Samuel Barber
Overture to The School for Scandal
Duration: 8 Minutes
Samuel Barber (1910-81) is one of the most well-known and celebrated of American composers of the twentieth century. While much of his music is known for its lush, lyrical neo-Romantic sound and the composer’s mastery of classical musical forms, Barber also increasingly employs unresolved dissonance and serialism in his later compositions. Born into a wealthy and very musical family, Barber showed early ability in music and was encouraged—and able—to get the finest training from the finest teachers at the time. At age 14 Barber entered the Curtis Institute of Music, from which he graduated in 1934. A multi-talented musician, Barber studied piano, voice (he had a fine baritone), and composition. His musical works include tonight’s work, the Overture to the School for Scandal, which was first performed when the composer was only 23; a string quartet, whose second movement Adagio has become world-famous in its setting for string orchestra; several symphonies; concertos for violin, for cello, and for piano (an amazing and under-performed work, which won the 1962 Pulitzer Prize for music and was performed at the opening of Lincoln Center in New York City) as well as sonatas and incidental instrumental works. His oeuvre also includes numerous works for voice, including Knoxville, Summer of 1915 for voice and orchestra; two operas, one of which, Vanessa, won a Pulitzer Prize; and scores of art songs. Throughout his career Barber worked with major musical artists—Gian Carlo Menotti, Eleanor Steber, Leontyne Price, John Browning, and Vladimir Horowitz—among many others. Barber was a super-star of the 20th century American musical tradition.
The young composer established his musical prowess with tonight’s work, a concert overture. Unlike earlier overtures that may introduce major themes in an opera or set the stage for the dramatic action that is to follow, the concert overture—a free-standing, single-movement work—became popular in the 19th century (think Mendelssohn or Brahms, e.g.). In the title, Barber makes reference to an 18th-century theatrical comedy of manners by Richard Sheridan. With characters such as Lady Sneerwell (there can be no doubt about her personality) and Lady Teazle (somewhat prickly, you might guess), School for Scandal mocks prevailing social norms and the dangerous import of gossip and loose talk.
Of course Barber’s overture is non-programmatic (although it is tantalizing to guess what bits of the play Barber might have been imagining as he wrote his music). The overture has tremendous vitality: slower, melodic (always tonal) sections are interspersed with pulsating rhythmic music. Barber makes skilful use of the entire tonal palette of the orchestra. The composition rushes to its peremptory conclusion with a great flourish, not unlike overtures of 17th- or 18th-century operas. Surely, John Williams studied this work in his musical pedagogy.
Sheridan Seyfried
Double Concerto for Two Violins and Orchestra
Duration: 25 Minutes
Sheridan Seyfried is a young American composer; he was born in Philadephia in 1984. His prodigious musical aptitude manifested itself early, and he was admitted to the Curtis Institute of Music as a violinist. Before graduating, he won the Alfredo Casella Award for composition and is now active as composer, church music director, and music educator. According to the composer, musical influences of Seyfried’s include classical music and New Age music as well as American folk and blues. He has written works for various ensembles in various styles: a Violin Concerto; Voices of the Holocaust, for accompanied choir; a sextet for clarinet, piano, and strings; a number of works for solo cello; Blues Train, for marimba and violin duet.
The following program notes were written by composer Sheridan Seyfried:
The Double Concerto was written in 2017 and premiered that year with Nikki and Timmy Chooi as violin soloists and Roger Kalia conducting the Lake George Music Festival orchestra. The piece was commissioned by Chuck and Judy Freyer.
This three-movement work, being written for two soloists who happen to be brothers, is in some ways a musical exploration of brotherhood itself. At the outset, a typical pattern is established: the elder sibling (Nikki in this case) leads and the younger (Timmy) follows, imitating faithfully. As the first movement proceeds, however, listen for different sorts of interactions: the brothers sometimes play in sync with each other, accompanying, responding to, or leading the orchestra. The orchestra could represent the external world in which the brothers exist—a world full of challenges and triumphs. Gradually, little brother starts to introduce more ideas of his own—sometimes big brother even plays along. After navigating turbulent waters (during the middle of the movement), at last there is a grand climax of the opening theme (played in the orchestra), and the first movement concludes in a mood of sweet serenity.
In the second movement, after a sparse introduction, the younger brother introduces a melancholy tune. The oboe follows with a more impassioned melody. Big brother briefly attempts to steer the music in a more lighthearted direction but fails to do so: the orchestra intervenes, and the initial dark mood quickly returns, this time led by the flute and bassoon (the soloists floating on top). Soon the clarinet also attempts to find levity, but this time waves of passion overtake both soloists and orchestra. A peak of great intensity is reached, but the sound is abruptly terminated, like a sudden realization. In the quiet, it is now the older brother who leads the opening melody, as if now empathizing with his little sibling. The brothers join together in a phrase of yearning nostalgia, but once again passion takes over and, at the top of their voices, the soloists intone the earlier oboe melody. What was once a cry behind closed doors becomes a public confession. But a large orchestral wave soon crashes over everything—the intensity subsides, and we are left with only fragments of the ominous opening material—a dim memory.
