by David B. Levy
The CSO Pre-concert Lecture Series and Program Notes are made possible thanks to the Carl and Lee Chaverin Fund.
“God is Dead, Schoenberg is Dead, but Love will come”
Frances Pollock
American composer, Frances Pollock, was born in Winston-Salem, NC in 1990 and is 2021 Composer-in-Residence at the Chautauqua Institution. The Baltimore Sun has characterized her opera, Stinney, as “bold and bracing . . . [and] pulls no punches and never flinches.” Pollock is a graduate of Furman University (BM) and Peabody Conservatory (MM) and is pursuing her doctorate at Yale University. Her online biography (www.francespollock.com) and the CHQ webpages show that her connection to the Institution was part of the American Opera Project (AOP), linking her to our Chautauqua Opera director, Steven Osgood. Scheduled to be at CHQ last year, she, Steve Osgood, and dramatic poet Jerre Dye created an a capella song cycle featuring each of the young artists of the CHQ Opera who, because of Covid-19, were denied the opportunity to perform in public. Each song is a meditation based on interviews with each singer on their lives under the shadow of the pandemic. The cycle was placed online under the umbrella of the CHQ Assembly and are available for viewing on YouTube. “God is Dead, Schoenberg is Dead, but Love will come” is a new seven-and-a-half-minute piece for “nested string quintet” and string orchestra. It received its first performance on April 22, 2021 at Yale University on a concert entitled “New Music for Orchestra.
Frances Pollock, in an email communication, says of tonight’s “hot off the press” piece:
“God is Dead, Schoenberg is Dead, but Love will come again” is a meditation on nihilism and a consideration of my conscious decision to turn away from it during the past year of Covid shut down and personal turmoil. The primary melody is the . . . [French Christmas] hymn, Noel Nouvelet and is used both in its winter usages and its Easter usage. The secondary theme is a melody which the audience will likely recognize. It was a tune that I rediscovered during the darkest days and a push towards the promise of a brighter day tomorrow.”
Symphony no. 38 in D Major, K. 504 (“Prague”)
Wolfgang Amadé Mozart
Wolfgang Amadé Mozart was born January 27, 1756 in Salzburg. He died on December 5, 1791 in Vienna. His Symphony no. 38 in D Major, K. 504 (“Prague”) was composed in 1786 and first performed on December 6 of that same year in the city that bears its nickname. The “K” number used for Mozart’s works refers to the name Ludwig Ritter von Köchel, who first issued the Chronological-Thematic Catalogue of the Complete Works of Wolfgang Amadé Mozart in 1862. The Köchel catalogue has been updated and revised many times to keep pace with musicological revelations. This work is scored for 2 flutes, 2 oboes,2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, timpani, and strings.
Of Mozart’s last six symphonies, the one in D Major, K. 504 (“Prague”) stands out for a number of reasons. Even though Mozart had adopted the four-movement structure of the mature Classical symphony, this one lacks a minuet, and was actually referred to on concert programs and reviews in the early nineteenth century as “The Symphony without a Minuet” (the last of Mozart’s symphonies is popularly known by modern audiences as “Jupiter,” but was known earlier as the “Symphony with the Concluding Fugue”). The popular subtitle for the D-Major Symphony, “Prague,” refers to the fact that Mozart had composed it for performance in that Czech city that at the time was part of the Habsburg Empire. Mozart’s 1785 masterpiece of comic opera (opera buffa), Le nozze di Figaro, was the equivalent of a smash hit in Prague, and the composer wrote to his father of how the city had become mad for Figaro, with strains of the aria “No piu andrai” sounding in the streets. The success in Prague led to the premiere of Mozart’s next opera, Don Giovanni, which enjoyed its premiere there in 1787. Indeed, Mozart makes a humorous self-reference to the afore-mentioned Figaro aria in the finale of Act II.
The first movement of the “Prague” Symphony begins with a broad and noble Adagio introduction, echoes of its excursion into the minor mode can be heard in the Overture to Don Giovanni of the next year. The same might be said of the energetic and high-spirited Allegro that forms the main body of the movement. A typical Mozartian trait is a poignant excursion into the minor key during the presentation of the second theme group of the exposition. One may discern how this first movement must have been an inspiration on the young Beethoven as he sat down in 1802 to compose his own D-Major Symphony (no. 2, op. 36). The second movement is a beautiful and operatic Andante that balances sweetness with moments of drama, and even sadness. The finale, Presto, on the other hand is filled throughout with sunshine, power, and boundless energy. These qualities are derived mainly from rhythmic energy of the principal theme’s first four notes (three short notes followed by a long one).
