic design. Not only does it show a mastery of form and technique (having entered the Conservatory at age nine, Bizet had by this time already won all the prizes one could win there)—it also manifests the innate and extraordinary melodism that would later figure so heavily in his operas.

A Lost Symphony Charles Gounod, with whom Bizet studied at the Conservatory, exerted a considerable influence on the boy’s musical development. Bizet idealized Gounod, who was already a famous composer well before writing his beloved opera Faust, and told him, “You were the beginning of my life as an artist. I spring from you.” During the early 1850s Gounod called upon his student to arrange compositions for piano four-hands, usually destined for publication. One of the works Bizet arranged, in 1855, was his teacher’s First Symphony in D. Within a week of his 17th birthday, Bizet began his own First Symphony; it should come as little surprise, then, that the work shares many characteristics with the elder composer’s. A few thematic ideas have been lifted almost note for note from Gounod’s Symphony, and the larger formal designs are identical in certain movements.

Bizet was aware of the powerful influence his teacher’s music exerted on him: “Gounod is an entirely original composer, and as long as one imitates him one remains on the level of a pupil.” This SEASON 2020-2021 THE MUSIC

assessment came a few years after Bizet had written his youthful Symphony and it may partially explain why he suppressed it. The Symphony in C may have been conceived more as an exercise in symphonic procedure than as an actual composition. The ultimate result, however, is one of the finest French symphonies in the whole repertoire, one that surpasses Gounod’s model in every respect.

It took a long time for the musical world to have the opportunity to make the comparison. Bizet suppressed the work and spoke of another symphony in C, his later Roma, as his first symphony. After Bizet’s death at age 36 in 1875, his widow gave the score to a friend who ultimately left it to the Paris Conservatory in 1933. Not long afterward, D.C. Parker, who wrote the first English-language biography of Bizet, brought the work to the attention of conductor Felix Weingartner, who conducted its premiere in Basel in 1935. The Symphony was published later that year and quickly became a favorite with concert audiences. The work also inspired one of George Balanchine’s most celebrated ballets.

A Closer Look: The charms of Bizet’s Symphony are undeniable and particularly astounding coming as they do from so young a composer. Like most prodigies, Bizet relies heavily on models, in this case not just the practical, present, and personal example of Gounod, but also the inspiration of past masters such as Haydn, Mozart, Rossini, and Schubert. (Beethoven, one notes, does not seem to have exerted his symphonic authority in this instance.) The four-movement work is of Classical dimensions and the size of the orchestra is modest (there are no trombones).

The opening Allegro vivo bursts forth with energy and formally accords to procedures that the great Viennese Classical composers had employed some 70 years earlier. The oboe solo of the second movement (Adagio), which Bizet later used in both the opera The Pearl Fishers and in L’Arlésienne, has an exotic tinge to it that reflects contemporary Parisian interest in other cultures. The fugal passage in the middle of this movement (another idea copied directly from Gounod’s Symphony) is prefigured at the very opening and returns at the conclusion, together with the oboe melody. The third movement is a scherzo (Allegro vivace) with a middle trio section over a drone bass. The perpetual motion finale (Allegro vivace) looks forward in certain respects to the music of Carmen and brings this exuberant work to a brilliant conclusion. SEASON 2020-2021 THE MUSIC

—Paul J. Horsley/Christopher H. Gibbs

Bizet composed the Symphony in C in 1855.

The first Philadelphia Orchestra performances of the Symphony were in November 1955, with Eugene Ormandy conducting. Most recently on subscription concerts, it appeared in April 2001, with Bobby McFerrin on the podium.

The Orchestra has recorded the work twice: in 1955 with Ormandy for CBS and in 1974 with Ormandy for RCA.

The score calls for a “Classical” orchestra of two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, timpani, and strings.

Performance time is approximately 28 minutes.

Program notes © 2021. All rights reserved. Program notes may not be reprinted without written permission from The Philadelphia Orchestra Association. SEASON 2020-2021 MUSICAL TERMS

GENERAL TERMS

Chord: The simultaneous sounding of three or more tones

Chromatic: Relating to tones foreign to a given key (scale) or chord

Dominant: The fifth degree of the major or minor scale, the triad built upon that degree, or the key that has this triad as its tonic

Drone bass: A bass line consisting of the tonic, or of the tonic and dominant, sounded continuously throughout a piece

Forlane: A lively dance from Northern Italy in triple meter with dotted rhythm, similar to the gigue

Fugue: A piece of music in which a short melody is stated by one voice and then imitated by the other voices in succession, reappearing throughout the entire piece in all the voices at different places

Minuet: A dance in triple time commonly used up to the beginning of the 19th century as the lightest movement of a symphony

Neo-Classicism: A movement of style in the works of certain 20th-century composers who revived the balanced forms and clearly perceptible thematic processes of earlier styles to replace what were, to them, the increasingly exaggerated gestures and formlessness of late Romanticism

Pavane: A court dance of the early 16th century, probably of Spanish origin

Perpetual motion: A musical device in which rapid figuration is persistently maintained

Rigaudon: A French folkdance, court dance, and instrumental form popular in France and England in the 17th and 18th centuries; duple-meter in two or more strains characterized by four-bar phrases, usually with an upbeat

Scale: The series of tones which form (a) any major or minor key or (b) the chromatic scale of successive semi-tonic steps SEASON 2020-2021 MUSICAL TERMS

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, vigorous rhythm, and humorous contrasts. Also an instrumental piece of a light, piquant, humorous character.

Tonic: The keynote of a scale

Triad: A three-tone chord composed of a given tone (the “root”) with its third and fifth in ascending order in the scale

Trio: A division set between the first section of a minuet or scherzo and its repetition, and contrasting with it by a more tranquil movement and style

THE SPEED OF MUSIC (Tempo)

Adagio: Leisurely, slow Allegro: Bright, fast Vivace: Lively Vivo: Lively, intense