The third movement begins with an introduction for both soloists that could almost be a conversation between adult brothers about childhood: the opening theme of the first movement is “discussed”—perhaps the brothers remember, or interpret, earlier events differently. Quickly, however, an understanding is reached, and the younger brother leads a lively bluegrass dance, complete with dueling fiddles. Soon the pace picks up still further—the country road has now merged onto the highway. For the first time, the brothers introduce a new melody at the same time—but, as in life, it’s not perfect unison: the older brother starts two beats before the younger. A climax is reached, and a short, playful interlude follows. Soon, intensity builds and the bluegrass material returns. The faster music also returns, after which the materials of both sections are combined in an exuberant coda which rounds off the whole piece in high spirits.
Modest Mussorgsky/Ravel
Pictures at an Exhibition
Duration: 35 Minutes
Modest Mussorgsky (1839-81) was a highly original if unorthodox Russian composer. Throughout his productive years he was associated with The Five, a group of Russian composers dedicated to creating a nationalist school of music, one that saw itself as separate from the mainstream of European composition (whose representatives in Russia at the time were Anton Rubinstein and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky). In his short life Mussorgsky’s musical output was not large, but he produced a remarkable opera, Boris Godunov, based on poetry of Pushkin; the well-known Night on Bald Mountain, whose original score was thoroughly rewritten by Rimsky-Korsakov; many wonderful songs that display his sensitive setting of the Russian language to music; and the Pictures at an Exhibition, originally a set of piano pieces, later orchestrated to great effect by Maurice Ravel in 1922.
Mussorgsky had early training at the piano from his mother, an accomplished pianist. A facile learner, he gave his first public performance at the age of nine. Later, while attending school in St. Petersburg in preparation for a military career, Modest nonetheless continued to study music and with a preeminent teacher, Anton Gerke. He rose to the rank of lieutenant in the military and as an officer was able to attend concerts, go to Moscow and participate in its cultural life, and meet prominent musicians such as Mily Balakirev and Mikhail Glinka. Deciding to devote his life to music, Mussorgsky left his military life and, in 1863, started working as a civil servant (Then as now, a music career often fails to produce significant or even life-sustaining financial reward.).
Mussorgsky wrote or began most of his best works in the 1860s. But the death of his mother in 1865 and his constant need for money sent him down a psychological spiral that resulted in his early death, from alcoholism and epilepsy, in 1881.
In 1873 a close friend of Mussorgsky’s, Viktor Hartmann, a promising artist, died suddenly. A memorial exhibition of the artist’s work was arranged; it included paintings, sketches, costume designs, and architectural renderings. It was this exhibition that Mussorgsky visited and which gave rise to his series of piano compositions, his musical tribute to the artistic skills of his great friend, Pictures at an Exhibition.
There are ten movements in Mussorgsky’s piano composition. Several interstitial “Promenades” separate movements of the entire work. Here—often in asymmetrical meters—the heavy-set composer strides from work to work as he contemplates the art.
The first painting, “The Gnome,” is that of a toy gnome. In his music Mussorgsky makes the homunculus slither and jump in grotesque motions. After the second Promenade, Mussorgsky beholds an ancient castle (“The Old Castle”) with a sorrowful troubadour singing on the castle grounds in slow 6/8 time. Ravel uses a mournful English horn to give voice to the singer. The next painting (#3), entitled “Tuileries,” depicts noisy kids at play in the famous Parisian gardens. The subject matter then moves from France to Poland, and the music from joyous to lumbering. In the fourth movement (“Bydlo”) Mussorgsky presents the central figure, a rough oxcart tugged by oxen, as it approaches then recedes from the viewer.
In his brief career Hartmann had created costume designs for a ballet, the “Ballet of Unhatched Chicks,” which Mussorgsky brings to life in filigree musical lines in this fifth movement. Ravel adds a horn that chirps in the background. The sixth musical painting makes reference to two sketches that Hartmann had given Mussorgsky, one of a wealthy Polish Jew, the other of a poor Russian one; these two are animated by music in “Goldenberg and Schmuÿle.” Ravel has the trumpet speak for the poor Jew, while the strings sing for the wealthy. The seventh movement, “Limoges,” gives voice to a bevy of women haggling in the market in that famous French town. The mood changes drastically for the following movement, “Catacombae,” with its ominous chords and deadening rhythms. The final two movements of the composition are played without separation. First comes the witch Baba Yaga as she terrorizes her victims; the movement bears the title “Hut on Fowl’s Legs” (It was actually a carved wooden clock.). The final bars of the movement dash up the octaves before crashing into the “Great Gate of Kiev,” the final, triumphant section. This is Hartmann’s sketch of a proposed ideal city with ramparts and great towers; bells toll loudly as the entire composition comes dramatically to a close.