Suite from The Firebird (1919 version)
Igor Stravinsky
One of the towering figures of twentieth-century music, Igor Stravinsky was born in Oranienbaum, Russia on June 17, 1882 and died in New York City on April 6, 1971. While his best known works remain the three ballet scores based on Russian themes and scenarios—The Firebird, Petrushka, and The Rite of Spring—composed for Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes in the early 1910s, Stravinsky wrote works that encompass many genres and explore a wide variety of musical styles, all of which bear his own distinctive traits. The Firebird ballet was first performed on June, 25 1910 at the Paris Opéra with G. Pierné conducting. The 1919 Suite, a slightly revised and reduced version of the 1910 Suite was first performed in Geneva on April 12, 1919 with Ernst Ansermet conducting. The Suite is scored for piccolo, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, piano, harp, and strings.
“He who hesitates is lost,” goes the old saying. The composer Anatol Liadov, who was supposed to have composed the music for a new ballet based on the legend of the Firebird that Sergei Diaghilev planned to produce in his second Paris season, ought to have paid attention to the adage’s warning. Fortunately for the young Igor Stravinsky, Liadov did not, and the great opportunity for which Stravinsky had been hoping was now at hand. Diaghilev already had been sufficiently impressed with the talent of the precocious student of Rimsky-Korsakov to commission orchestrations of two piano pieces by Chopin from him in 1909. But a chance to collaborate as a full partner with the likes of choreographer-dancer Mikhail Fokine was almost too good to be true. The success of Stravinsky’s score to The Firebird, first performed at the Paris Opéra on June 25, 1910 under the baton of Gabriel Pierné, was legendary. This ballet remains to this day the most popular of all Stravinsky’s scores. Over the next two years (1911 and 1913) Stravinsky was to follow the success of The Firebird with Petruchka and the epic Le Sacre du Printemps (The Rite of Spring).
The story of The Firebird revolves around three primary figures – Prince Ivan, the monster Kastchei, and the magical Firebird herself. Near the beginning of the ballet, the prince captures the fabulous beast, but she persuades him to release her by offering him one of her feathers, which he may use to summon her whenever he finds himself in peril. That moment comes when Ivan is captured by the evil Kastchei and his minions. The prince waves the Firebird’s plume, and she appears as promised. She leads Kastchei and his defenders in a wild dance, which itself is followed by their own sinister Infernal Dance, after which they fall exhausted and are lulled into a magical sleep by the Firebird. The Firebird shows Ivan a huge egg containing Kastchei’s evil soul. The Prince smashes the egg, killing Kastchei and destroying the monster’s kingdom. Thirteen princesses who had been imprisoned by Kastchei are released from their bondage, and the last of these becomes Ivan’s bride.
Stravinsky excerpted three suites from The Firebird, in 1911, 1919, and 1949 respectively. The earliest of these calls for the largest orchestra, identical to the scoring of the complete ballet. The more frequently performed Second Suite (heard on this program) is written for a smaller orchestra, but retains many of the spectacular effects (glissando harmonics, for example) of the earlier suite, even adding a few new ones, such as the glissandos for trombone and horn. Its succession of movements is as follows:
I and II. Introduction; The Firebird and Her Dance; Variation of the Firebird. A slow and brooding legato figure in the lower strings is punctuated with colorfully jagged woodwinds. A faster tempo introduces the fabulous firebird in passagework that taxes the skill of all the winds.
III. The Princesses’ Round: Khorovod. A lushmovement in B Major is inaugurated by the flutes, and continued by a beautiful melody in the oboe, accompanied by the harp. Other gentle tunes are presented in the winds and strings and the movement comes to a shimmering conclusion couched in the softest possible dynamic.
IV. Infernal Dance of King Kastchei. The calm of the previous movement is shattered by the full orchestra as Kastchei and his followers revel in syncopated rhythms. The Infernal Dance unfolds as one of the most exciting tours de force in all orchestral music, leading without pause into the fourth movement. Much of its harmonic exoticism comes from Stravinksy’s bold use of an augmented triad.
V. Berceuse and Finale. The evocative timbre of the high bassoon sings the Firebird’s lullaby. A magical passage of chromatic harmonies leads to a noble melody in the solo horn, marking the onset of the finale. This tune—a variant of one heard in the second movement—is repeated, growing louder with each statement. A sudden pulling back of dynamics in the tremolo violins ushers in a brilliant faster version of the tune which yields finally to a grandiose broadening of tempo and pompous closure for the full orchestra, led by the triumphant brass.
