Pastorale d’été

     Arthur Honegger was born in France in 1892. Though his parents were Swiss, Honegger spent much of his life in France, where he began advanced music study at the Paris Conservatory in 1912. An advocate of “modern” music, he was a prominent exponent of Les Six, a group of young French composers among whom figured Francis Poulenc and Darius Milhaud.  
     Throughout his long career (Honegger died in 1955), Honegger compiled an impressive list of compositions including five symphonies, several operas, much chamber music and film music. Perhaps his most famous composition, Pacific 231 (which evokes the revving up of a locomotive), expresses many characteristics of Honegger’s music with its jarring rhythms, explosive dissonances, and little concern for traditional harmony.  
     Tonight’s piece, however, shows Honegger at his tonal and melodic best.  Pastorale d’été (“summer pastoral”) was written in 1920 when Honegger was vacationing in the Swiss Alps. As an epigraph to the composition, Honegger chose the following words of the renegade French poet Arthur Rimbaud: J’ai embrassé l’aube d’été (“I have embraced [also: hugged or kissed] the summer dawn”). That embrace begins musically with a slow rocking 4/4 rhythm; the sound of a solo horn rises above the susurration of the strings. Birds can be heard, also the murmurings of wildlife both animal and plant. These are the Alps, so you might also imagine an Alpenhorn sounding in the mountainous distance. The composition contains a second section, at first only a little faster, then Vif et gai (“lively and cheerful”), announced by clarinet and oboe. But that sudden vitality winds back down to the original tempo and mood; the solo horn returns; and the piece closes with the quiet twittering of flute and then clarinet.
     It takes not much imagining to summon up other musical evocations of the natural world—Debussy’s Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune or Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloé, for example—as you listen to Honegger’s charming tone poem.  Interestingly, just several years before his death Honegger wrote an autobiography whose self-evident title, Je suis compositeur (“I am a composer”), underscores the musician’s absolute dedication to his art.

Violin Concerto No. 5 in A, K. 219 

     Mozart (1756-91) was employed by the Salzburg court from 1773 to 1777 where he led the court orchestra. As concertmaster he directed the ensemble from the violin and was likely soloist as well. During this period he composed five concertos for violin, the only ones he wrote, as well as a number of incidental pieces featuring the violin. And all this by the advanced age of 20 years! The dates of composition are at best guesses since the original dates have been scratched out and re-entered, probably by Mozart himself. The final three of his violin concertos remain in the concert repertoire today.
     The Violin Concerto No. 5 in A major (in the same key as both the Honegger selection and Beethoven’s symphony) is written in the conventional three movements, fast-slow-fast. The first movement has the unusual tempo marking Allegro aperto (in Italian aperto means “open” or “broad”), perhaps suggesting that the entire movement be a bit more serious than a speedy Allegro might imply. After a charming orchestral introduction, the soloist enters with a lovely, slow melody that works its way back to the faster opening tempo. Mozart makes much use of the violin’s higher register (which helps it to stand out above the orchestration), and there is plenty of virtuosic passagework throughout.
     The second movement, Adagio, is also written in a major key, E (a fifth above A). Though the mood is still light, the music still delicate, the development section moves into a darker minor key before returning to the simple, cheerful melody of the movement’s beginning.  
     The final movement is a minuet in the form of a rondeau, or rondo (wherein a lead theme recurs, interspersed with other musical material). It is this movement that gives the concerto its nickname, “Turkish.” About halfway through the composition, Mozart moves to a minor key with surprising percussive sounds, regular pounding accents, and repeated swells from the orchestra while the solo violin virtually growls up and down the fingerboard. Mozart is imitating the raucous sound of a Turkish band (which he has done elsewhere, as in the “Rondo alla Turca” for piano), a bit of musical exoticism in the midst of classical Salzburg. As recently (for Mozart) as 1683, the Ottoman Turks were poised to invade Vienna, and the relationship between Austria (indeed, much of Eastern Europe) and the Ottoman Empire was always fraught. But the concerto’s dalliance with orientalism doesn’t last long, and the soloist returns to a more recognizably Mozart sound as the concerto draws to a close.

Symphony No. 7 in A major, Op. 92

     Most of Beethoven’s symphonies were written in the first 15 or so years of the 19th century (he died in 1827). This was also the time that Napoleon Bonaparte rose to power in France, at first promising democratic changes, later establishing himself as emperor while his troops overran much of Europe, and then falling from grace fairly spectacularly in 1815.  While Beethoven—passionate about individual freedoms and social justice like a good Romantic—at first applauded the ambitions of the Corsican, he became increasingly disgusted with the self-aggrandizing actions that followed. In some ways Beethoven’s symphonies can be thought of as a musical rebuke to the gross excesses of unbridled power.
     Symphony No. 7 dates from 1812, when Napoleon was planning to invade Russia. The symphony’s premiere took place in 1813 in Vienna, a city that had already been occupied by Napoleon two times, in 1805 and 1809. Beethoven himself served as conductor that opening night, and a number of patrons remarked on his wild appearance and excessive, dramatic gesticulations on the podium. The concert was a benefit for Austrian soldiers wounded in battles with Napoleon and despite everything was a tremendous success—for Vienna and for Beethoven. The audience rose to their feet after the completion of the second movement, which had to be repeated, again to acclaim. This arresting, dirge-like composition (despite its tempo indication “Allegretto”) has been one of the most popular pieces of the Beethoven canon ever since.  
     But it is the tremendous energy of the entire symphony—all of its four movements—that has made it a favorite of audiences too. Even Beethoven felt that the symphony was his best work (although a Ninth Symphony and a number of String Quartets were yet to be written), calling the work his “most excellent symphony.”
     After a slow introduction, the first movement bursts into a lively dance-like theme in dotted rhythms and in the bright key of A major. In the second movement, the not-so-slow slow march follows in the parallel minor key; its ostinato signature—long-short-short long-long—is a recurring rhythmic pattern that carries through the movement as the instrumental sound grows and the key returns to A major briefly before fading A minor chords conclude the dirge. A whirlwind scherzo, marked Presto, follows. Written in 6/8 time, typical of peasant dances, its middle section is repeated, unusual in the compositional practice of the time.  Then the fourth movement, Allegro con brio, fires up, its first theme in 2/4 time written with accents on the second beat, creating a sort of musical race that continues to the triumphant finish.
     Listeners have labelled the fourth movement “bacchanalian,” so visceral are the rhythms and the relentless energy of the music. Richard Wagner, not known for his generous opinions of other musicians’ work, loved the symphony, which he labelled “the Apotheosis of Dance itself.”  
     In response to the authoritarianism that Napoleon and his minions tried to establish in the Europe of the time, Beethoven worked to assert the independence of artistic freedom and the a-political but totally human import of music in the lived lives of people.