January 18, 2013 Concert

In celebration of the 99th birthday of William H. Scheide

Judy and William Scheide

Friday, January 18, 2013 at 7:30PM

Richardson Auditorium in Alexander Hall

Princeton University

A Concert to Benefit the Community Park Pool

Performers

English Chamber Orchestra

Mark Laycock, Conductor

Stephanie Gonley , Violin

Malcolm Gets, Narrator

Andrew Sun, Piano

Concert Program

Sir Arnold Bax

Dance in the Sunlight

Antonio Vivaldi

“Winter” from The Four Seasons

Stephanie Gonley, violin

Intermission

Sir Benjamin Britten

The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra

Malcolm Gets, narrator

Samuel Barber, et al.

Variations on Happy Birthday

Andrew Sun, piano

Ludwig Van Beethoven

Symphony No. 5 in C minor, Op. 67

For more information or to buy tickets, visit http://scheideconcerts.com/

Program notes Copyright 2012 by Gene De Lisa

Table of Contents

In celebration of the 99th birthday of William H. Scheide

Bax: Dance in the Sunlight

Britten: The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra

Narration by Britten from the manuscript

Mary Louise Curtis Bok Zimbalist (1876-1970)

Vivaldi: Winter from the Four Seasons

Beethoven : Symphony No. 5 in C minor, Op. 67

First Movement

Second Movement

Third Movement

Fourth Movement

Bax: Dance in the Sunlight

Sir Arnold Bax (1883-1953)

Born November 8, 1883 in Streatham (South London), England.

Died October 3, 1953 in Cork, Ireland.

Arnold Bax in the mid 1920s

Dance in the Sunlight from Three Pieces for Small Orchestra

Composed in 1928.

Instrumentation: 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, timpani, percussion, harp and strings

Duration: ~5 minutes.

Sir Arnold Edward Trevor Bax, KCVO, was born to an financially secure family in London. He studied piano and composition at the Royal Academy of Music, but abandoned his studies in 1905.

In 1902, Bax read W. B. Yeats’ The Wanderings of Usheen (Oisin) which had a profound effect on the young composer declaring “The Celt within me stood revealed.” He travelled to Ireland, studied its history, and learned to read Irish Gaelic. He visiting Ireland frequently and wrote a large number of poems, plays, and novels under the Irish pseudonym Dermot O’Bryne.

Initially Bax was influenced by Wagner, but later discovered that Debussy, Ravel, Delius, and Strauss were more in accord with his own aesthetic outlook. He described himself as “a brazen romantic,” and is considered one of the last of the post-Romantic composers, rejecting new 20th century techniques such as serialism. Upon hearing Schoenberg’s music he wrote “It might deal successfully with neuroses of various kinds, but I cannot imagine it associated with any healthy and happy concept such as young love or the coming of spring.”

Bax received little public recognition until the late 1930s when Sir Adrian Boult, conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra, championed his music. Bax was Knighted in 1937, and was made Master of the King’s Music in 1942 Tintagel (a castle on a cliff in Cornwall) is his best known work. He wrote seven Symphonies as well as the tone poems The Garden of Fand (1916) (legendary Irish sea goddess) and November Woods (1917).

The Four Pieces for Orchestra were written in 1912-1913. Bax removed the final piece, hence the current title. These remaining three pieces are Evening Piece, Irish Landscape, and Dance in the Sunlight, an infectiously cheery piece that bubbles with rhythmic vitality, underpinning a happy theme first announced in the clarinet that balances lilting romanticism with impressionistic colors.

Resources

The Wanderings of Usheen

Tintagel

November Woods

Britten: The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra

Benjamin Britten (1913-1976)

Born November 22, 1913 in Lowestoft, Suffolk, England.

Died December 4, 1976 in Aldeburgh, Suffolk, England.

Benjamin Britten

The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra, Opus 34

Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Purcell

Composed: 1945.

First Performance: October 15, 1946 with Sir Malcolm Sargent conducting the Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra.

Instrumentation: piccolo, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, snare drum, bass drum, cymbals, Chinese wood block, castanets, whip, tambourine, triangle, tam-tam, xylophone, harp, and strings.

