There Were Shepherds....

 One of the most endearing musical traditions of the Italian Baroque era was the tradition of writing an instrumental piece of a special type called a "pastorale."  The name refers to a gentle piece in a moderate tempo, written in 6/8, 9/8, or 12/8 time, which has a peaceful, open-air feel to it.  The character is enhanced by the simple chordal texture of the music, often with parallel melodies a third apart, and by the presence of a consistent drone bass rather like the drone of a bagpipe.

The tradition arose (and continues today) in the south of Italy, with the music being played on a zampogna (bagpipe) and piffero (reed pipe).  It's worth remembering in this context that the bagpipe was originally found in the Mediterranean world, and later travelled north over the Alps on its way to Scotland.

The association of the pastorale with Christmas is owing entirely to the verse in St. Luke's Gospel which states, "There were shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flocks by night."  And I think we all know what happens in the story after that.  

Undoubtedly the most-often heard example is the so-called "Pifa" (the name plainly derived from piffero) which is played immediately before the scene with the shepherds in Handel's Messiah.  

But there are others, from such pens as Corelli and Torelli (not, of course, to be confused with Torelli and Corelli -- precise diction is essential on such points).  Corelli's Christmas Concerto, Op. 6 No. 8, which was subtitled "Written for the night of Christmas," provides a beautiful example.  It's cast in an unusual form of six movements, ending with the gentle Pastorale.

Although resembling these other examples at first glance, the sinfonia which J. S. Bach wrote to open Part II of his Christmas Oratorio is a different kind of piece altogether, using the pastorale's lilting 6/8 time as the basis for a display of complex polyphony. 

Several examples of the pastorale occur in a delightful recording which I recently acquired, featuring Canada's renowned Baroque orchestra, Les Violons du Roy, under the direction of Bernard Labadie.  The disc is entitled Simphonies des noëls.  In this beautiful anthology you find a fusion of Italian and French baroque traditions in music for strings.

Opening with music from the French side, the programme begins with the three-movement Simphonies des noëls by Michel-Richard de Lalande, and nine of the Noëls pour les instruments by Marc-Antoine Charpentier.  I've written several times about other French works using these bewitching folk melodies, and the music presented here is just as rewarding as the earlier examples I've reviewed.  

From the Italian side, you then get the Christmas Concertos of Corelli, Torelli, and Sammartini, each of which includes a delightful Pastorale.  Torelli's example is a bit different from the others, taking on a more upbeat tempo.  In this way, the composer produces a lively dance-like atmosphere, although the parallel thirds and the drone bass are still present.

In addition, from Germany, comes the much rarer Concerto pastorale in F Major by Johann Christoph Pez.  In this seven-movement work, the pastorale comes first and is in a slower tempo than the other examples cited.  

Few of these works will be at all well known to a wider musical public.  I myself was only familiar with the Corelli and with the Charpentier noëls.  The music is arranged so that the record ends with the familiar and soothing strains of the Pastorale which closes Corelli's concerto.

Even if this music doesn't carry any overt Christmas associations in today's world, this glowing record, with its skilled players captured in a warm acoustic, will give pleasure at any time of the year.

Simphonies des noëls was originally recorded and released by Dorian Recordings, and has been re-released under licence in 2016 by the Quebec label ATMA Classique.

Hail! Bright Cecilia!

Today is November 22, St. Cecilia's Day.  St. Cecilia is the patron saint of music and musicians, and what better time could there be to feature a work of music written in her honour?

There are quite a few, actually.  In England, the feastday of St. Cecilia was for many years a time for special musical festivities.  The work I'm looking at, and listening to, today is a product of a man known as one of the greatest composers in English musical history, Henry Purcell.  He is making his first bow in this blog today.

His ode, Hail! Bright Cecilia, which was composed in 1692, was one of a series of commissions by the Musical Society of London, which began to hold its annual St. Cecilia Festival in 1683.  Purcell himself composed odes for them on two earlier occasions, and Handel too joined the parade at a later date.

The traditional commission called for the setting to music of a poetic ode in honour of the saint, and of music.  These honorary odes were a singular feature of English poetry -- sometimes lengthy, full to the brim with flowery language, and always written in rhyming couplets.  I have to admit that this kind of poetry can often trigger my gag reflex, but the music which it inspired is another matter altogether -- and this 1692 ode is often considered the best of its kind ever composed.

That's not surprising, because Purcell at this time was at the very height of his powers as a composer, and he lavished the complete range of available musical styles and the full force of his gifts as a composer on this celebratory poem by Nicholas Brady.  

In the conventional style, the poem open with general praise of St. Cecilia and of music, then goes into a series of verses praising the characters of different instruments, eventually arriving at the organ as the ultimate musical instrument.  This was due to a mistranslation of an ancient text which seemed to link Cecilia specifically to the organ.  After discussing how the other instruments must yield to the organ, the ode closes with another hymn of praise to the saint.

