Download NEW PHIL 2014-15 4/26 PROGRAM NOTES by Steven Ledbetter

NEW PHIL
2014-15
4/26
PROGRAM NOTES
by Steven Ledbetter
CHARLES IVES
Variations on “America” (arr. William Schuman (1910-1992)
Charles Edward Ives was born in Danbury, Connecticut, on October 20, 1874, and died in New
York on May 19, 1954. He evidently composed Variations on “America” for organ in 1892.
William Schuman orchestrated the Ives work in 1963; André Kostelanetz conducted the New
York Philharmonic in the first performance on May 20, 1964. The score calls for three flutes
(two doubling piccolo), two each of oboes, clarinets, and bassoons, four horns, three trumpets,
three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, and strings. Duration is about 8 minutes.
Charles Ives began composing during his teenage years in Danbury, Connecticut. Yet,
although music was of great importance to him, he remained leery of being too closely identified
with it in the minds of his friends. (Being a church organist cut no ice with the other boys of
Danbury, and often, when he was asked what he played, he would reply, “Shortstop.”) Some of
his passion for musical experimentation, as well as for musical jokes played on the staid citizens
of Danbury, came from his desire to break away from what he saw as the stilted, even
emasculating, conventions of classical music, while nonetheless pursuing an active course in that
line.
While still in his late teens, Ives composed a set of variations on one of the best known of
American patriotic songs, “My country, ’tis of thee,” for the instrument he played professionally,
the organ. He gave what was probably the first public performance at the Methodist church in
Brewster, New York, on February 17, 1892. He may have been inspired by a completely sober
set of variations on the same tune (though it was identified by its earlier title, “God save the
king”) by the German composer J.C.H. Rinck, which he himself had performed the preceding
summer. If that was an inspiration, it was probably the utter seriousness of Rinck’s piece that
gave Ives the impetus to write a light-hearted, almost satirical set of variations, with the use of
barbershop harmonies, surprising modulations, a polonaise variation in the minor, and two
interludes written in two keys at once (though those may have been a later addition).
William Schuman, one of the great American symphonists of the twentieth century and
another baseball fan (he wrote an opera called The Mighty Casey based on the much-loved
baseball poem “Casey at the Bat”), made his orchestral version of Ives’s organ variations in 1963
to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of Broadcast Music Incorporated (BMI, the performing
rights organization for composers). It was first performed by André Kostelanetz the following
spring. Ironically, it quickly became one of Schuman’s most often-performed works while
spreading the experience of Charles Ives’s own sassy sense of humor.
WILLIAM SCHUMAN (1910-1992)
New England Triptych
At the time of his death, William Schuman was one of the few remaining American composers
who owed his career largely to the support and encouragement of Serge Koussevitzky. Though a
lifelong New Yorker, he often said that he considered Boston his second home, because
Koussevitzky recognized the young composer's talent and asked for a new piece even after the
critics had roundly abused his Symphony No. 2. The new piece was the American Festival
Overture, which made people sit up and take notice. The Symphony No. 3—one of the most
original and powerful symphonies by an American composer—came next. And soon afterwards
A Prayer in Time of War was given the very first Pulitzer prize awarded for a musical
composition. Thus in his early 30s, Schuman was established as a leading figure in American
music, particularly as a symphonist. He went on to write ten symphonies, as well as many other
works, to become an innovative president of the Juilliard School, where he completely revamped
the program (and founded the Juilliard Quartet), and later on the first director of Lincoln Center.
Throughout his life he continued to espouse in his music the highest American ideals.
Occasionally he did so by paying homage to earlier significant figures on the American scene. In
1956 Schuman paid tribute to one of the earliest American composers to achieve anything like
general fame—the one-eyed tanner-composer William Billings (1746-1800). Billings was a
singing-master, who traveled from town to town setting up singing-schools for the entire
community. These involved a few days' or a few weeks' instruction in the rudiments of reading
music and rehearsals of some of the pieces in the songbook that the instructor sold to the
members of the class, followed by a concert of the newly-learned music. These concerts were
often a high point in the local cultural season (especially in rural communities). Billings
published four volumes of his music, and some of his pieces achieved considerable fame. Many
of them have become well known through a revival of the old tunebooks by modern “shapenote” singing groups. Recently Billings became—appropriately—the first American composer
whose complete works were published in a critical scholarly edition.
For his New England Triptych, William Schuman took three of Billings's vocal works
and recreated them in an elaborated orchestral version. Be Glad Then, America is exuberant and
outgoing. The second tune, When Jesus Wept, was a round, and Schuman faithfully kept its
mood and canonic structure. The finale draws on Chester, perhaps Billings' best known piece,
particularly after he added a new set of words after the outbreak of the Revolution:
Let tyrants shake their iron rods,
And slavery clank her galling chains.
We fear them not, we trust in God—
New England's God forever reigns!
This tune became regarded as the "battle hymn of the Revolution," and Schuman's arrangement
fully preserves its martial, and marching, character.
CAMILLE SAINT-SAËNS
Symphony No. 3 in C minor, Opus 78
Charles Camille Saint-Saëns was born in Paris on October 9, 1835, and died in Algiers on
December 16, 1921. He composed the Symphony No. 3 in 1886 and conducted the first
performance on May 19 that year, at a Royal Philharmonic Society concert in London. (On the
first half of that concert he played Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concerto while Arthur Sullivan
conducted.) The score calls for three flutes (third doubling piccolo), two oboes and English horn,
two clarinets and bass clarinet, two bassoons and contrabassoon, four horns, three trumpets,
three trombones, bass tuba, timpani, triangle, cymbals, bass drum, organ, piano four-hands, and
strings. Duration is about 36 minutes.