Duration: ~19 minutes.

Benjamin Britten began piano lessons at the age of five and was composing songs by the age of ten. At 13 he began composition studies with composer Frank Bridge (1879 – 1941), and in 1930 he entered the Royal College of Music. In 1937 he met the tenor Peter Pears, who would remain a lifelong partner and vocal interpreter. In August of the same year, he gained considerable attention with his Frank Bridge Variations which was performed at the Salzburg Festival.

Britten’s first stage triumph was his opera Peter Grimes (1945). He went on to write a total of 13 operas, and is rivaled only by Puccini and Strauss in the number of performances of operas written in the 20th century. Although he wrote in a wide range of genres, his operas and vocal music form the most significant core of his output. He performed often as a conductor and pianist as well as being a bit of an entrepreneur. In 1948, Britten, Peter Pears, and Eric Crozier founded the Aldeburgh Festival.

In the same year as Peter Grimes, the British Ministry of Education commissioned Britten to compose the music for a film to be called Instruments of the Orchestra (1946), directed by composer/conductor Muir Mathieson (1911–1975), and featuring a performance by the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Sir Malcolm Sargent. This film intended to familiarize children with the standard instruments used in a symphony orchestra. Britten decided that a theme and variations followed by a fugue would be suitable, and titled his new work Variations on a Theme of Purcell. Montagu Slater (1902-1956), Britten’s librettist for Peter Grimes, adapted Britten’s original text for the narration read by Sir Malcolm Sargent (The narration is sometimes omitted in concert performances).  Eric Crozier followed with an alternate narration and that is the version printed in the published score. Tonight we will hear the unknown (and perhaps never heard before) original narration written in Britten’s hand in his manuscript score.

The great English composer Henry Purcell (1659-1695) wrote incidental music for the 1695 revival of Aphra Behn’s 1676 play Abdelazer or The Moor’s Revenge. Behn was the first English woman to successfully make her living as an author. Britten based the variations used in The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra on a theme of Purcell’s Rondeau (no similarity to a rondo) movement. Purcell’s Rondeau has been frequently adapted since Britten brought it to the forefront of the public with this work in 1945, notably in the 2005 soundtrack to Pride and Prejudice.

Purcell’s theme is first stated by the full orchestra, then by each of the four sections: woodwinds, strings, brass and percussion. Thirteen variations follow, each one featuring the individual instruments. The work closes with a fugue on an original theme, with the instruments entering in the same order as they appeared in the variations. As the fugue scurries along in the woodwinds and strings, Purcell’s theme makes a stately return in the brass, bringing the work to a thrilling conclusion.

Purcell's theme

Last year Britten’s pencil manuscript composing score to what was titled Variations on a Theme of Purcell, Op.34 came up for auction at Sotheby’s London.  The score was purchased by the Scheides for the Scheide Library.  It was then determined that the score was a British National Treasure, and that if a buyer in the UK could be found to match the hammer price then the purchase price would be refunded to the Scheides and the score would remain in England.  An undisclosed buyer “very high up”, and presumed to be a member of the Royal Family, matched the price so the score could remain on British soil, but the British Library was very kind to provide photographs of the score to the Scheides in lieu of the real thing.

Narration by Britten from the manuscript

Variations on a theme of Purcell Op.34

Here you see before you, boys and girls, a full symphony orchestra – comprised of nearly/about a hundred (60 – 80??) musicians.

The fine noise of an orchestra, which you know so well, is made by these musicians either blowing, scraping, or banging the instruments which they hold in their hands.  Now using a grand tune of our own English composer Henry Purcell, we will tell you the names of these instruments and let you hear their own particular sound.

First of all, all the instruments together:

[music]

Of the instruments which you blow, some are made of wood, and called collectively, the woodwind.

[music]

And some are made out of brass – the brass instruments.

[music]

The other are the instruments you scrape with a bow – the strings!

[music]

Finally, the instruments you hit – the percussion.

[music]

Now listen to the instruments which make up these groups.  first – the highest of the woodwind instruments, the flutes – and their small brother, the piccolo.

