Kabbalah, Op. 96 Marlos Nobre (b. 1939) Written: 2004 Movements: One Style: Contemporary Duration: Ten minutes

Marlos Nobre was born in , and studied and at the

Conservatory of Music of . He continued with advanced studies at the Latin

American Center in , where he rubbed shoulders with internationally acclaimed such as , , , and .

He came to the United States in 1969 to work at the Berskshire Music Festival at Tanglewood and the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center in New York. Considered a “worthy successor to Villa-Lobos,” he was -in-residence at the Brahms-Haus in Baden-Baden and received a Guggenheim Fellowship. He has held visiting professor positions at Yale, Juilliard, and the Universities of Indiana, Arizona and Oklahoma and has served as composer in residence at the and Texas Christian University. In his native country, he has been the Director of the National Institute of Music and President of the Brazilian Academy of Music.

Highly decorated, he has won numerous awards and composition competitions. He is also the

Chief Conductor and Music Director of the Recife Symphony Orchestra.

“Kabbalah” is a Hebrew term meaning “that which is received.” “Cabal” is the source of energy and knowledge and unveils the ways to “Superior Knowledge.” Marlos Nobre conceived his Kabbalah “in two connected parts representing light and energy . . . inspired by the fundamental rules of ‘cabal’ . . . starting with the cabalistic numbers that define its rhythmic and melodic structure.” He constructed Kabbalah in two levels: “one rigorously mathematical in organizing the micro and the macro structure . . . [the other] in a totally free form of intuition . . . [simply described] as spontaneous inspiration.”

Kabbalah is a highly rhythmic piece. Nobre uses—“almost literally”—a song from the

Xingu Indians for the first rhythmic section of the work. At one climactic point, “the piece turns inwards onto itself, referring to the past and present, and then leads to a coda that combines all elements used in the music.”

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Symphony of Psalms Igor Stravinsky (1882–1971) Written: 1930 Movements: Three, played without pause Style: Contemporary Duration: 21 minutes

Serge Koussevitzky was the conductor of the Boston Symphony for many years and a tireless proponent of new music. In 1929, Koussevitzky asked Stravinsky to write a symphonic work to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the Boston Symphony.

Koussevitzky let Stravinsky have a free hand in the final form of the product. Stravinsky’s publisher, on the other hand, wanted something “popular.” Instead, Stravinsky chose to write something that would be “universally admired” and selected Psalm 150 as his starting point. He also wanted to “counter the many composers who had abused these magisterial verses as pegs for their own lyrico-sentimental ‘feelings.’”

Ever the iconoclast, but with a great reverence for the past, Stravinsky breaks the rules of standard expectations in this work. Even though he called it a symphony, the Symphony of

Psalms does not follow standard symphonic treatment. It doesn’t even have the standard symphonic instruments: there are no violins or violas! Stravinsky first thought of using only an organ, but then he realized that “the monster never breathes” so instead wrote for primarily a wind band. And instead of lots of loud, fast music, which we would expect for something like

Psalm 150, we get a hushed alleluia; and we get the inimitable Stravinsky rhythmic twists and use of ostinato (constantly repeating rhythmic and melodic cells).

Stravinsky based the first movement of the Symphony of Psalms on two verses from

Psalm 38 (Stravinsky wrote using the Latin Vulgate Bible, which is why the numbering may puzzle you). Stravinsky claims he wrote it in a state of religious and music ebullience. The second movement is a double fugue (a complicated sort of “follow the leader”) and is based on

Psalm 39. The first fugue is for the orchestra, the second for the chorus. Finally, in the third movement, we get Psalm 150. Never really loud, it expresses Stravinsky’s realization that “God must not be praised in fast, loud music, no matter how often the text specifies ‘loud.’”

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Overture to Tannhäuser Richard Wagner (1813–1883) Written: 1845 Movements: One Style: Romantic Duration: Fourteen minutes

An opera overture “must encompass the general spirit of the action without the misuse of musical means, and conduct it toward a solution that corresponds ‘apprehensively’ to that of the drama.” So said the celebrated German opera composer Richard Wagner. The way an overture should connect with the following drama is through the character of the two themes presented. Wagner presented this theory about the opera overture shortly before he wrote

Tannhäuser. Its overture fits his equation perfectly. Wagner’s Tannhäuser is really a combination of two different stories: the legend of

Tannhäuser from Des Knaben Wunderhorn (a collection of German folk poetry) and the legend of the singers’ contest. Tannhäuser is first seen with Venus, goddess of sensuous delights. Tired of this sort of thing, Tannhäuser leaves Venus in search of a purer love, finding it embodied in the woman Elisabeth. Tannhäuser encounters some monks and decides to go on a pilgrimage to

Rome to receive a pardon from the Pope. The Pope responds that it would be a surer thing to see his staff break into blossom than for him to receive redemption. Dejected, Tannhäuser returns to Elisabeth. He engages in a singing contest with other knights. They threaten him and—like Beethoven’s Fidelio—Elisabeth intercedes. Eventually, it is through her death that

Tannhäuser gains redemption—and the Pope’s staff blossoms!

The musical themes of the overture deal strictly with Tannhäuser. You will first hear the pilgrim’s hymn played softly by clarinets, bassoons and horns. It is repeated, this time played much louder and more heroically by the trombones. The faster section of the overture is the

Venusberg music, representing Venus and her sensual pleasures. This music gives way to a return of the pilgrim’s hymn of the beginning. This time, ceaselessly murmuring strings accompany it in the background. The overture ends with a blaze of glorious brass. The sacred wins out over the profane.

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Prelude and Liebestod from Tristan und Isolde Richard Wagner (1813–1883) Written: 1857–59 Movements: One Style: Romantic Duration: Nineteen minutes

The legend of Tristan and Isolde—that tale of intense romantic yearning—is probably of

Celtic origin, but it was the decidedly Teutonic composer Richard Wagner who re-invented it for the world of opera. He was in the midst of writing his monumental four-opera The Ring of the

Niebelung when he first read the legend of Tristan. He was also in the midst of an intense relationship with the very-much-married Mathilde Wesendonk. Soon he was taking a sabbatical from The Ring and working on a new opera: Tristan und Isolde.

It is difficult to encapsulate all of the psychological sub-texts of the opera, but the basic plot is this: Tristan goes on a journey to bring Isolde back to wed his master, King Mark. Of course, Tristan falls in love with Isolde, and somehow the two drink a love potion that was meant for the King and Isolde. Their eyes are opened and, in the words of Wagner’s own synopsis,

For the future they only belong to each other. . . . The World, power, fame, splendor,

honor, knighthood, fidelity, friendship, all are dissipated like an empty dream. One thing

remains: longing, longing, insatiable longing . . .

The never-resolving harmonies of the Prelude themselves imply that insatiable longing.

In a long, slow crescendo, the tension builds to a tremendous climax and then slowly subsides.

Now the “Liebestod” (Love-death) begins. It contains melodic material from the famous second act duet between Tristan and Isolde. The gist of the aria? “Thus we died, undivided, one forever, without end . . . living only in our love!”

Wagner’s affair with Mathilde Wesendonk didn’t last. But Wagner was soon at it again, this time wooing and eventually marrying Cosima von Bülow, Franz Liszt’s daughter and the wife of the man who conducted the premiere of Tristan und Isolde. While Cosima was still married to Hans von Bülow, she and Wagner had two daughters. One of them was named

Isolde.

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