Of Camille Saint-Saëns, Berlioz once remarked, “He knows everything but lacks
inexperience.” This bon mot is ideally suited to describe a man who, having composed his first
piece at age three, was hailed for a time as a second Mozart; who played a piano recital in Paris
at age ten and offered to play as an encore any Beethoven piano sonata, to be selected by the
audience; who was hailed by Liszt as the greatest organist in the world; who eagerly pursued
studies in archeology, astronomy, and philosophy and wrote extensively in all three fields, as
well as taking a vigorous part in musical polemics. And, of course, in his eighty-six years, he
composed thirteen operas, five symphonies (of which two remained unpublished after his death),
orchestral tone poems, ten full-fledged concertos for piano, violin, or cello, and a large body of
chamber music and other works. But he is best remembered for a private burlesque which he
dashed off in a matter of days, an amusing jest called The Carnival of the Animals (this fact
would have caused him deep chagrin). Unlike many other composers of the romantic era, SaintSaëns was more classical in his orientation, preferring clarity and craftsmanship to “inspiration”
and “personal expression.” Today, when so many adopt the expression of personal feelings as the
height of significant statement, we rather lose track of composers like Saint-Saëns, who remind
us of the opposite swing of the artistic pendulum.
Surprisingly, perhaps, the Third Symphony, bears a dedication “to the memory of Franz
Liszt.” The Hungarian composer, who had exercised a profound influence on his French
colleague, had died in July 1886 without having heard the symphony that was to bear this
dedication, which Saint-Saëns had conducted in London the preceding May 19. The dedication
was not only an avowal of long-standing friendship but also of musical connection. Saint-Saëns
learned his technique of thematic transformation from the tone poems of Liszt. And the idea of
adding an organ to the instrumentation of a symphony came from one of those tone poems,
Hunnenschlacht (The Battle of the Huns). In any case, the Third Symphony had been
commissioned for a premiere in London, and Saint-Saëns knew that the British had a strong
predilection for the organ, so that this was one means of assuring the new work’s success.
Moreover Saint-Saëns had heard—as we have not—Liszt, the most famous pianist of his day,
also acquitting himself as a brilliant organist, and it seems that the organ part in the symphony
was to some degree inspired by that experience.
The premiere was a stunning success, and the work has remained popular ever since.
Charles Gounod was in the audience at the first performance, and he remarked, “There goes the
French Beethoven!” Saint-Saëns must have been delighted. Though the common nickname of
“Organ Symphony” (not given by the composer) may hint that the organ plays a prominent role
throughout, in fact its appearance is discreetly handled, being absent for long stretches,
sometimes forming part of a distinctly impressive sense of orchestral color, and occasionally (as
at the beginning of the finale), dominating the entire ensemble.
Saint-Saëns actually wrote five symphonies--two juvenile works that have not been
published, though both have been recorded, and two more from early in his professional career.
So the Third is really his only mature symphony and has remained one of his most popular largescale works.
Saint-Saëns himself wrote a program note for the premiere in which he explained that the
symphony is divided into two large parts, though, with subdivisions, these correspond quite
closely to the four movements of a traditional symphony. He connected the first movement’s
abridged development to the Adagio and the scherzo to the finale “so as to avoid somewhat the
interminable repetitions which are now more and more disappearing from instrumental music.”
A few bars of slow introduction sounds the emotional character from which the
symphony starts on its progress, tracing a course from uncertainty and doubt to serenity and
triumph. Once the Allegro moderato gets underway, the opening movement unfolds almost
entirely through the development of motivic ideas heard on the first few pages of the score,
drawing upon Beethovenian thematic unity by way of Liszt. This draws to a close on the tonic C
when the organ enters for the first time, suddenly lifting the key to D-flat for the Poco Adagio
that comprises the second section of score’s first half. It suggests a warmth and serenity
projected with an increasingly lavish scoring.
Part II is also in two sections, the first being an elaborate scherzo (marked Allegro
moderato) in C minor based on a driving repeated-note figure. The contrasting trio, which moves
somewhat faster, appears twice and avoids a final repetition of the opening scherzo by way of a
more lyrical interruption that gradually settles onto the dominant G, sustained and poised to leap
into the symphony’s famous finale (Maestoso). This begins with the first thunderous appearance
of the organ in all its resplendent glory (previously its presence was relatively subdued, but now
it seems ready to take on the entire orchestra for sheer volume). The orchestral response is to
suggest a reversion to Baroque-style contrapuntal phrases alternating with shimmering string
sounds brightened by a piano with two players tossing off sixteenth-note figurations in four
octaves. Finally the main material of the movement takes off in a fugato marked Allegro, in
which the thematic material is also echoed by winds and organ at a slower pace. The full
orchestra and organ are given their head to bring the symphony to a vibrant, energetic, and
confident close.
After the French premiere of the work, on January 9, 1887, a colossal triumph for the
composer, Saint-Saëns asserted, “I gave everything to it that I was able to give...What I have
done, I will never do again.” Indeed, though he continued to compose operas and chamber music
actively for decades, this was his last significant orchestral score.
© Steven Ledbetter (www.stevenledbetter.com)