[music]

Now , also members of the woodwind group, but that are known as “double-reed” instruments, the oboes.

[music]

Not unlike the oboes to look at, but single reed instruments, are the clarinets.

[music]

Then the lowest of the woodwind, like the oboe a double reed instrument, the bassoons.

[music]

By far the most numerous instruments in the orchestra are the strings of which the highest are the violins, divided in two parts: the first violins, and second violins.

[music]

The same shape, held the same way, but slightly larger than the violins and darker in tone are the violas.

[music]

And larger, held between the legs, are the cellos.

[music]

The double basses are about the same shape, but even larger than the cellos.

[music]

Also a stringed instrument, but quite a different shape, and only plucked is the harp.

[music]

Now we come to the brass instruments.  First of all, the horns – four of them.

[music]

Then the trumpets, which every boy (and girl) must know.

[music]

And then are the solemn trombones, and the bass tuba that so often plays with them.

[music]

Then are a whole crowd of percussion instruments, but we have time to examine only the most common.  Let us start with the kettledrums or the timpani.

[music]

The bass drum and cymbals.

[music]

The tambourine, and the triangle.

[music]

The familiar side drum and the Chinese block.

[music]

The xylophone with its wooden bars.

[music]

The castanets, and the gong.

[music]

And finally, the sinisterly named whip.

[music]

Having taken the orchestra to pieces we must put it together again.  So here is a fugue, with the instruments coming in one after another – starting as begun with the piccolo and working right through to the percussion.  At the end you will hear the grand tune on the brass instruments.

Resources

Instruments of the orchestra clip

Purcell – Rondeau from Abdelazar, or The Moor’s Revenge. Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra

Mary Louise Curtis Bok Zimbalist (1876-1970)

Born August 6, 1876 in Boston, Massachusetts.

Died January 4, 1970 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Curtis with composer Samuel Barber

Mary Louise Curtis founded the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia in 1924. She was the daughter of the publishing magnate Cyrus H. K. Curtis, the founder and editor of the Ladies Home Journal and the Saturday Evening Post.

For her 75th birthday in 1951, Philadelphia composer Samuel Barber presented her with an album containing 26 manuscript settings of "Happy Birthday" by well-known composers written especially for her. Even the table of contents is interesting: it is Happy Birthday in Barber's hand with each composer represented by a note of the melody.

There is a wide range of styles and settings. Some were very simple. Sibelius simply typed Happy Birthday and signed it! Milhaud, Pizzetti, and William Schuman each provided just the melody. Walton also wrote just the melody, but prefaced it with the beginning of the "Star Spangled Banner". Copland also wrote an angular bass passacaglia theme marked "broadly, with a bang!"

There are several vocal settings, including those by Bax, Chavez, and Honneger. Stravinsky wrote a 2 voice canon, and Menotti a 3 voice canon with second part marked "be sung standing on one's head." Poulenc, and her second husband Efrem Zimbalist, wrote for voice and piano.

Many are small ensemble works. Dohnányi set it as a (non standard) brass quintet of trumpets, trombones, and tuba. Scalero wrote a string quartet. Piston provided a violin solo accompanied by oboes, clarinets, basoons, and timpani.

Virgil Thomson and Villa-Lobos wrote piano settings. Salzedo set it in the style of Schubert. Harris used the date 8-6-1951 as scale degrees. Finally, pianist Edith Evans Braun, who was a close friend of Mary and with her became friend and patroness to composers including Barber and Menotti, provided a piano setting with the melody in the tenor.

Vivaldi: Winter from the Four Seasons

Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741)

Born March 4, 1678 in Venice, Italy.

Died July 28, 1741 in Vienna, Austria.

The only authentic image of Vivaldi

Winter from the Four Seasons, Opus 8, Number 4

Published: 1725.

Instrumentation: Solo violin, strings, and continuo.

Duration: ~9 min.

Antonio Vivaldi received his early musical training from his father Giovanni, who was a professional violinist at St. Mark’s Basilica in Venice. Giovanni used the surname Rossi, which implies that the red hair which gave Antonio the nickname “il prete rosso” (The red priest) was hereditary. Antonio was ordained as a priest in 1703, but was essentially thrown out for “conduct unbecoming a priest” (whatever that could be) in 1737.

