by David B. Levy
Simple Symphony, Op. 4
Benjamin Britten
Benjamin Britten, one of England’s leading twentieth-century musicians, was born in Lowestoft, Suffolk on November 22, 1913 and died in Aldeburgh on December 4, 1976. Britten’s contribution to opera, sacred and secular choral music, and vocal and instrumental repertory is impressive, both in quantity and quality, and is widely admired for its superb craftsmanship and expressive power. His Simple Symphony was composed in the town of his birth between December 1933 and February 1934 and received its first performance on March 6, 1934 at Stuart Hall, Norwich with the composer directing an amateur orchestra. It is scored for string orchestra.
The forty-five years that have elapsed since the death of Benjamin Britten have only served to enhance the reputation that accrued to him during his lifetime – one of the greatest composers in the history of English music. Gifted from an early age, we should be grateful that, unlike some composers, Britten did not destroy his juvenilia. Had he done so, his Simple Symphony would not have come into existence. By time Britten composed this charming work, his precocious talents had already produced a number of significant compositions. The return to his Suffolk coastal home town after study at boarding school and composition lessons with Frank Bridge inspired Britten to take a whimsical look at eight pieces he composed during the 1920s, reusing themes from these works to create a four-movement symphony for string orchestra. He dedicated the work to his childhood viola teacher, Audrey Alston (Mrs. Lincolne Sutton).
The first movement, “Boisterous Bourrée,” is based on a dance movement from Britten’s youthful Suite No. 1 for piano (1925), as well as a 1923 song for voice and piano. Here the composer puts the old Baroque wine in a new bottle, filled with spirited energy. Next comes the best known music from the piece, “Playful Pizzicato,” an adaptation of a Scherzo for Piano (1924), the Scherzo from this Sonata for Piano, Op. 5, and another song from the same year set to a text by Rudyard Kipling (T.he Road Song of the “Bandar-Log”). The third movement, “Sentimental Sarabande,” is the longest one and evokes a melancholic mood that demonstrates the composer’s ability to explore, even in his youth, profound and intense depths of emotion, even as it ends gently with an air of consolation. The last movement is entitled “Frolicksome Finale” and is again based on a work for piano, his Sonata no. 9 (1926) as well as song composed in 1925. After an arresting opening gesture, the movement rolls forward with tremendous energy.
It should come as no surprise that some of the music from Simple Symphony has enjoyed an afterlife as music for ballet, radio programs, as well as making its way into film (Bad Blood, Moonrise Kingdom) and, more familiarly, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (2017-18 seasons).
Lyric for Strings
George Walker
American composer, pianist, and organist, George Theophilus Walker was born in Washington, D.C. on June 27, 1922 and died in Montclair, NJ on August 23, 2018. A graduate of Oberlin College Conservatory, the Eastman School of Music, and the Curtis Institute of Music, Walker achieved many firsts as an African-American composer and performer. He had further studies at the American Conservatory in Fontainebleau, where his teachers included, among others, Nadia Boulanger. Walker also was the winner of several distinguished awards, including a Fulbright, Whitney, Guggenheim, Rockefeller, and MacDowell fellowship. He received the Pulitzer Prize in music in 1996 for his vocal/orchestral setting of Walt Whitman, Lilacs. Walker also taught at many prestigious colleges and universities. His Lyric for Strings, originally entitled “Lament,” was composed in 1946 and was conceived as a middle movement from a string quartet.
Although not a performer on any string instrument, George Walker had a fine sense of how to write beautifully for string ensemble. Inspired in some respects by the famous Adagio for Strings (1936) by Samuel Barber, the composition of Lyric for Strings overlapped with news of the death of Walker’s grandmother, thus becoming a memorial in her honor. As is the case with so many other music of its kind, it is a work of profound personal expression. As an African-American, Walker did not try to hide his identity. As documented in an interview with the New York Times in 1982, Walker remarked ''There's no way I can conceal my identity as a black composer. I have a very strong feeling for the Negro spiritual and have also drawn from American folk songs, and popular and patriotic tunes, which I believe merit inclusion in serious compositions." In this way Walker represented, along with other African-American composers such as William Grant Still and Florence Price, the fulfillment of the promise of American music predicted and advocated by Antonín Dvořák toward the beginning of the 20th Century.