Purcell's musical setting opens with an extensive overture in multiple sections, lasting 10 minutes and entitled "Symphony."  A slow introduction in dotted maestoso rhythm leads to a vigorous "Canzona", marked allegro, with trumpets and drums prominent.  A more relaxed adagio features the strings and oboes.  The score then directs a full repeat of the Canzona and the adagio.  Another allegro now follows, full of brilliant rapid staccato writing for the trumpets.  After a brief slow passage marked grave, this second allegro is also repeated in full, to bring the Symphony to a spectacular conclusion.

The opening chorus is actually led off by a bass soloist, singing the first phrase of "Hail! Bright Cecilia," complete with a florid cadenza.  The chorus then take up his song of praise.  Both solo and chorus share a curious feature, with the repeated word "Hail! Hail!" sung on the second and fourth note of a four-beat bar, normally the two weakest beats.  The chorus ends with these lines:

May make the British forest prove / as famous as Dodona's vocal grove. 

The reference is to the shrine of Zeus in ancient Greece, where the voice of the oracle spoke through a talking oak tree.  Such references to ancient Greco-Roman history and mythology were an integral part of the English ode tradition.

The succeeding duet, "Hark! Each tree its silence breaks," takes up this idea in a moderate 3/4 time, with the bass and alto voices alternating and overlapping.  With the singers spinning out increasingly elaborate lines, this movement tells how the voice of the forest can be heard in the flute, violin, and harp.  In line with the St. Cecilia tradition, of course, the violin and flute feature as instrumental voices, with the flute being the 17th century version which was made of wood.

The alto continues with an accompanied recitative, "'Tis Nature's Voice," full of lavish ornamentation and musical effects to denote grief, sighing, laughter, and the like.  This bridges into a choral movement, "Soul of the World."   Again the music becomes illustrative as the polyphony of "made up of various parts" segues into the chordal writing of "one perfect harmony."

The next movement, "Thou tun'st this world," begins as a solo for the soprano, and then continues as a choral movement on the same theme.

A trio begins with two altos asking, "With that sublime celestial lay / dare any earthly sounds compare?"  The bass responds by telling them that the organ may do so, and then he proceeds to sing the elaborate aria in praise of the organ, "Wondrous machine."  The accompaniment moves in a steady marching rhythm with a typical Baroque "walking bass" line.  

This is followed by a series of movements telling how the other instruments must yield place to the majestic organ.  "The airy violin," for alto, is a brief but showy solo.  Then comes the very slow and somewhat mournful sound of "In vain the amorous flute," an extended duet for tenor and alto.  

The trumpets and drums return for the first time since the opening to accompany "The fife and all the harmony of war," another alto solo.  When looking at this preponderance of alto solos, it's important to remember that these were adult male altos (countertenors as they are more commonly known today).  The extreme ornamentation of these alto solos makes even more sense when we read that Purcell had for the premiere the services of Mr. Pate, the foremost male alto of his day.

Two basses then sing a duet, "Let these amongst themselves contest."  This number finally affirms the supremacy of the organ.

The way is thus paved for the final majestic chorus, again beginning with "Hail! Bright Cecilia."  The trumpets and drums return, along with the rest of the orchestra, in more elaborate writing around the block chords of the choir.  A slower and quieter central section intervenes before the full forces burst into a reiteration of the first section, bringing the entire ode to a grandiose end on "Great patroness of us and Harmony!"

I've been very fond of this work ever since I had a chance to sing it as a young chorister in Toronto when I was 19 or 20 years old.  It was just one of several unusual and (at the time) adventurous choices of repertoire made by Dr. Melville Cook for his Festival Choir at Metropolitan United Church.  Although the performance we gave predated the great push for authenticity in Baroque music, it was still a great musical work and a great experience for a young singer.

After Sunrise -- The Rest of the Story

This is one of my periodic posts in which I draw attention to some less-well-known aspects of a well-known piece of music.  In this case, the less-well-known aspects are found in the final 28 minutes of a work which normally lasts 30 minutes in performance, give or take a bit.

So what is found in the first 2 minutes that has caused the rest to fade into relative obscurity?  Simple answer: the most renowned, most often played-to-death, most instantly-recognizable sunrise in all of music.  And here we are, with the symphonic poem Also sprach Zarathustra ("Thus Spake Zarathustra") by Richard Strauss.

That sunrise shot from relative obscurity to lasting, world-wide fame, when it was used by Stanley Kubrick for the soundtrack of his epic 1968 film, 2001: A Space Odyssey.  Less often remembered is the fact that the four uses of the musical theme in the film are each accompanied by a significant shot of the sun rising over the earth or in alignment with the mysterious black monolith.  Kubrick was undoubtedly aware of the implications when he chose this music for underscoring those scenes.