In 1703 Vivaldi became the Maestro di Violino at the Seminario Musicale dell’Ospedale della Pietà in Venice which was an institution for orphaned or abandoned girls. The all-girl orchestra became quite famous and a bit of a tourist attraction. Besides his teaching duties, Vivaldi wrote a great deal of music for these young musicians, including hundreds of concerti.

Vivaldi wrote music in many genres including 46 Operas, oratorios, cantatas, sundry church music, and sonatas, but he is best known for his concerti – the solo concerto in particular.

The snarky comment that “Vivaldi composed the same concerto 400 times” is amusing, but the simple fact that no less than J.S. Bach held Vivaldi’s concerti in such esteem that he transcribed and arranged many of them, shows that it is unfair.

What we know as the Four Seasons was part of a larger collection of concerti entitled Il Cimento dell’Armonia e dell’Invenzione (“The Contest Between Harmony and Invention”). The collection was published in 1725 as his Opus number 8. Each of these four concerti are for solo violin with strings and continuo, and each are three movements that are fast, slow, then fast.

The three movements in the Winter concerto are marked:

I Allegro non molto

II Largo

III Allegro

The phrase “program music” still had to wait 200 years for Liszt to invent. But Vivaldi was indeed inspired by non musical sources. Vivaldi wrote that one of his inspirations for the Four Seasons was the landscape paintings by Marco Ricci (1676–1730) . Vivaldi included descriptive sonnets before each concerto in the published score. It is probable that he wrote them himself. Each line of the sonnet is enumerated as a letter, which is printed at the top of the staves of the music. This creates a clear connection for us between the imagery of the words and music. There are many wonderful musical illustrations describing teeth chattering, foot stamping, and strong winds. I particularly like his depiction of rain in the middle slow movement. The pizzicato strings play at different speeds just like rain drops.

Line C "To run stamping one’s feet at every step"

Sonneto Dimostrativo sopra il concerto intitolato L’Inverno

L’Inverno

Winter

Allegro non molto

Aggiacciato tremar trà nevi algentí

Al Severo Spirar d’ orrido Vento,

Correr battendo i piedi ogni momento;

E pel Soverchio gel batter i denti;

Frozen and shivering in the icy snow.

In the strong blasts of a terrible wind

To run stamping one’s feet at every step

With one’s teeth chattering through the cold.

Largo

Passar al foco i di quieti e contenti

Mentre la pioggia fuor bagna ben cento

Caminar Sopra il giaccio, e à passo lento

Per timor di cader gersene intenti;

To spend the quiet and happy days by the fire

Whilst outside the rain soaks everyone.

To walk on the ice with slow steps

And go carefully for fear of falling.

Allegro

Gir forte Sdruzziolar, cader à terra

Di nuove gir Sopra ‘l giaccio e correr forte

Sin ch’ il giaccio si rompe, e si disserra;

To go in haste, slide and fall down:

To go again on the ice and run,

Until the ice cracks and open.

Sentir uscir dalle ferrate porte

Sirocco Borea, e tutti i Venti in guerra

Quest’ é ‘l verno, mà tal, che gioia apporte.

To hear leaving their iron-gated house

Sirocco, Boreas and all the winds in battle:

This is winter, but it brings joy.

It is hard for us to believe now that Vivaldi was “forgotten” until after World War II. Actually he wasn’t totally forgotten. In particular the Primavera concerto was always around and rearranged. But in the past 60 years his popularity has skyrocketed, in no small part due to The Four Seasons. A current search at a popular online music store will return over 12,000 matches for The Four Seasons alone! Even better, his lost scores continue to be discovered and performed. Recently a Czech harpsichordist, Ondrej Macek, discovered the score to most of his opera Argippo. It was performed in 2008 for the first time since 1730!

Beethoven : Symphony No. 5 in C minor, Op. 67

Ludwig Van Beethoven (1770-1827)

Baptized December 17, 1770 in Bonn, Germany.

