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About the Music
November 18, 2012
CARL MARIA von WEBER
Euryanthe Overture
Carl Maria von Weber was born in Oldenburg, Germany
in 1786 and died in London in 1826. He completed his
opera Euryanthe in 1823 it was first performed in
Vienna the same year. The Overture is scored for 2 flutes,
2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 3
trombones, timpani, and strings.
Carl Maria von Weber was the quintessential
romantic artist: he was a virtuoso pianist, the
most important conductor of his day (and the first
to insist on complete control of every aspect of an
opera production), a music critic, novelist, and artist
. As a composer his effect on the music world was
wide and deep. After Beethoven, Weber was the
name cited by composers such as Mendelssohn,
Berlioz, and Liszt as their greatest influence. The
only wonder of it all is why his music is so rarely
performed today.
Euryanthe was Weber’s follow-up to his
highly successful opera Der Freischütz, but his new
work, while not exactly a flop, failed to match his
previous opera’s enduring popularity. It was not
for lack of trying. German opera was traditionally
a series of set-pieces with spoken dialog between
them, but Euryanthe was through-composed, with
masterful transitions between scenes. Weber gave
his villains densely chromatic music, and deployed
recurring themes for the characters—something
we call leitmotiv when talking about Wagner.
He even juiced up the libretto with additional
supernatural elements.
It was primarily the libretto that failed
him. The story by Helmina von Chezy was already
implausible, even for opera. (Mahler once described
von Chezy as a “poetess with a full heart and
an empty head.”) And Weber’s ghostly additions
didn’t help. The libretto—coupled with the opera’s
imposing length—caused the opera to close after a
mere twenty performances, and revivals are rare.
Weber’s Overture, however, gives us a taste
of the opera’s wonderful music without regard to
its dramatic failures. The two themes of its sonata
form give us both the heroic and gentle sides of
the opera’s protagonist, while the onset of the
development is a short but delicious feast of badguy chromaticism in soft, divided violins and
violas.
CLAUDE DEBUSSY
Printemps
Claude Achille Debussy was born in St. Germain-enLaye, France in 1862 and died in Paris in 1918. He
composed this work in 1887. The original orchestral
score, which included a wordless chorus, was lost. The
work was re-orchestrated in 1912, without chorus, by
Henri Büsser under the composer’s supervision. This
was first performed at the Société Nationale de Musique
de Paris in 1913. The score calls for 2 flutes, piccolo, 2
oboes, English horn, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2
trumpets, 3 trombones, timpani, percussion, harp, piano
four-hands, and strings.
The word we use most often to describe
Debussy’s music—impressionism—was one he
loathed: “A term used with absolute inaccuracy
by imbeciles.” He had good reasons to dislike that
word, and many of them have to do with his very
early work, Printemps (Spring).
Debussy won the coveted Prix de Rome
while still a student in his early twenties. The
prize included a scholarship to the Académie
des Beaux-Arts and a four-year residency at the
French Academy in Rome. Debussy periodically
was required to submit works composed in Rome
to the Académie des Beaux-Arts for evaluation.
One of the works he submitted was Printemps, and
the academics at the Académie took special care
in instructing the young composer:
Certainly, M. Debussy does not transgress
through dullness or triteness. On
the contrary, he shows a rather overpronounced taste for the unusual. His
feeling for musical color is so strong that he
is apt to forget the importance of clarity of
design and form. He should beware of this
vague impressionism, which is one of the
most dangerous enemies of truth in any
work of art.
This was the first time the word
impressionism was used to describe Debussy’s
work, and it was not a compliment. For his part,
Debussy decided to leave Rome a year early and
submitted nothing more to the Académie; he
burned his bridges behind him.
Debussy himself described Printemps as a
work having “a very special color, which will give
rise to as many sensations as possible. It is entitled
Printemps—not Spring in its descriptive sense, but
seen from a human angle. I would like to express
the slow and painful genesis of objects and living
creatures in nature, their gradual blossoming, and
finally the overwhelming joy of being born again
into a new life.”
All this is easily perceived. The first
movement of Printemps is the “painful genesis,”
the second the “overwhelming joy.” And Debussy
would tell you that impressionism had nothing to
do with it.
RICHARD STRAUSS
Concerto for Horn & Orchestra No. 1 in E-flat
Major, Op. 11
Richard Strauss was born in Munich in 1864 and died in
Garmisch, Germany in 1949. He completed this concerto
in 1883 and it was first performed by Gustav Leinhos,
horn, with the Meiningen Orchestra under the direction
of Hans von Bülow, in 1885. The score calls for solo
horn, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns,
2 trumpets, timpani, and strings.
Much becomes clear when it transpires
that the composer of Ein Heldenleben and Til
Eulenspiegel’s Merry Pranks was the son of a virtuoso
horn player. Richard Strauss’ works show both a
love for the instrument and a canny awareness
of its capabilities. But what to make of his horn
concertos?