The majestic grandeur of the sunrise with its brass fanfares and organ chords over, what happens next?  Strauss set himself the unenviable task of trying to somehow capture something of the flavour of the long, densely-written philosophical novel published in segments (1883-1885) by Friedrich Nietzsche. 

The sustained organ pedal note at the end of the sunrise leads us on into the next section, and part by part the music unfolds for us.  The titles of the various sections are perhaps more mysterious than the music itself, unless the listener has in fact waded through Nietzsche's massive work.  But for the sake of completeness, here they are:

Von der Hintenweltlern ("Of the backworldsmen")

Von der grossen Sehnsucht ("Of the great longing")

Von den Freuden und Leidenschaften  ("Of joys and passions")

Das Grablied ("Song of the Grave")

Von der Wissenschaft ("Of Science")

Der Genesende ("The Convalescent")

Das Tanzlied  ("The Dance Song")

Nachtwandlerlied ("The Night Wanderer's Song")

In practice, as section flows into section, it's not easy to discern where one part ends off and the next begins, unless you have recourse to studying the score with the subtitles marked.  But a few sections are instantly recognizable.  Von den Hintenweltlern features a warm, broad lyrical melody on the cellos and (later) the violas.   

 

Von der Wissenschaft opens deep in the bass with the same C-G-C progression that launched the sunrise -- a progression which appears from time to time throughout the work as a motto.  This leads into a slow rising and falling theme which takes the form of four triadic arpeggios that among them comprise all 12 notes of the chromatic octave.  This theme is then treated to a lengthy fugal development -- appropriate, since a well-structured fugue is among the most scientific of musical forms.  

 

The Tanzlied -- no surprise here -- launches into a perky triple-time dance on a solo violin.  The music grows and grows until it erupts into a full-throttle, swirling Viennese waltz in the massed forces of the orchestra.

The greatest climax of the work arises at the end of the Tanzlied as the music swells into frenzied activity, then suddenly darkens and -- amid the thunderous orchestral textures -- a deep bell tolls 12 strokes -- the hour of midnight.  From this point, the music slowly dies down into the spare orchestration of the final pages, the Nachtwandlerlied, inspired by the poem in the novel which begins with these words:

Oh, Mensch!  Gib' acht! Was spricht die tiefe Mitternacht?

("Oh, man!  Take heed!  What does deep midnight speak?")

 

As a side note, that poem also served as text for the fourth-movement alto solo in Mahler's epic Symphony No. 3.

At the very end, the music closes with what some experts have identified as the "World-Riddle Theme."  The deep strings intone the C-G-C motto pizzicato, but above them the woodwinds quietly play the chord B-F#-B simultaneously, leaving the music without a clear resolution in either key.  Evidently, the great riddle continues to resist solution.

Like many of the Strauss tone poems, Also sprach Zarathustra requires a massive orchestra with multiple woodwinds and extra brasses, not to mention that essential organ.  Thus, it's a very costly piece to perform.  Its obscure philosophical programme has also told against it, with audiences more willing and eager to embrace the clearer storytelling of Tod und Verklärung, Till Eulenspiegel, or even Ein Heldenleben.  It's been more often performed in the German-speaking countries than in North America, where it enjoyed a brief vogue in the years after 1968 (surprise, surprise) but then lapsed back into the twilight zone on the periphery of the repertoire.  

 

In fact, despite having accumulated three or four recordings of this music, I've never actually heard a live concert performance of it.  The Toronto Symphony Orchestra had it programmed for the spring of 2020, and we all know where those concerts went.  But some day, my luck will be in.  Fingers crossed!

Honouring A Mother

I've been planning for some time to write a post about this remarkable and scarcely-known piece of music, but I've been holding on to it until Mother's Day.

Welsh composer William Mathias wrote his cantata, Lux Aeterna, in 1982 on a commission from the world-renowned Three Choirs Festival.  This wide-ranging and deeply-felt work was composed in memory of the composer's mother, and there's an implied thread of connection that links several aspects of the piece to womanhood and motherhood.  It's not an overt connection, but is none the less present.

What is overt, and striking too, is the series of resemblances to Benjamin Britten's masterpiece, his War Requiem, composed 20 years earlier (you can read about that work here:  In Remembrance....

Many of the resemblances are structural.  Mathias also sets the Latin text of the Requiem Mass (portions of it, at least) along with other texts from the liturgy for large orchestra and chorus, and uses a children's chorus in a separate, more sparely accompanied role, singing Latin hymns to the Virgin Mary, underscored by organ.  He also interweaves the Latin sections with poetry from other hands, sung in English by soloists.  

