Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791), Symphony #35 in D major, K. 385, “Haffner”
The summer of 1782 was an extremely busy time for the 26-year old Mozart, both personally and professionally. His opera Die Entführung aus dem Serail (Abduction from the Seraglio) was a huge success in Vienna and Mozart was scrambling to finish an arrangement for wind instruments to allow him to “cash in” on the success of the opera, and on top of his creative work he had a number of students that took up a good portion of his time. Personally, his wedding to Constanze Weber was scheduled for early August and he was in the process of moving to a new residence on the Höhe Brücke in Vienna. So imagine Mozart’s consternation when he received a letter from his father asking him for a new serenade to be performed at the ennoblement (elevation to the nobility) of one Sigmund Haffner, a family friend, in ten days! Haffner’s father, also named Sigmund, was an early supporter and patron of Mozart so the request was one of particular urgency and poignancy.
Mozart’s letter to his father was one of incredible restraint for a youth of 26, particularly given their strained relationship: “Well, I am up to my eyes in work. By Sunday next week I have to arrange my opera (Abduction from the Seraglio) for wind instruments, otherwise someone else will beat me to it and secure the profits instead of me. And now you ask me to write a serenade too! How on earth can I do so… Well, I must spend the night over it for that is the only way, and to you, dearest father, I sacrifice it. You may rely on having something from me by every post. I shall work as fast as possible and, as far as haste permits, I shall write something good.” According to historical evidence, Mozart may not have met the 10-day deadline for completion, if there actually was a deadline at all. There seems to be no evidence of an “ennoblement” of a Haffner at this time and it has been conjectured that this was a ruse to try to stop or postpone Mozart’s wedding by a disapproving father!
In any event, Mozart asked for the manuscript to the serenade back from his father in December 1782, as he planned to the use the music again in a concert scheduled for early in 1783. After getting back the manuscript form his father, Mozart was particularly amazed at the quality of this work produced in such haste, writing, “My new Haffner symphony has positively amazed me for I had forgotten every single note of it. It must surely produce a good effect.” Dropping the introductory march and one of the minuets as well as adding flutes and clarinets to the outer movements, Mozart turned the “Haffner” Serenade into the symphony we know today. First performed on March 23rd, 1783 at the Vienna Burgtheater, it was a huge success, both artistically and financially.
As the old saying goes, “Necessity is the mother of invention;” a work composed in haste to a meet a looming deadline turned out to be one of Mozart’s greatest creations in the symphonic form.
Maurice Ravel (1875-1937), Piano Concerto in G Major
Straddling the 19th and 20th Century, Maurice Ravel holds a very special and important place in the development of French music. Often paired with the other titan of early 20th Century French music, Debussy, Ravel’s earlier music is like his compatriots in that it can be described as “impressionistic,” the title coming from the impressionist paintings of Claude Monet that partly inspired their creation. By the early 1920’s Ravel’s musical style changed considerably, becoming much sparer in tone and more abstract in character, akin to Stravinsky’s neo-classical style, and using jazz influenced harmonies and rhythms. Ravel remained throughout his life a master orchestrator (his orchestration of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition is a work of genius) with a musical language uniquely his own.
The Piano Concerto in G dates from late in Ravel’s life, 1931, and after the onset of the debilitating brain disease that ultimately silenced his creative output. Ravel’s condition eventually left him lucid yet helpless, unable to write, speak or play an instrument, yet full of musical ideas that he was unable to communicate. The composition of the Concerto in G was also interrupted by the composition of his second masterpiece in the genre of the piano concerto, the Concerto for the Left Hand, commissioned by the Austrian pianist Paul Wittgenstein who had lost his right arm in the First World War.
When Ravel began composition of the Concerto in G in 1929 he was still healthy and planned to use the completed concerto as a vehicle to showcase his prowess as both pianist and composer. By the completion of the concerto, however, his health had degenerated to the point that performing as piano soloist was impossible. At the premiere performance on January 14th, 1932, Ravel conducted and entrusted the solo piano to Marguerite Long, the dedicatee of the score. In three movements, fast-slow-fast, the concerto uses classical form in innovative ways, with Ravel’s unique jazz inspired harmonic and rhythmic language and masterful orchestration throughout.
Kurt Weill (1900-1950), Symphony #2
Kurt Weill is obviously best known for his work in the musical theatre- his Die Dreigroschenoper (The Threepenny Opera) and Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny (Rise and Fall of the City Mahogany) are classics of the genre, not to mention his work on Broadway- but his roots lie squarely within the German classical musical tradition, albeit the progressive segment of that tradition. Born in Dessau, Germany, he studied with the composer Engelbert Humperdinck at the Berlin Hochschule für Musik and later with Ferruccio Busoni. He also acted as a répétiteur (Assistant Conductor) at the Friedrich-Theater in Dessau under one of the 20th Century’s most respected conductors of the German symphonic and operatic repertoire, Hans Knappertsbusch. His early compositions are influenced by Gustav Mahler, Richard Strauss and Arnold Schoenberg with a dash of Igor Stravinsky thrown in for good measure. While not completely abandoning tonality, they are astringent works lying very close to serialism while not embracing the rigors of that system.
Forced to flee Germany in 1933 by the Nazis- his theater works with Bertolt Brecht were anathema to the Nazis- he moved to Paris where he wrote the Second Symphony we are hearing this evening as well as collaborating again with Brecht on a ballet, The Seven Deadly Sins. The first performances of the Second Symphony were under another famed conductor squarely in the Germanic tradition, Bruno Walter. The performances were extremely well-received by the public but not so by the critics, who in essence stated that Weill should stick to composing for the theater. The criticism stung, and Kurt Weill never again wrote a piece for the concert stage, which was a great loss for the musical world.
Weill claimed the Second Symphony does not have a specific program- he stated it was “…conceived as purely musical form.” When pressed by Walter, he only conceded the title Symphonische Fantasie. Influenced by Mozart and Haydn and written for an orchestra of classical proportions, the symphony is imbued with the theatricality of his stage works and the romanticism and expressionism of his earlier purely musical compositions. The result is an eminently accessible work of tremendous intensity, and one that is all to rarely heard on the concert stage today.
