Download Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis

MasterWorks 2: Tchaikovsky & Sibelius – Program Notes
Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958)
Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis
Written: 1910
Movements: One
Style: Early 20th century
Duration: 17 minutes
As the title would suggest, the inspiration for the Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis
was the work of composer Thomas Tallis (1505-1585). Tallis was not only a great composer,
he was an astute politician. He remained a Roman Catholic throughout the social and
religious changes of 16th century England, but managed to endear himself to every monarch
that took the throne. He was even a favorite of the protestant Queen Elizabeth, who granted
him the exclusive privilege of printing music and music paper for all of England.
The theme for the Fantasia comes from a hymn by Tallis published in 1567 in the
Metrical English Psalter. The melody is in Phrygian mode (the scale you hear if you play the
white keys on the piano starting on the note “E”), and sets the text, “Why fumeth in sight:
the Gentiles spite, in fury raging stout?” Three and one-half centuries later, when the English
composer Ralph Vaughan Williams was serving as editor for the English Hymnal for the
Anglican Church, he included Tallis’ hymn. (It is still found in many Christian hymnals,
albeit with a different text.) In 1908, Vaughan Williams used Tallis’s tune in a production of
his opera Pilgrim’s Progress and again in 1910 when he was asked to write a new piece Fantasia
on a Theme of Thomas Tallis for the Three Choirs Festival at Gloucester Cathedral.
Vaughan Williams’s score calls for a large string orchestra, a smaller and separate
string orchestra and a solo string quartet. Those three groups often perform all together and
sometimes separately as they respond to and echo each other. The antiphonal writing and
the resonant, open sound so characteristic of English music is ideally suited to expansive
spaces – in this case Gloucester Cathedral.
The Fantasia is a series of free variations of the hymn, sometimes quoting Tallis’s
hymn in full and often developing fragments of the melody between the three groups of
strings. At its premiere, the piece was an immediate success. The London Times review of the
premiere said, “Throughout its course one is never quite sure whether one is listening to
something very old or very new. The work is wonderful because it seems to lift one into
some unknown regions of musical thought and feeling.”
Vaughan Williams wrote the Fantasia in the same year he wrote his First Symphony.
They are his first major orchestral works and represent a time of renewal of the great
heritage of English music. With Edward Elgar, William Walton and Benjamin Britten,
Vaughan Williams began to reclaim England’s musical soul. Critic Hubert Foss wrote that
the pages of the Fantasia “hold the faith of England, in its soil and its tradition, firmly
believed yet expressed in no articled details. There is quiet ecstasy, and then alongside it
comes a kind of blind persistence, a faithful pilgrimage towards the unseen light.”
Jean Sibelius (1865-1957)
Symphony No. 5 in E-flat Major, Op. 82
Written: 1914-1919
Movements: Three
Style: Romantic
Duration: 30 minutes
In our country, we wait until a person is long gone before we declare his birthday as
a national holiday. We’re pretty stingy with who we celebrate: just a few presidents and
Martin Luther King, Jr. get the honor of a named national holiday. Imagine getting to take
the day off from work to celebrate a living composer! That’s what happened in Finland in
1915. The event was Jean Sibelius’s fiftieth birthday.
With compositions such as Finlandia, Kullervo and his symphonies, Sibelius—perhaps
more than any other person—helped forge a distinct national cultural identity for the Finns.
Now, on his national holiday, Sibelius gave another gift to his people, his Fifth Symphony.
He began thinking about it in 1912, seeing himself in “a deep valley with the mountain that
he should ascend before him.” Suddenly, “God opens His door for a moment and His
orchestra plays the Fifth Symphony.” He felt the divine inspiration again in 1915 when he
wrote:
Spent the evening with the symphony. The disposition of the themes: with all its
mystery and fascination, this is the important thing. It is as if God the Father had
thrown down mosaic pieces from heaven’s floor and asked me to put them back as
they were.
Getting those pieces back together in just the right way was a real struggle. Shortly
after the birthday premiere, Sibelius withdrew the symphony and completely reworked it for
a performance in 1916. Still not satisfied, he withdrew it again, bringing it to its final form in
1919. What was originally a four-movement work became a three-movement symphony.
The first movement opens with an expansive horn call which leads a wandering
woodwind figure. The whole first part of this movement seems dark and stormy. A dramatic
entry by the strings builds to a climactic moment, which quickly gives way to echoing
trumpet and woodwind calls. The tension slowly builds within the orchestra, and again it
quickly subsides after a few glorious chords. Against murmuring strings, a lonely bassoon
plays a wandering melody, then the strings interrupt with a more urgent utterance. This time
the build-up to a tremendous climax is for real. The sun comes out, and the orchestra breaks
into a joyful dance. There is a slight lull while various sections work through some of the
main motives; then there is a final rush to the end of the movement.
The woodwinds introduce the second movement. It is a set of variations of a theme
first played by pizzicato strings and staccato flutes. The whole movement has a simple and
sentimental folk-like character. Each variation explores a different mood.