Stylistic similarities are there too, most openly and strikingly in the final section, Libera Me, in which Mathias closely follows Britten in building a helter-skelter climax out of disjointed, rhythmically irregular melodic sequences highlighted by particular use of the whip-crack.  I think it's safe to say that Mathias would have produced a very different kind of work if the War Requiem hadn't been there to stake out a precedent.

But don't be deceived.  For all the large number of similarities, the souls of these two works reside in very different neighbourhoods.  Britten's is more edgily dramatic, pleading, exhorting, and warning (in line with the poetry of Wilfred Owen which so profoundly influenced Britten).  William Mathias leans much more towards the consoling, the inspiring, the philosophical, and the tone of his music is far more lyrical with long-arched melodic lines reflecting that very different character and emphasis.  Nor is this entirely surprising, since the innate musicality of his homeland of Wales has been known and celebrated for centuries on end.  The orchestration overall makes effective use of harps, vibraphone, celesta, and marimba to evoke in sound a tissue of light, reflecting the theme of "lux aeterna."

Mathias chose three of the mystical poems of St. John of the Cross, written during the 1500s in Spain and here translated into English.  The poems reflect in a mystical tone the songs of a bride to the bridegroom, an image which in Catholic theology especially is held to reflect the union of the Church with God, and particularly with Christ.  These poems are sung by trio of female voices, one each of contralto, mezzo-soprano, and soprano, in that order -- since the poems reflect the theme of a journey from the Dark Night of the Soul to the moment of final union with God, personified as Light.  A fourth poem, a reflection on the first chapter of the Gospel of John ("in the beginning was the Word") is sung by all three soloists.

The work divides into three main movements and lasts for nearly an hour in performance.  The first two movements each begin with one of the sections of the liturgy, proceed into one of the Marian hymns, and then continue into one of the solos.  A final utterance of the main choir concludes the first and second movements.

The longer and more complex third movement, Libera me, begins by following this pattern.  But after the soprano solo comes a significant change in the layout.  The main choir (rather than the children) launches into the Latin hymn, Veni, sponsa Christi., which is sung to the same intense and dramatic music sung at the beginning of the movement to the Libera me of the Requiem.  Then comes the magnificent trio of the three soloists together, its intricate melodic lines gradually entwining and mounting towards a soaring climax which is reached by way of a dramatic acceleration.  The three soloists drive forward with unstoppable energy into an ecstatic setting of the Sanctus.  This breaks off suddenly as the children intone the Agnus Dei, with its "plea for inner and outer peace" as Beethoven so memorably described it. 

The final pages feature a complex, multi-layered tapestry of sound, with the orchestra underpinning the singers with its shimmering, glittering textures.  The main choir sings the Lux aeterna of the Requiem, while the children chant an ethereal Ave maris stella that rides atop the texture.  Meanwhile the trio of soloists are singing the Requiem aeternam, with a small but significant change of the text.  Instead of singing "Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine" ("Grant them eternal rest, Lord") the key word change alters "eis" to "ei", and we then have "Grant her eternal rest, Lord."  The work ends on a luminous, unresolved suspension which, so far from feeling incomplete, actually opens a sense of the continuity of eternity.

Mathias may have been inspired by Britten's War Requiem in some particulars of this work, but his own special and considerable gifts led him to create a totally striking and original work, a masterpiece of great beauty in its own right, which deserves much wider circulation.

I have a copy of the premiere recording on Chandos Records, made in 1984 under the direction of Sir David Willcocks, and their 1998 reissue of that recording is still available from the Chandos website.

The Isle of the Dead

From the title, some of my readers may be expecting me to bring in Rachmaninoff's tone poem of that name.  Well, they're right -- but only partly.  Rachmaninoff was not the only composer whose musical inspiration was fired by Arnold Böcklin's symbolist painting, Die Toteninsel.

The picture, first of all, depicts a towering rocky island  punctuated with doorways that suggest burial crypts.  A boat approaches the shore, rowed by an oarsman, and bearing a draped casket, with a robed and hooded figure standing watch over the body.  Böcklin plainly set great store by the theme, since he created five versions of the picture between 1880 and 1886; the third version is shown here.  The title of the picture was actually not the artist's, but was suggested by an art dealer.

Rachmaninoff's tone poem, composed in 1909, is remarkable for its uniquely unsettling and evocative use of 5/8 rhythm.  The choice of a barcarolle, with its rhythm replicating the sounds of the oars dipping into the water, was a natural enough idea.  Rachmaninoff, though, dislocates expectation by setting his A minor barcarolle in a stately 5-beat rhythm, 2-2-1, repeated over and over as a rising tonic-dominant-tonic figure in A minor in the bass.  Over this rhythm, melodic lines slowly appear, all of which are variants on the idea of a rising triadic arpeggio.  This simple formula produces a lengthy musical paragraph of great diversity of texture.  Over the course of the music, the orchestration grows steadily broader and grander, to the point where that main theme erupts with great force in the full orchestra.

