Program Notes by Jim Yancy

65th Season Opening Concert

September 27, 2008

Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1742)

from the Four Seasons, Opus 8

          Spring

          Winter

Shannon Lee, violin

 

Vivaldi’s Opus 8 consists of twelve concertos for violin and orchestra, of which the first four comprise The Seasons.  Composed in 1723, The Four Seasons is Vivaldi's best-known work, and is among the most popular pieces of baroque music, as well as a prime example of program music.  Program music is a form of music intended to evoke extra-musical ideas, images in the mind of the listener by representing a scene, image or mood  through specific musical sounds or themes.  This kind of descriptive music was especially popular in the baroque period where 18th century philosophers felt that the arts should imitate nature as precisely as possible.  Vivaldi prefaced each concerto with a poem (authorship unknown, but thought to have been written by the composer himself) to which the music corresponds.  For the best “program” guide to the music, one need look no further than Vivaldi’s own descriptions of these evocative “tone poems.”

 

Spring

 

Allegro
Springtime is upon us.
The birds celebrate her return with festive song,  [The soloist imitates the chirping of the birds.]
and murmuring streams are softly caressed by the breezes.
Thunderstorms, those heralds of Spring, roar, casting their dark mantle over heaven,
Then they die away to silence, and the birds take up their charming songs once more.

Largo
On the flower-strewn meadow, with leafy branches rustling overhead, the goat-herd sleeps, his faithful dog beside him. [A peaceful, languorous movement; the repeated rhythm in the violas depicts the dog barking.]

Allegro
Led by the festive sound of rustic bagpipes, nymphs and shepherds lightly dance beneath the brilliant canopy of spring.

 

 

Winter

 

Allegro non molto
To tremble from cold in the icy snow,
In the harsh breath of a horrid wind;
To run, stamping one's feet every moment,
Our teeth chattering in the extreme cold

Largo
Before the fire to pass peaceful,
Contented days while the rain outside pours down. [Note the violin pizzicatos suggesting the rain plopping outside.]

Allegro
We tread the icy path slowly and cautiously, for fear of tripping and falling.
Then turn abruptly, slip, crash on the ground and, rising, hasten on across the ice lest it cracks up.
We feel the chill north winds course through the home despite the locked and bolted doors...
this is winter, which nonetheless brings its own delights.

 

 

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827) 

Symphony No. 9 in D minor, op. 125, “Choral”

              I. Allegro ma non troppo, un poco maestoso

             II. Scherzo: Molto vivace

            III. Adagio molto e cantabile—Andante moderato

            IV. Presto—Recitative—Allegro assai vivace, alla Marcia

                  Andante maestoso --- Allegro energico, sempre ben marcato

                  Allegro ma non tanto --- Prestissimo

 

Unlike the programmatic format of Vivaldi’s  Seasons,  the bulk of Beethoven’s music is “absolute” music.  Absolute music is music for its own sake and owes little or nothing to extra-musical considerations.  It is generally devoid of any intentional attempts to depict pictures, events, or anything other than just the music itself.  There are exceptions of course, even in Beethoven’s music – the “Pastorale” symphony and “Wellington’s Victory,” for  example.  In the mighty 9th symphony,  “one of the most stupendous and exhilarating instance of Western art,” most of the music is of the “absolute,” but the extraordinarily innovative inclusion of the “choral” finale, set to a specific text, makes this final symphony of Beethoven’s really “about something.”  It is in this “Ode to Joy” by Friedrich Schiller that the music celebrates the joy of brotherhood that can lift mankind above the pain of life and of living.

 

Beethoven’s  final years saw him becoming increasingly isolated.  Because of his deafness, he was no longer able to function as a performer and was no longer the center of Vienna’s musical life.  The need he had to communicate to an increasingly remote world led him to the directness of words, a reaching out to humanity and hopefully touching the human spirit as forcefully as possible.  With the incorporation of the Schiller Ode which provides the text for the finale,  Beethoven does not merely praise joy, but indelibly expresses his belief that it is in joy and the brotherhood of man where man’s salvation may be found.  Although Beethoven had experimented with the device of including a choral finale, particularly in the Choral fantasy of 1808, what he was doing here was nothing short of revolutionary.

 

The premiere of the 9th on May 7, 1824,  was an occasion of triumph and poignancy.  Owing to his deafness, Beethoven was of course unable to conduct, although he had supervised the rehearsals.  Knowing he could not hear them, his singers, frustrated with his refusal to change some of the more difficult notes, simply omitted them.  The conductor, Michael Umlauf,  instructed the musicians to ignore the composer who was seated on stage, and who most certainly would begin to beat out the time.  At the end of the performance, Beethoven was so engrossed in the score that he did not realize the symphony had concluded and he couldn’t hear the tumultuous applause.  One of the soloists touched his sleeve and turned him around so he could see the waving handkerchiefs and clapping hands.  Then he bowed to the audience and acknowledged applause which he could not hear for his own music also which he could not hear.

 

The opening of the symphony is justifiably famous in its growing from nothingness and creating an atmosphere of awe and expectation until the great proud theme is reached.  Richard Wagner described the development which follows as “a struggle conceived in the greatest grandeur of the soul contending for happiness against the oppression of that power which places itself between us and the joys of the earth.”  The second movement is a scherzo which is an expression of joy, movement, and rhythmic vitality and momentum.  This music took on a life of its own for many of us who recall it as the theme music for “The Huntley-Brinkley Report” during the 1960s.

 

The noble adagio inspired Hector Berlioz to comment:  “ If my prose could only give an approximate idea of [the principal melodies], music would have found a rival in the written speech such as the greatest of poets himself would never succeed in putting against her.”  The serenity of the adagio is shattered by a savage outburst of sound which announces the fourth movement.  Main themes from the first three movements are recalled until a melody first played by the cellos and basses, then by the violas and violins reveal the “joy” theme.  The angry opening of the movement is heard again and leads to the opening baritone solo of Schiller’s “Ode.”