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About the MUSIC
ALLIAGE QUINTETT
January 2015
Bernstein: Overture from “Candide”
If there were a special prize for "most labored-over show in theater history," the honor would
most certainly go to Candide. Life has imitated art: the show's forty-four-year saga resembles
Voltaire's picaresque narrative itself, as numerous brilliant minds have endeavored gallantly to
create the "Best of all Possible" shows.
In 1953, the renowned playwright Lillian Hellman proposed to Leonard Bernstein that they adapt
Voltaire's Candide for the musical theater. Voltaire's novella of 1758 satirized the fashionable
philosophies of his day and, especially, the Catholic church whose Inquisition routinely tortured
and killed "heretics" in a ghastly event known as an "Auto da Fé" ("act of faith"). Hellman observed a sinister parallel between the Inquisition's church-sponsored purges and the "Washington Witch Trials" being waged by the House Un-American Activities Committee. Fueled by rage
and indignation, she began her adaptation of Voltaire's book. John LaTouche was engaged as
initial lyricist, while Bernstein made numerous musical sketches. Before long, LaTouche was
replaced by poet Richard Wilbur. Hellman, Bernstein and Wilbur worked periodically over the
next two years but labored in earnest through 1956. By October, Candide was ready for performances in Boston. At some point during those Boston performances, Dorothy Parker contributed lyrics to "The Venice Gavotte," while Bernstein and Hellman had also added lyrics of
their own to other numbers. The lyrics credits were already beginning to mount up.
Copied/pasted from < http://www.leonardbernstein.com/candide.htm >
Rossini: Overture from “The Barber of Seville”
It took a composer of singular confidence to agree to turn the Beaumarchais play The Barber of
Seville into an opera in 1816. By then, opera audiences were very used to a setting by the Italian composer Paisiello. It’s probably fair to say that his version was a much loved favourite with
the famously loyal audience of the time. When Rossini agreed to take on the project, he knew
that he had to come up with something wonderful. By the end of the cold February night in
Rome, where Rossini’s work was premiered, it wasn’t looking good. The composer had even
taken care to call the opera something different – it premiered as Almaviva, or the Useless Precaution.
The evening had ended with the audience baying, ‘Pai-si-ell-o, Pai-si-ell-o!’ to a closed curtain.
Somehow, though, Rossini turned it around. It’s even possible that the audience reaction wasn’t
genuine and the first-nighters were a hired claque (a group of paid applauders prevalent in
French opera houses at the time). Eventually retitled, Rossini’s Barber of Seville saw Paisiello’s
version relegated to the dusty top shelves of the library of history. As well as possessing a simply stunning overture, the opera is a sheer delight throughout, with hit after hit, including ‘Una
voce poco fa’ and the ‘Largo al factotum’.
Copied/pasted from < http://www.classicfm.com/composers/rossini/music/barber-seville/ >
Satie: Gymnopedie No. 1
Erik Satie's Gymnopedies are what many consider to be the groundwork for today's ambient
music; it's as ignorable as it is interesting (although, I find it hard to ignore such great music).
These three beautiful pieces for solo piano composed in 1888, are calming, reflective, ethereal,
relaxing, soothing, and provide respite from the stresses of everyday life.
Gymnopedie No. 1 - Lent et douloureux (slow and mournfully): With a hollow, but eerily warm
melody gently floating atop an accompaniment of steady short-long rhythms, Gymnopedie No. 1
is as expressive as it is transparent. Its simplicity and openness masterfully disguises its apparent dissonances.
Copied/pasted from http://classicalmusic.about.com/od/20thcenturymusic/p/gymnopedie.htm >
Gershwin: An American in Paris
An American in Paris is an extended symphonic tone poem by the American composer George
Gershwin, written in 1928. Inspired by the time Gershwin had spent in Paris, it evokes the sights
and energy of the French capital in the 1920s. It is one of Gershwin's best-known compositions.