A contrasting central section brings a more varied, somewhat wistful melody, very plainly by the same composer as the slow movements of the more famous second and third piano concertos.  This too is gradually worked up to a climax of passion and regret.  After a brief lull, a second and even more anguished climax grinds its way through the orchestra until the music darkens and disintegrates into a massive tremolo above which six huge staccato chords extinguish this more humane song of life.  The Dies irae medieval plainchant appears, is briefly developed, and then a cello solo leads to the return of the opening barcarolle, in all its quiet, mysterious depth.

Incidentally, or perhaps not, Rachmaninoff had not seen any of the versions of the painting but only a black-and-white reproduction of it before composing his tone poem.  After he saw one of the actual paintings, he remarked that he preferred it in black and white and probably wouldn't have written the music at all if he had seen the picture in full colour!

Rachmaninoff was only one of half a dozen or more composers who composed works inspired by this painting. The only other version I've heard is the work of Max Reger, one of four movements of his Böcklin Suite.  Although written four years after Rachmaninoff's work, Reger's piece sounds like it could be older, some of the densely chromatic harmonies being positively Wagnerian.  

This work was actually a major departure for Reger, who until this time had resolutely continued to compose absolute music, often denying the value of programmatic music.   In sharp contrast to Rachmaninoff's approach, Reger makes no attempt to portray the scene, being content to capture the moods evoked by the picture.  His musical painting always strikes me as being steeped in a very real and human sorrow where Rachmaninoff's more severe work suggests a deeply fatalistic, even hieratic view of death.

The other three movements of Reger's Böcklin Suite are equally fascinating.  The Hermit With a Violin uses winds, brasses, and a double string orchestra, one playing with mutes and one without, to provide a backcloth for the slow, lyrical violin solo.  At Play in the Waves, representing a painting of naiads and tritons disporting themselves in the sea, brings a faster, more playful sound world whose sparkling sea music can stand comparison with Debussy.  The Isle of the Dead follows in third place, and the final Bacchanal is a riotous summing up of sheer virtuoso orchestral brilliance.

 

In Memoriam Krszystof Penderecki

The passing of Polish composer Krszystof Penderecki this week took from the musical world one of the most remarkable figures of recent musical history: renowned as a prolific composer in all major genres, respected as a conductor and teacher, a man of deep faith in a predominantly secular age, a composer who achieved a unique synthesis of the experimental and the traditional, and above all the most prolific and significant contributor since the 1950s to the literature of music for large choral forces with orchestra.

Love Penderecki or hate him (and there's no shortage of music lovers in both camps), no one with any desire to immerse themselves in the choral-orchestral literature can ignore him.

His St Luke Passion of 1965 was his first large-scale foray into the field of choral-orchestral music, and featured extensive use of the techniques which dominated his first, modernist period -- the tone clusters, glissandi, cries and shouts, indeterminate or "chance" passages, microtonal writing, all are present.  Yet the score is also marked by sparing but noteworthy use of traditional tonal elements in the form of melodic ostinati, and even moments marked out by clear tonal chords.

In the 1970s, his style underwent a shift which he himself characterized as a move back to a more traditional language.  Yet in retrospect, we can see that what he was actually doing was broadening his musical language by making broader use of traditional musical language, in harness and in contrast with continuing use of some of his more experimental techniques.  In effect, through this transition he became an early harbinger of a trend in composition which has gained significant momentum since the turn of the twenty-first century.

I've always been a great admirer of his music ever since my first encounter -- a recording of the Magnificat, made in 1970.  That's not to say that I always enjoy it -- many pages of the St Luke Passion are definitely harrowing and not comfortable at all.  But the dramatic intensity of this extraordinary piece is remarkable, and I should probably write about it in my next post.

Nor do I mean to convey that Penderecki's output was of uniformly high quality.  The Magnificat is frankly uneven, with some truly gripping moments but much that is less so.  The two-part Utrenja which followed it a year or so later has always struck me as a complete misfire.  Although I've dutifully listened through it a number of times, I can never sense any kind of overarching design or plan behind it, and the endless streams of aggressive sounds wear out their welcome.

But there are two of Penderecki's major choral-orchestral frescoes that I truly love, and will gladly listen to several times every year.  One is the massive Seventh Symphony from 1996, "The Seven Gates of Jerusalem."  You can read my thoughts about that work, with its propulsive, energetic central scherzo, here:  Modern Energy II.  Here I will only add that it has been among the most successful of his major compositions, with multiple recordings and frequent performances in many musical centres of Europe.