Died March 26, 1827 in Vienna, Austria.

Portrait of Beethoven in 1804 by Mähler

Symphony No. 5 in C Minor, Op. 67

Composed in 1808.

First Performance: December 22, 1808 conducted by Beethoven at the Theater-an-der-Wien in Vienna.

Instrumentation: piccolo, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, contrabassoon, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 (alto,tenor,bass) trombones, timpani, and strings

Duration: ~40 minutes

The Symphony No. 5‘s  premiere performance took place in the unheated Theater-an-der-Wien on the evening of December 22, 1808 with Beethoven conducting. That alone would have made this a memorable concert, but the evening also included the premiere of the Pastoral Symphony! In addition, Beethoven performed the premieres of his Fourth Piano Concerto  and the Choral Fantasy conducting from the piano. Not enough? The concert included two excerpts from the C Major Mass and the concert aria Ah, Perfido! as well.

Although it is now universally known as the Fifth Symphony, it was performed on that concert after the Pastoral Symphony and was entitled No. 6, while the Pastoral was given the number 5. The manuscript of the C minor symphony does not have a date or number but the Pastoral does have the number 6 written on it in Beethoven’s rabid scrawl.

Beethoven made sketches for the Fifth Symphony as early as 1800 but most of it was composed between 1805 and 1808. Beethoven spent the summers of 1807 and 1808 in the town of Heiligenstadt, where he wrote his famous testament in 1802. Much of the Fifth and Sixth Symphonies were written there.

First Movement

The C minor first movement begins with what is mostly likely the most famous motif in all music; the so-called fate motif. Anton Schindler described this motif as “fate knocking at the door.” On the other hand Karl Czerny wrote that Beethoven heard a bird – the yellowhammer we hear in the Sixth Symphony – gave him the motif. If you were a Romantic writer which story would you choose – fate or the birdie?

The motif is presented con brio (with fire) by a unison tutti playing fortissimo as if to announce “Look at me! I’m important!” Indeed it is! This short-short-short-long (SSSL) rhythmic pattern pervades the entire work. To underscore its importance there is a fermata on the last note which allows the conductor to stay on that note as long as needed. The motif is then immediately sequenced down a step, again with a fermata on the last note.

Example 1. The fate motif

After the halting four measure opening the motif gains momentum.

Suddenly everything comes to a halt with the horns blaring a variation of the motif to make way for the second theme. The shape of their call is the same as the opening but the intervals are expanded. The second theme in E flat major provides relief from the darkness of C minor but not the SSSL rhythm which keeps poking its nose under the tent.

Example 2. The Horn Call and the second theme

This lyric second theme is actually a variant of the horn call. Under the second theme rumblings of the fate motif are heard. They come to the fore as the exposition ends with a cascade of them in E flat major.

The development begins fortissimo with the fate motif ominously dispelling the light E flat end of the exposition. The fate motif is sequenced and imitated in many guises. The horn call becomes fragmented, first as two notes and then only one. The music comes to a standstill until a sudden burst of fate motifs leads into the recapitulation back in C minor. But the music seems to have lost its initial power as the oboe plays a brief plaintive cadenza. But then the first theme powerfully returns again with a modulating sequence that brings us to the horn call once again introducing the lyric theme 2. But this time theme 2 is not in E flat but in C major! It appears that a triumphal finale has been reached. But we are not there yet. An extended coda which amounts to a second development section begins.

The fate motif is hammered away again and once again the horn call disintegrates to two pitches. A new sounding theme is introduced but it is actually, like theme 2, derived from the horn call.

Example 3. Coda. Sequences derived from horn call

After an extended pedalpoint, there is a fortissimo second recapitulation where we seem to be back at the beginning of the movement with the fate motif played by the orchestra in unison. Theme 1 begins quietly and we are expecting it to once again metastasize but the movement ends abruptly.

Second Movement

The second movement is in A-flat major. It is a double theme and variations that begins with the violas and ‘celli playing a flowing dotted theme.

Example 4. Second movement

The second theme is introduced by the clarinets and bassoons.

