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2008 Series IV Concerts
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Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791) is today considered so highly and his music so universally lauded that it is hard sometimes to understand the difficulties encountered by this genius during his own lifetime. Perhaps it is best to remember that composers don’t live and create in a vacuum- they are affected as much by family problems, financial concerns and all the other mundane minutiae of everyday life as we all are. And it is also germane to remember that 18th Century composers were much more “commercial” than we now think of composers of classical music as being. They were, in many cases, composing music that was designed to be played, listened to and maybe even sold as popular entertainment entirely at the whims of public taste (or lack thereof).
Geniuses are, after all, flesh and blood humans, and perhaps even more so than the rest of us- it is their humanity that allows them the insight to understand themselves and their fellow man so intimately to be able to create art that resonates across the distance of time and place. Mozart’s genius lies not only in his incredible musical mind and fertile creativity, but ultimately in his understanding of and compassion towards the foibles and sufferings of humanity.
Mozart’s Symphony #32 was written in 1779 after an unhappy, unsuccessful trip to Paris. Not only was Mozart unable to find secure employment befitting a musician of his stature, his Mother died while accompanying him on this fruitless excursion. Mozart returned to his native Salzburg at the behest of his Father, who disagreed with his son’s wish to relocate to a major metropolitan center and work as a free-lance composer and musician as opposed to the musical indenture he knew as Deputy Kapellmeister to the Archbishop of Salzburg. He had secured employment for his son as Court Organist for the Archbishop against Mozart’s wishes, who with forward-looking insight saw that the future for composers lay in working independently of royal or ecclesiastical patronage.
Composed during his sojourn in Salzburg, the Symphony #32 is composed in three linked movements like the contemporary Italian opera overture. It is conjectured that the symphony was composed for the theater since it is not clear exactly what Mozart was required to write for his ecclesiastical employers during this period in his life. Alfred Einstein among others has advanced the theory that it is an overture to the unfinished Singspiel opera Zaida, but it is now conjectured that is was written on a commission for the theatrical troupe of one Johann Heinrich Böhm. In any case, Mozart used the symphony as theatrical music in 1785, when he contributed it to a Viennese performance of Francesco Bianchi’s opera La Villanella Rapita. Mozart uses a large wind section and an unprecedented four horns in the symphony, looking forward to the works of Beethoven; and at a brief nine minutes it is by far the shortest of Mozart’s later symphonies.
Like Mozart, the astonishing early musical development of Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847) certainly puts him in the category of “genius.” One of the 19th Century’s most insightful musical critics, Robert Schumann, called a youthful Mendelssohn, “the Mozart of the 19th Century; the most brilliant among musicians.” The fact that Mendelssohn completed his Octet for Strings and Overture for A Midsummer’s Night Dream prior to his 18th birthday lends credence to Schumann’s comments. That Mendelssohn was unable to follow through with a considerable number of musical masterpieces as an adult (at least in comparison to a protean genius like Mozart) in no way besmirches neither the works he has bequeathed to posterity nor the incredible musical gifts he possessed.
One of Mendelssohn’s unquestionable masterpieces from his adult years is his Violin Concerto in E Minor, which is in fact his last completed large-scale orchestral work. Composed over a span of six years, it was written for Mendelssohn’s childhood friend, Ferdinand David. David was the concertmaster of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, the same orchestra in which Mendelssohn served as Principal Conductor. Mendelssohn, in fact, had appointed David to his chair as concertmaster. Throughout the six year gestation period of the concerto Mendelssohn and David kept up a lively and regular correspondence in which Mendelssohn sought technical and compositional advice. This collaborative work on the concerto set a precedent that future composers and performers emulated, perhaps most famously between Brahms and the famous violinist Joseph Joachim. Completed in September 1844, the Concerto premiered in 1845 with David as soloist to immediate and lasting acclaim.