The other, the Te Deum, was one of the first products of his self-labelled "return to tradition," completed in 1973.   He was writing it at the same time as he was working on his Symphony No. 2, a single-movement work which has become known as the "Christmas Symphony" because of its quotation of the old German carol, Stille nacht ("Silent Night").  In fact, the two pieces, both running about the same playing time of 35 minutes, are so alike in character that they form a natural pair -- so it's not surprising that the composer's own performances were combined for the EMI reissue which I have in my collection.

In the Te Deum, the orchestral instruments spend much more time playing in their respective "proper" styles.  Such effects as string players slapping their instruments or wind players blowing through without reeds or mouthpieces are less common, and the use of percussion is much more sparing.  The vocal parts, too, involve some use of the tone clusters and microtonal glissandi so prominent earlier, but again employed here with much more discretion.  But be aware that the music nonetheless remains very dramatic in expression, in a way that sometimes seems ill-attuned to the text.  It's a characteristic of Penderecki's large choral works that the text may condition the overall atmosphere of the piece -- but one shouldn't expect nor seek for line-by-line illustrative treatment of the words.

The major signature mark of the Te Deum -- as with the co-incident Symphony -- is a casual, laissez-faire attitude towards tonality.  There's one very prominent stylistic mannerism in which the orchestra lands on an unmistakably tonal chord -- and immediately follows it with an equally unmistakable chord in a completely unrelated key.  Sometimes the two chords are sounded by the same instruments (say, the wind and brass choir) and in the same register.  More often, though the first chord (usually very high up) is answered by the contrasting chord far below it in the bass register.

The effect is, at first, remarkably like a classical cadence until you realize that these chords do not bring a completion but rather an undermining of whatever feeling of tonal rootedness you may be experiencing.  Another common feature of both works is a slowly rising scale figure of four or five notes in the low brass, and indeed the texture of these two pieces is often dominated by the low brass and wind sound.  By contrast, the vocal lines often feature chains of descending semitones.

The centre of the Te Deum brings a remarkable moment of peace amid the turmoil of so much of the music.  The orchestra falls silent and the choir slowly and quietly intones an ancient Polish hymn, set to its traditional tune.  The hymn is briefly broken by one of Penderecki's characteristic wandering solo lines (a soprano) and then resumes with the soprano in concord with the choir.

The second half of the score involves even more turbulent writing, culminating in a wildly anarchic rising cadenza for the massed violins, a cadenza which keeps doubling back on itself while slowly and remorselessly accelerating to an enormous climax marked by the last and hugest occurrence of those paired chords.  In the final pages the music slowly dies away in a shimmering haze of sound, and the final pages are a quiet but widely spread final major chord repeated multiple times as the choir chants the final words, "non confundar in aeternum."

Beyond the New World: Other Dvořák Symphonies

For many music lovers, the work of Czech composer Antonin Dvořák begins and ends almost at the end, with his beloved Symphony No. 9 in E Minor, Op. 95 "From the New World."  Among musicians, the standing of the New World Symphony is a little more equivocal.  Apart from the glorious and all-but-perfect slow movement, the work does have its share of odd features and even a clumsy moment or three.  

But notice that the New World is the ninth published symphony.  What about the other eight?  And what about so many other beguiling works from this master's pen?  The impulse to write this post came after hearing a rare (for North America) and engrossing performance of the sixth symphony of the series.

In all honesty, my favourite Dvořák symphony is always the one I happen to be listening to at the moment, but for purposes of this post I want to focus on #s 5 & 6, both of which are full of masterly orchestration and a positive overflow of engaging melody.  From there, I want to move on to # 7 which comes closer than any of Dvořák's symphonies to earning the sobriquet of "Tragic."

By the way, don't put too much reliance on the misleading opus numbers.  Dvořák's first four symphonies were never published in his lifetime.  The first one to hit publication was # 6, followed by # 7, then # 5, and finally #s 8 and 9 in their proper place.  The opus numbers were assigned as each score was published, but the current numbering from # 1 to # 9 places them in their correct chronological order of composition.  Older readers may recall hearing them identified by the older numbers from 1-5 with the New World as # 5, but these numbers are now rightly discarded.

There are few moments in all of music more imbued with sunshine and sheer good spirits than the opening bars of Symphony No.5 in F Major, Op. 76.  The melody does little more than fly up and down an F major arpeggio, ending with a 3-note rising tag, but as scored in the bright tones of the woodwinds it has an immediately engaging and cheery air.  One characteristic of Dvořák's writing in both this work and # 6 is his habit of separating out the woodwind choir, and leaving the other instruments silent or all but silent while the wind group carries the musical argument forward.  This habit contributes a good deal to the summer-like air of these two works.

The fifth symphony goes on very much as it begins, with a charming slow movement, a completely beguiling folk dance as a scherzo, and a finale which -- if sometimes discursive -- is forgivable because of the unfailing interest and strength of the melodic ideas.