Serenade for Strings in E, Op. 22 (B. 52)
Antonín Dvořák
The Czech master Antonín Dvořák was born in Nelahozeves, near Kralupy, on September 8, 1841; and died in Prague, May 1, 1904. His Serenade for Strings was composed in 1875 and received its first performance took place in Prague on December 10, 1876 with Adolf Čech directing the orchestras of the Czech and German theatres. Emanuel Starý made an arrangement of the piece which was published in Prague in 1877. The score of the original version appeared in print in Berlin two years later. The Serenade’s scoring calls for violins, violas, cellos, and bass.
Dvořák’s five-movement Serenade for Strings stands among the composer’s most popular works. While not as frequently performed by orchestras as his last four symphonies of the magnificent Concerto for Violoncello and Orchestra, its hearing on concert programs is always welcome. The work also has been overshadowed—unfairly, one might add—by Tchaikovsky’s work of the same name, composed five years later. Often a composer’s greatest compositional skill is hidden by the seeming simplicity of a given musical work. Surely this is the case in Dvořák’s lovely work, a companion of sorts to his Serenade for Winds in D Minor, Op. 44, composed three years later (1878).
The composer dashed off this delightful work in short order in May of 1875. He was by then married, expecting his first child. But his financial situation was not good, as evidenced by a letter of recommendation written by none other than Johannes Brahms to his publisher Simrock in Berlin penned two years later:
As for the state stipendium, for several years I have enjoyed works sent in by Antonín Dvořák (pronounced Dvorschak) of Prague. This year he has sent works including a volume of 10 duets for two sopranos and piano, which seem to me very pretty, and a practical proposition for publishing. … Play them through and you will like them as much as I do. As a publisher, you will be particularly pleased with their piquancy. … Dvořák has written all manner of things: operas (Czech), symphonies, quartets, piano pieces. In any case, he is a very talented man. Moreover, he is poor! I ask you to think about it! The duets will show you what I mean, and could be a ‘good article’.
Brahms was to become one of Dvořák’s most enthusiastic advocates.
Dvořák was a violist who knew the capabilities of string instruments and their sonority very well. One would be hard-pressed to find a more amiable first movement than the lovely Moderato that opens the work. It begins with a gentle dialogue between the first violins and cellos. The return of the opening material is gracefully embellished, with the texture thickened by dividing the violin, viola, and cello lines into parts (divisi). Dvořák continues to divide the strings in this fashion throughout the entire work.
The second movement, Tempo di valse, is perhaps the best-known of the work’s five movements. Structured like a minuet or scherzo, it features a contrasting “trio” section sandwiched between the wistfully melancholic waltz theme in C-sharp minor.
The third movement is a duple-meter scherzo of great energy. This Vivace escapade changes mood frequently. Towards the end, the composer slows the tempo before a sudden final outburst of energy. It is entirely possible that this gesture was inspired by the final movement of Beethoven’s String Quartet in F Major, Op. 59, no. 1 (“Razumovsky”), which coincidentally (?) is in the same key.
The emotional heart of Dvořák’s Serenade is to found in the Larghetto fourth movement, with its achingly beautiful melodies, treated in canonic fashion, as well as its lush harmonies and texture. Astute listeners will detect that the composer brings back one of the themes from the second movement. The Finale: Allegro vivace is a folksy and rigorous affair marked by many unexpected and tricky rhythmic displacements. On hearing the opening, one might conclude that the movement is in the minor mode, but this is but a feint that yields to unbridled fun and joviality. A particularly poignant moment comes when Dvořák brings back the main theme of the work’s first movement, only set the stage for a brilliant rush to the end.