While Sibelius was working on the symphony in 1915, he saw a flock of sixteen
swans fly over a lake. It was “one of the greatest impressions of my life!” It was also the
inspiration for the finale. The movement begins with shimmering strings playing an urgent
melody. Shortly into it, the horns break in with a great swinging theme over which the
woodwinds and strings play a triumphant melody. The opening of the movement returns,
this time played extremely quietly by muted strings. The triumphant theme returns, but in a
more tragic setting. It gives way to the swinging theme, started by the trumpets. The
orchestra builds in volume and intensity to a dramatic climax until—suddenly and
unexpectedly—six short and widely spaced chords bring the symphony to a close.
Pyotr Il'yich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893)
Concerto No. 1 in B-flat Minor for Piano and Orchestra, Op. 23
Written: 1874-1875
Movements: Three
Style: Romantic
Duration: 32 minutes
“This extremely difficult, strange, wild, ultramodern Russian Concerto is the
composition of Peter Tchaikovsky, a young professor at the Conservatory of Moscow ... We
had the wild Cossack fire and impetus without stint, extremely brilliant and exciting, but
could we ever learn to love such music?” That is from a review in a Boston paper following
the premiere of Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto. The answer to the critic’s question is an
unequivocal “YES” because this concerto is one of the most loved and popular of any work.
“Tonight We Love,” a 1941 popular song sung by Freddy Martin, even used the first tune
from the concerto. But why would this concerto, written in 1874 by a leading young Russian
composer, get its premiere performance in what was then a cultural backwater: Boston,
Massachusetts? Therein lays a tale.
There were two “camps” of composers in Russia during Tchaikovsky’s time. One
group included those who emulated the European classical masters. The other, the Russian
nationalists, included those who felt that Russia deserved serious music based on Russian
subjects and folk-song. Tchaikovsky successfully straddled both groups. He had been a
student of Anton Rubinstein in St. Petersburg, and Anton’s brother, Nikolay, hired
Tchaikovsky to teach at the Moscow Conservatory. Both Rubinsteins were part of the
“European” camp. Yet by 1874, Tchaikovsky had already written two symphonies, each
based on Russian folk-melodies. Now a well-established composer, he was ready to try his
hand at a piano concerto.
He wasn’t quite sure of the piano writing, so he went to his friend Nikolay
Rubinstein. It was also the politically correct thing to do as he was still Tchaikovsky’s
employer. Maybe Nikolay would even perform the piece. A letter to his patroness Nadezhda
von Meck gives a picture of the painful consequences:
I played the first movement. Not a single word, not a single comment! He was
preparing his thunder ... As a matter of fact I did not require any opinion on the
artistic form of my work; it was purely the technical side which was in question ... I
took patience and played the concerto to the end. Again silence. “Well?” I said. It
was then that there began to flow from Rubinstein’s mouth a stream of words, quiet
at first, but subsequently assuming more and more the tone of Zeus hurling
thunderbolts. It appeared that my concerto was worthless, that it was unplayable,
that passages were trite, awkward, and so clumsy that putting them right was
impossible, that as a composition it was bad and tawdry, that I had filched this bit
from here and that bit from there, that there were only two or three pages that could
be retained, and that the rest would have to be scrapped or completely revised. I was
not only stunned, I was mortified by the whole scene ... “I won’t change a single
note,” I replied, “and I’ll publish it just as it is now!” And so I did.
He sent the concerto to Hans von Bülow, the eminent German pianist and
conductor. His response was a bit more encouraging: “The ideas are so original, so noble, so
powerful, the details are so interesting ... I would weary you if I were to enumerate all the
characteristics of your work, characteristics which compel me to congratulate equally the
composer and those who are destined to enjoy it.” Tchaikovsky scratched out the
dedication on the score to Nikolay Rubinstein and replaced it with Hans von Bülow.
It turns out that the first audiences destined to hear the concerto were American,
because Bülow took it with him on a tour of North America. The premiere was in Boston
with an orchestra made up of players from Harvard. (The Boston Symphony hadn’t been
formed yet.) Can you imagine? The first violin section contained four players! In spite of
some harsh reviews in the papers, the concerto had a fantastic reception in this country.
Finally, in 1878, Rubinstein openly admitted that he had made a mistake, learned the
concerto, and made it a staple of his repertoire.
The famous tune that you hear at the beginning of the first movement of this
concerto is not the main theme at all. It is only an introduction and, in fact, never gets
repeated for the rest of the piece! The main tune comes after the extended (nearly five
minutes long!) introduction. It is a jaunty, clipped melody based upon a folk-song that
Tchaikovsky claimed, “in Little Russia [Ukraine] every blind beggar sings.” The second
theme is a gently rocking one played by woodwind and muted strings. The rest of the
movement is a showcase for Tchaikovsky’s lyricism and fireworks. It includes a massive
cadenza for the piano alone.
The first part of the second movement is based on a beautiful melody first played by
the flute and accompanied by plucked strings. The central part of this movement is
extremely fast, demanding fleeting fingers by the pianist. The pianist gets first crack at the
slower melody when it returns.
The finale also has a Ukranian folk song as its main theme. Its rhythmic twist comes
from the accent that always happens on the second beat of a three-beat pattern. This tune
alternates with a beautiful lyrical one that grows in stature to rival the famous opening
melody and then, with added piano pyrotechnics, ends the entire concerto.
©2010 John P. Varineau