The Symphony No. 6 in D Major, Op. 60, marked Dvořák's first great success in international circles, aided by the support of Brahms and of the famed publisher Simrock.  Commentators seem to feel obliged to search out points of comparison with the music of Brahms as a result, and the comparisons are ready to hand in the older master's second symphony, which shares a common home key and some other similarities in the first and last movements.  I don't place too much stress on this because in all its essentials this music is as overtly Bohemian as anything Dvořák ever wrote.

The sixth is a more robust symphony in many ways, perhaps one might even say earthier, than its immediate predecessor in F major.  Once again we have a profusion of delightful melodic thoughts and afterthoughts in the first movement, and a strong contrast from its powerful climax in the haunting lyrical beauty of the slow movement.  The finale returns us to the energy of the first movement, and ends with a fantastic coda in faster tempo which can practically be guaranteed to pull the audience out of their seats.

However, it's the scherzo that distinguishes this symphony for all time.  Dvořák wisely and accurately labelled it as a Furiant, a tremendously energetic Czech dance in triple time with alternating bars grouped in three groups of two beats and two groups of three.  In fact, he was here repeating a pattern from the eighth of his Slavonic Dances, originally for piano 4-hands, and later orchestrated.  Like that dance, this scherzo rushes onwards at an appropriately furious pace, creating a surge of energy such as has rarely been heard in the music of any other composer, Beethoven not excepted.  The trio then gives the greatest contrast you can imagine, a beguiling melody for the winds with the end of each phrase punctuated by a dreamy little cadenza for the piccolo.

The Symphony No. 7 in D Minor, Op. 70, is only one of many significant works of music from the latter part of the 1800s which we owe to the enterprise in commissioning new work of the London Philharmonic Society.  Perhaps because of that commission, this symphony is more conscientiously constructed than the fifth and sixth.  But don't mistake "conscientiously" for an accusation of being boring or uninspired.  In fact, I've often felt that this symphony marks the height of Dvořák's dramatic inspiration as much as the fifth marks the pinnacle of his lyrical gifts.  It's also the least overtly "Czech" of the nine, although Dvořák stated that he intended parts of it to evoke the struggle of the Czech people for freedom from Austria-Hungary and independent nationhood.

The home key of D minor tells us right away that this is going to be a dramatic, not to say tragic, work -- and that character emerges from the very opening bars, with a gloomy melody that emerges from darkness deep down in the lower instruments of the orchestra.  The symphony as a whole won't maintain that gloomy character, but that simple little melodic motif will continue to evolve into moments of high drama as the movement goes on.  One of the odd characteristics of the movement, and of the symphony as a whole, is the frequent flip-flopping between major and minor chords based on the same key (D minor-D Major-D minor, for example).

The first and last movements of the seventh symphony between them give us more dramatic intensity than any other symphonic work by this composer.  Perhaps, subconsciously, Dvořák wanted to signal to the world that there was much more to his art than folk dances and pretty tunes.  If so, he succeeded magnificently, as we hear when the full orchestra, led by the horns and trombones, thunders out that quiet and gloomy opening theme fortissimo to usher in the recapitulation.  The intensity of the coda goes light years beyond anything that Dvořák had written to that time, and (for my money at least) arises far more organically than the somewhat contrived "tragic" climaxes of the New World.  Not the least of Dvořák's innovations is the quiet yet unquiet (read: unresolved) ending of the movement immediately in the shadow of that tragic catastrophe.

The winds open the slow movement in a plaintive and reminiscent mood worlds removed from the lyrical delights of # 5 and # 6, although the melodies sing just as beautifully.  This movement is punctuated by several repetitions of a strange little phrase which eventually takes on a drum-beat rhythm evocative of stress and fear.  A contrasting theme is intoned by the horns like a kind of secular benediction.

The third movement scherzo resumes the feel of folk dance, in a slower version of the furiant rhythm of # 6, but with a more uneasy feeling lurking behind the lilting rhythms and the main theme.  The uneasiness is even more pronounced in the fragmented cross-rhythms and restless character of the trio.

The finale brings us back to the tragic intensity of the first movement with a vengeance.  The music swells quickly to a first climax within moments, and then leads into a ponderous melody played with great emphasis on the strings.  This theme, and the surging octave of the opening, will be developed to great effect in this gripping music.  The last word of # 7 is among the most unusual closings in all of symphonic literature.  Dvořák eschews the triumph-from-tragedy shape so common in the 19th century, but equally avoids the rarer tragic ending in the minor.  Thus the final cadence of this intense symphonic drama performs the almost unique feat of ending the work in the full power and darkness of tragedy on a D major chord.

In each of the fifth, sixth, and seventh symphonies, Dvořák follows the example of his mentor Brahms in giving us three completely distinct and distinctive symphonic worlds to enjoy, without either retreading old ground or overtly copying the work of others.  In no uncertain terms, he stamped himself with these works as one of the great masters of the symphonic art.  To readers who have enjoyed the New World Symphony, any or all of these three works should almost certainly give equal pleasure.