They were composed 59 years apart, but
they resemble each other more than they resemble
his other works. Of course, a concerto is a concerto
and Also Sprach Zarathustra is—well, you know what
it is. One doesn’t expect to become a Superman
(or merely climb the Alps) in a concerto, even a
romantic one. Still, Strauss’ horn concertos aren’t
nearly as romantic as we’d expect—they’re largely
classical in form and style. They are polished,
elegant—even Mozartean.
Franz Joseph Strauss, Richard’s father, was
principal hornist of the Munich Court Orchestra
for an astonishing 49 years. He not only had the
power and stamina to perform the heroic horn
parts of the day, but was considered by all to be
a musician of consummate artistry and taste. He
was also a bit of a terror: Richard described him as
“vehement, irascible, tyrannical,” and more than a
few conductors of the day would readily agree. At
the same time, the elder Strauss held his son to
the highest musical standards, for which Richard
was grateful to his dying day.
Richard Strauss composed his First Horn
Concerto at age nineteen. By that time he had
years of experience accompanying his father as
they read through horn music of all kinds. The
incomparable concertos by Mozart were in their
repertory, and doubtless made their impression on
Strauss the younger. Richard was not yet the fullblooded romantic he was to become, and while
no one would mistake this concerto for one of
Mozart’s, one can recognize the shape of Mozart’s
molds.
The Concerto’s first movement begins
with a huge chord from the orchestra and the
immediate entrance of the soloist with a bravura
fanfare. The orchestral tutti is short, whereupon
the horn returns with the graceful and lyrical
second theme. From here things proceed in a
suitably heroic fashion.
An artful transition brings on the second
movement without pause. This music is somber
and lyrical, with an accompaniment that reveals
Strauss as a master of the orchestra at an
impressively young age.
The Finale brings on the hunt with a rollicking 6/8,
thoroughly spiced with sweet lyrical passages to
set off the fanfares. There is no cadenza as such,
but rather a place where the horn reiterates the
movement’s themes with spaced chords from the
orchestra. From there it’s a quick, cheerful gallop
to the end.
IGOR STRAVINSKY
The Firebird: Suite (1945)
Igor Stravinsky was born in Oranienbaum, Russia in
1882 and died in New York City in 1971. He completed
his ballet The Firebird in 1910, and it was first performed
the same year in Paris, conducted by Gabriel Pierné.
Stravinsky created a Suite in 1911 and then again, for a
smaller orchestra, in 1919. In 1945 Stravinsky created a
third suite with substantially the same instrumentation
as the 1919 version but with five added numbers from
the ballet. The score of the 1945 Suite calls for 2 flutes,
piccolo, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2
trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, harp,
piano, and strings.
He was not a composer, or even a musician,
but no one had more influence on the music of
the early twentieth century than Serge Diaghilev.
Diaghilev was the impresario who organized the
Ballet Russes in Paris. Over a twenty-year span he
collaborated with a formidable roster of composers,
including Stravinsky, Falla, Debussy, Prokofiev,
Ravel, Milhaud and Poulenc, as well as artists such
as Picasso and dancers such as Nijinsky. With the
Ballet Russes, the very best of 20th century art came
together under one roof.
Diaghilev hired Stravinsky to compose
music for the Firebird when another composer
failed to get the job done. Time was short—
Stravinsky sent each section of the piece to the
choreographer as it was composed, then joined
the company for rehearsals. The premiere of The
Firebird was the coming-out party of the most
important composer of the twentieth century and
the beginning of a famed collaboration that would
last until Diaghilev’s death.
The story of The Firebird is a pastiche of
tales from Russian folklore. The young prince
Ivan Tsarevich wanders into an enchanted garden
in pursuit of the magical Firebird. Ivan captures
the Firebird but she pleads to be released, telling
him she will come to his aid if ever needed; Ivan
releases her.
Ivan sees thirteen young princesses
dancing and playing a game; he falls in love with
one of them and follows them into the palace of
the ogre Kashchei. When Kashchei captures Ivan
the Firebird comes to his rescue. First the Firebird
sends Kashchei and his retinue of monsters into a
frenzied, exhausting dance, then lulls them to sleep
with a beautiful Berceuse. She shows Ivan a casket
with an egg containing Kashchei’s soul. When
Ivan smashes the egg Kashchei dies, his castle and
retinue disappear, and his victims return to life. In
the rejoicing portrayed in the Finale, Ivan receives
the hand of his favored princess. The celebratory
closing pages are some of the most thrilling music
ever written.
The Firebird became the most popular
of Stravinsky’s works, much to the composer’s
chagrin. He came to resent the attention it took
from his current (and very different) work,
dismissing it as an “audience-pleasing lollipop.”
No matter—Diaghilev knew better. On the day
before the premiere, as he stood with his prima
ballerina, he pointed to Stravinsky and said, “Mark
him well. He is a man on the eve of celebrity.” And
the world was on the eve of a new way of thinking
about music, thanks to Serge Diaghilev.
—Mark Rohr is the bass trombonist for the PSO.
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