Example 5. Second theme

There is an unexpected modulation to C major where we hear a triumphal version of the second theme. But the mood nor the key lasts and we slide back to A flat to begin the variations. There is a variation of theme 1 followed by theme 2, then a second variation on theme 1 followed again by one for theme 2. But then Beethoven begins to vary both at the same time. As if to make light of all that has come before, Beethoven releases the tension by employing the bassoon to tell “the moral of the story” over a jovial bouncing rhythm in the strings.  The music harkens back to what we have heard previously, but Beethoven has had enough, and the movement ends as though he orders the theme and variations out of the room and slams the door closed with a coda based on theme 1 in A flat.

Third Movement

The scherzo third movement begins back in C minor. As in the opening movement there are two phrases each separated by a dramatic pause.

Example 6. Scherzo first theme

Yes the shape of that theme does look familiar. In Beethoven’s sketchbooks were a few dozen measures of Mozart’s G minor symphony. This sets the stage for the return of the opening SSSL fate motif that is announced by the horns in dramatic short order, giving the symphony an immediately recognizable organic quality.

Example 7. Horns

The gloom is dispelled by a C major, with the low strings playing a vigorous fugue-like theme.  The music is playful, building to a fortissimo statement of the fate motif before quieting into a near chorale-like transition from the winds that returns us either to the opening material or directly into the coda (since Pierre Boulez’s habit of inserting a repeat in the scherzo, it has become increasingly acceptable to do so – as is the case with tonight’s performance. The repeat marks were written by Beethoven in the original performing score, but were deleted upon publication. There is hardly universal agreement on why this happened, whose decision it was, or if it was even Beethoven’s intent to remove the additional repeat, the inclusion of which is found in several examples of his music in this particular period – including the surrounding symphonies numbers 4,6 and 7.  Of further interest is that in Ferdinand David’s copy of the first edition referenced in the introduction to these notes, two extra bars are printed at this spot, leaving the question of which two of the four measures to eliminate.  While the later printings agree on one decision, Ferdinand David has marked out with several penciled “x”s the other two bars, citing a specific page of a newspaper article from 1870, making yet an entirely different option!).  A remarkable codetta follows with hushed statements of the fate motif passed between the winds and pizzicato violins.  Parts of the theme are gradually brought from darkness to light, with the solo timpani expanding the fate statement into 38 measures of repeated quarter notes that drives the music forward with a great crescendo and without pause directly into the triumphal final movement.

Fourth Movement

The finale bursts forth fortissimo in C major. The Trombones, piccolo and contrabassoon are heard for the first time, dispelling the gloom of C minor is dispelled by a theme that is as C major as you can get.

Example 8. Finale

The first theme followed by a second theme announced by the horns. The strings pick it up and begin to modulate.

Example 9. Second theme

In the second section (in G major, the dominant of C) are groups of four notes that are yet another variant of the fate motif, now appearing to have been set free.  These triplet figures rise and fall, under which in the bass is a four note motif that will be brought to the fore in the development.

Example 10. Second section

Example 11. Bass motif under second theme

There is yet another variant of the fate motif as the development begins. In the development the second theme is used extensively until the entire brass section takes up the bass motif. The music is building to a climax with everyone finally cranking away on a G major chord leading us to expect that C major first theme to bring us home in triumph. But no! We wind up not only back in 3/4 meter but cast back into the dread c minor from which we had been given the impression we had been liberated.  The strings with the winds again begin to toss softly the horn theme from the third movement back and forth, leading the listener to believe that another long section is to be heard. But the detour is brief and we are not cheated. and soon we are returned to the recapitulation, giving us theme 1 in all its C major glory followed by theme 2. A coda begins with theme 2 and variants of theme 1 as the music marked sempre più allegro keeps building up steam until we hear the brass and winds play theme 1 fortissimo in C major. The final 40 measures – 40! – are nothing but dominant and tonic chords as if C major is beating its chest in victory. As the symphony reaches its conclusion the fate theme is heard in different rhythmic combinations until one final statement of the “three notes plus one note” theme is heard, punctuated by the entire orchestra in a firm C major.

Resources