In My End is My Beginning

Two relative rarities for chorus and orchestra from Johannes Brahms form my subject matter today.  The continuing, world-wide popularity of the masterly Deutsches Requiem has overshadowed the other works which Brahms composed for chorus and orchestra.  During the LP era, the Schicksalslied and Nänie saw more circulation, since both were ideally suited to fill up an LP devoted to one Brahms symphony.  The same was also true of the two concert overtures. The Alto Rhapsody also enjoyed wide circulation, thanks to the advocacy of many famous contraltos.

But that leaves out the last of the quartet of late choral masterpieces, the Gesang der Parzen, Op. 89 ("Song of the Fates").  This stern, granitic work did not find the favour which its three companions garnered, and remained mainly unperformed unless a choir undertook to sing all four of the late works as a kind of choral suite within a concert.

Out of those four short works, though, it's the Gesang der Parzen to which I return most often.  This brief (12 minutes or so) cantata to a poem by Goethe is marked throughout most of its length by an unrelenting funeral march which begins in the orchestra, and then is taken up by the singers.  The orchestral introduction's most noteworthy characteristic is the emphasis on descending lines and phrases, and the struggle with which the orchestra briefly achieves a rising phrase before resuming its fatal downward progress.  

As the orchestral march dies away in the depths, we become aware of the plucked strings and timpani outlining an ominous rhythmic pattern -- amphibrachic metre, if you want the correct poetic term.  (I've always wanted to use that word in a sentence).  Here's what it looks like:

When the choir begins to sing, the eighth note followed by an eighth rest becomes in the voices a quarter note and then the amphibrachic rhythm is both clear and exact -- with the long note framed between two shorter ones, twice in each bar.

This doom-laden rhythmic ostinato continues through much of the piece, sometimes rising to a forte, but usually quiet.  It's one of several features which ensures a predominantly dark colour to the music.  Another is the inclusion of parts for alto, tenor, and bass trombones, along with tuba.  Finally, there's the division of the choral altos and basses into two parts each, giving a six-part choir with the emphasis on the lower, darker voices.  

All of these aspects faithfully echo the deeply pessimistic tone of Goethe's poem, which contrasts the blissful existence of the gods above with the sufferings of humanity when exposed to divine whims.  

When the amphibrachic pulses are laid aside, we then hear two contrasting musical styles: a triumphant rising and falling theme representing the glory of the gods, and later a gracefully flowing, triple-time passage expressing the bliss in which the gods live.  Between these two episodes, the amphibrachic march returns, as does the opening verse of the text.  We hear one final reminiscence of that obsessive drumbeat before the ending dies quietly down into the deepest darkness, the last word a deep, dark chord of D minor in the orchestra.

The contrast is striking, to say the least, with the other three well-known short works.   Each of the Alto Rhapsody, Nänie, and Schicksalslied achieves a kind of secular blessedness in its final bars.  Not so this despairing vision of fate.

This work was such a rarity that I never succeeded in laying my hands on a recording until we were well into the age of the compact disc.  Since then, it's been recorded seven or eight times that have come to my attention.

It was later still in the years that I discovered an astonishing early anticipation of the Gesang der Parzen.  That same obsessive rhythmic pattern dominates the opening pages of the early Begräbnisgesang Op. 17 ("Burial Song"), which was composed a quarter of a century before the Gesang der Parzen.  Interesting, too, is the fact that these two works stand as the first and last published examples of Brahms' output for chorus and orchestra.  I admit, I am fudging the terms a bit here because the Begräbnisgesang is actually written for chorus and Harmonie or wind band.  Yet the wind writing also contains uncanny anticipations of the later works, especially the Nänie and the Gesang der Parzen.

But the Begräbnisgesang also sounds eerily like a dress rehearsal for the second movement of the Deutsches Requiem (Denn alles Fleisch es ist wie Gras), with the melody announced first in unison, low and quiet, and then building through an extended and ominous crescendo to a fortissimo outcry of the choir in full harmony.  The choral reiteration of the opening lines is then accompanied by triplet figures very reminiscent of the drum rhythms in Denn alles Fleisch.

That hair-raising moment justifies the piece's continuing existence in the repertoire.  The remainder of this early work is rather more pedestrian, rising to no convincing melodic statement which can balance the extraordinary power of the opening.  That level of accomplishment still lay in the composer's future in 1858.  But make no mistake, the Begräbnisgesang is well worth any time you care to invest in hearing it.  And the experience of pairing it with the Gesang der Parzen shows that, even at the age of 25, Brahms had a gift of musical invention which, at its finest, could hardly be bettered by the mature composer in his fifties.