Gershwin composed the piece on commission from the New York Philharmonic. He also did the
orchestration. (He did not orchestrate his musicals.) Gershwin scored An American in Paris for
the standard instruments of the symphony orchestra plus celesta, saxophone, and automobile
horns. Gershwin brought back some Parisian taxi horns for the New York premiere of the composition which took place on December 13, 1928 in Carnegie Hall with Walter Damrosch conducting the New York Philharmonic.
Gershwin collaborated on the original program notes with the critic and composer Deems Taylor,
noting that: "My purpose here is to portray the impression of an American visitor in Paris as he
strolls about the city and listens to various street noises and absorbs the French atmosphere."
When the tone poem moves into the blues, "our American friend ... has succumbed to a spasm
of homesickness." But, "nostalgia is not a fatal disease." The American visitor "once again is an
alert spectator of Parisian life" and "the street noises and French atmosphere are triumphant.”
Copied/pasted from < http://www.princeton.edu/~achaney/tmve/wiki100k/docs/An_American_in_Paris.html >
Piazzolla: The Four Seasons of Buenos Aires
Piazzolla was a marvelous composer with a distinctive musical sound that combined jazz and
the Argentinian tango of his native land together with classical forms and twentieth century harmonic ideas. His music is filled with exciting rhythms that seem to insist that the listener dance
to their hypnotic beat, and with luscious harmonies that incorporate dissonance yet remain
largely tonal. He was without question Argentina's greatest cultural export, both as an unprecedented virtuoso on his chosen instrument, the bandoneona large button accordion that is a
common folk instrument in Latin American countriesand as a composer. Most notably, he single-handedly took the tango, an earthy, sensual, often disreputable folk music that he enjoyed
as a child, and elevated it into a sophisticated form of high art. The term nuevo tango was
coined to designate the modernization of the tango by Piazzolla and his followers. The Four Seasons of Buenos Aires is an extraordinarily interesting work. In its final shape, it
takes a tango-inspired work by Piazzolla and combines it with elements easily recognizable
from Vivaldi's model. Not only does it share with Vivaldi the general concept of depicting four
seasons in music; it also presents a solo violin featured within an orchestral texture in highly virtuosic style. Yet initially, this work was written for a folk ensemble, not at all for virtuoso violin.
The first to perform it was the composer's own folk/chamber ensemble, specialists in nuevo tango.
Dr. Beth Fleming’s Program Notes - copied/pasted from
< http://www.symphonysiliconvalley.org/concerts >
Nagao: Rhapsody on Carmen from Bizet
The first production of "Carmen" took place at the Opera Comique, Paris, on the 3rd of March
1875. There was a crowded attendance on the occasion, including "all of Paris that assumes to
have any voice in the creation of public opinion." But nobody seems to have thought much of
the opera then -- this opera which has now become the property of every amateur throughout
the civilized world, and which though often presented, never wears out its welcome. It is not
very difficult to understand why. French audiences are essentially conservative, and "Carmen"
came upon them like a shock. "Its passionate force," says one authority, "was miscalled brutality, and the suspicion of German influence which Bizet’s clever use of guiding themes excited,
was in itself enough to alienate the sympathies of the average Frenchman in the early seventies." Bizet, in short, had broken loose from the classical French style. His music displayed
some startling, novel features, and for these the polite tastes of the French public were not prepared…
Carmen is a rôle that exercises a great fascination over artists. It offers so many opportunities
and can be played (and sung too) in so many different ways. There are four elements in Carmen’s character: she was a daughter of the people, she was a reckless flirt, she was full of passion, and she was superstitious. The differences between one Carmen and another resolve
themselves into a question of the greater or lesser prominence given to one or other of these.
One is a greater flirt and more heartless; the other is more sensual; the third more plebeian.
Some Carmens love Don José and merely play with Escamillo; others love Escamillo and regard Don José as a bore.
Copied/pasted from < http://www.musicwithease.com/bizet-carmen-history.html >