In the standard three movements, the concerto contains a number of innovations to the concerto genre. The soloist enters almost immediately in the first movement, as opposed to the standard orchestral introduction. The first movement cadenza, instead of occurring after the recapitulation and before the final coda, occurs before the recapitulation and is written out by the composer instead of allowing for improvisation by the performer. The concerto also stands out because the movements are linked. A bassoon holds a note between the first and second movements which is performed without a break, and a short passage of material reminiscent of the opening of the piece begins almost immediately after the end of the second movement. These links are designed to eliminate applause between movements and would have come as a shock to 19th Century audiences, who were accustomed to applauding between movements.
Perhaps the final words on Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto should come from the famous 19th Century violinist Joachim: “The German’s have four violin concertos. The greatest, most uncompromising is Beethoven’s. The one by Brahms vies with it in seriousness. The richest, most seductive, was written by Max Bruch. But the most inward, the heart’s jewel, is Mendelssohn’s.”
Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s (1840-1893) Fourth Symphony was born during a period of considerable upheaval in his personal life. Whatever possessed the homosexual Tchaikovsky to propose marriage to a much younger woman he didn’t even know is still (and will probably always be) a matter of mystery. Tchaikovsky himself confessed that he had, “…lived thirty-seven years with an innate aversion to marriage. In a day or two my marriage will take place. What will happen after that I do not know.” The results of this disastrous union were predictable- the marriage lasted all of three months and Tchaikovsky traveled restlessly across Russia and the Europe. But the emotional upheaval acted as a spur to Tchaikovsky’s creativity- he completed not only the already begun Fourth Symphony and opera Eugene Onegin, but sketched the Violin Concerto in a period of ten days!
It is a commonplace today to discuss the concept of “fate” and the Fourth Symphony, but it is exactly this that Tchaikovsky considered the “theme” of this work. Tchaikovsky states in a letter to his patron, Nadezhda von Meck, “The introduction is the seed of the whole symphony, undoubtedly the main idea. This fate, the fatal force which prevents the impulse to happiness from attaining its goal, which jealously ensures that peace and happiness shall not be completed and clouded, which hangs above your head like the sword of Damocles, and unwaveringly, constantly poisons the soul.”
The horn fanfare that opens the symphony and represents “fate” appears repeatedly in the first movement and once in the last. Tchaikovsky compared this symphony to Beethoven’s Fifth, and it is easy to see the parallels with one major difference- the fate motive that opens Beethoven’s Fifth is used as a theme that is developed throughout the symphony, while the fate motive in Tchaikovsky’s Fourth is more of an interruption, and is not developed musically by the composer. Again, Tchaikovsky’s words, this time from a letter to his former student, Sergei Taneyev:
“Of course my symphony is programmatic, but the program is such that it cannot be formulated into words. That would excite ridicule and appear comic. Ought not a symphony- that is, the most lyrical of all forms- be such a work? Should it not express everything for which there are no words, but which the soul wishes to express, and which requires to be expressed… In essence my symphony imitates Beethoven’s Fifth; that is, I was not imitating its musical thoughts, but its fundamental idea. Do you think there is a program in the Fifth Symphony? Not only is there a program, but in this instance there cannot be any question about its efforts to express itself. My symphony rests upon a foundation that is nearly the same, and if you haven’t understood me, it follows only that I am not Beethoven, a fact which I have never doubted.”
While fate may be the theme of the Fourth Symphony, the dance-like music that makes up the preponderance of the first three movements certainly adds a lighter touch to what one could easily misconstrue as a dark, brooding work if one only read Tchaikovsky’s words without hearing the music he described. As Tchaikovsky wrote to von Meck: “If you cannot discover reasons for happiness in yourself, look at others. Get out among the people. Look at what a good time they have simply surrendering themselves to joy.”
This abandoning oneself to the joy of others results in an exultant finale where the one appearance of the “fate” motive is finally rejected. But while in Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony in the finale the composer’s heroic strength of will and character wrestles a Nietzschean victory over fate, ultimately Tchaikovsky’s lack of strength results in a half-victory at best. The triumphant music in the finale ultimately has a hollow ring and perhaps the forced rejoicing of an ultimately defeated artist and man.
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