by David B. Levy
The CSO Pre-concert Lecture Series and Program Notes are made possible thanks to the Carl and Lee Chaverin Fund.
Strum for Strings
Jessie Montgomery
Born in New York City in 1981, African-American composer, musician, and educator, Jessie Montgomery is one of the most vital voices of her generation. Her studies began at Manhattan’s Third Street Music School Settlement. She late went on to receive a degree in violin performance at Juilliard and a master’s degree in Composition for Film and Multimedia at New York University (2012). She has been actively involved with the Detroit-based Sphinx Organization in supporting and encouraging young African American and Latinx string instrumentalists. Her works have been performed by many significant arts institutions (Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, American Composers Orchestra, Atlanta Symphony, to name but a few). She also has worked collaboratively with numerous colleagues in both music and dance. Strum began its life as a string quintet in 2006. She later made a string quartet version (2008), reaching its final version in 2012 in celebration of the 15th annual Sphinx Competition.
In her own program notes for Strum, Jessie Montgomery wrote:
Originally conceived for the formation of a cello quintet, the voicing is often spread wide over the ensemble, giving the music an expansive quality of sound. Within Strum I utilized texture motives, layers of rhythmic or harmonic ostinati that string together to form a bed of sound for melodies to weave in and out. The strumming pizzicato serves as a texture motive and the primary driving rhythmic underpinning of the piece. Drawing on American folk idioms and the spirit of dance and movement, the piece has a kind of narrative that begins with fleeting nostalgia and transforms into ecstatic celebration.
Living up to its title, the work uses extensive pizzicato (plucking) effects, evoking the idea of a banjo, over which evocative musical fragments are played (arco) with the bow. In kaleidoscope fashion, the music to shifts from idea to idea, keeping the listeners on their toes from start to finish. The work, in its string quartet version, has been recorded by the Catalyst Quartet as part of the album Strum: Music for Strings (2015) on the Azica label.
Serenade in C Minor, K. 384a
Wolfgang Amadé Mozart
Wolfgang Amadé Mozart was born January 27, 1756 in Salzburg. He died on December 5, 1791 in Vienna. The Serenade in C Minor, K. 388 (384a) was composed in 1782 or early 1783. The composer thought well enough of it to later transcribe it for string quintet in 1788 (K. 406/516b). 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. The Serenade in C Minor is scored for 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, and 2 horns.
Throughout his all-too-brief life, Mozart never considered it beneath his dignity to provide music for parties. The genre of composition known as the serenade, in fact, may be deemed among the earliest examples of background or “restaurant” music. This should be taken only in the sense that it was created to lend a festive atmosphere to an occasion, rather than to draw attention to itself as a piece intended for “serious” listening. As is the case with nearly everything he wrote, however, Mozart’s serenades make for rewarding and delightful attentive listening.
Mozart composed three larger-scaled Serendates for Wind Instruments in the early 1780s, a period during which he was planning his break from the Prince-Archbishop’s provincial court in Salzburg. Movements from the Serenade in B-flat Major, K. 361 (370a), known as the “Gran Partita,” may be familiar to those who have seen Milos Forman’s film, Amadeus. In the case of the Serenade in C Minor, the seriousness and depth of expression of its music transcends any other work of its kind, leading it to be known by some as “Nachtmusik.” The term here, however, could never be confused with the lighter serenade for strings known as “Eine kleine Nachtmusik.” The wind serenade is, rather, a somber composition in four movements that comes closer in mood to Mozart’s Piano Concerto in the same key, K. 491 (1788). Of particular interest is the weight given to the third movement, Minuet and Trio. The Minuet section is a strict canon (or round) between the oboes and the bassoons, while the central Trio is also a canon, whereby the response is an inversion of the melody. The work’s finale is a set of variations in which the dark mood ultimately yields to a brighter ending in the major mode; a kind of “happy ending” known in the world of opera as a lieto fine.
Suite in B-flat Major, Op. 4
Richard Strauss
Richard Strauss was born in Munich on June 11, 1864, and died in Garmisch-Partenkirchen on September 8, 1949. He was not related to the Viennese Strauss family of waltz fame, although he composed some impressive waltzes that are incorporated in his larger works. A brilliant conductor and composer, Strauss first came to public attention as a composer because of his sensational symphonic poems composed during the 1880s. At the beginning of the 20th century Strauss turned his attention to the world of opera, shocking the operatic establishment with the high-powered sexuality and violence of Salomé (1905) and Elektra (1909). Strauss later chose somewhat less scandalous subjects for his operas, beginning with his first collaboration with the Austrian poet and playwright, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Der Rosenkavalier (1911). Strauss composed his Suite in B-flat Major, Op. 4 in 1884, and it was first performed on November 18, 1884 in Munich with the composer leading members of the Meiningen Orchestra. Like his earlier Serenade, Op. 7 (1881), the work scored for 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, contrabassoon, and 4 horns.
In many respects, Richard Strauss was the “bad boy” of his generation, composing orchestral compositions and operas that were shocking to his contemporary audiences. Nevertheless, the bookends of his career were marked by works of a far gentler nature. While works composed toward the end of his life such as the Oboe Concerto and Four Last Songs are well known, we do not often hear some of the works from the earlier stages of his oeuvre. Growing up, the young Richard was surrounded by music. The French horn was especially near and dear to the composer’s heart, as it was the instrument superbly wielded by his father, Franz Joseph Strauss, in the Munich Court Orchestra. Franz, along with composer and theorist Ludwig Thuille, were the primary influencers on the young Richard. His father’s direction of an amateur orchestra, the “Wilde Gung’l,” gave the precocious youth hands-on experience with the art of orchestration. This primary education bore extraordinary fruit as the composer entered into his maturity.
After the success of his Serenade for Winds in E-flat, Op. 7 in 1881-82, the young Richard Strauss decided to try his luck once again in the genre of Harmoniemusik. Still harkening back to the spirit of the 18th century, Strauss, using the same instrumentation, fashioned the Suite, Op. 4 (a later work than the Serenade, despite its lower opus number). The important conductor, Hans von Bülow thought well enough of the Suite to place it into the repertoire of the Meiningen Orchestra in 1883-84.
A worked entitled suite (or partita) in the Baroque era denoted a series of dances, often beginning with a Prelude. The opening movement of this lovely latter-day suite by Strauss opens with a quasi-heroic Präludium in sonata form. Perhaps in a gesture of honor towards Mozart’s String Serenade in G Major, K. 525 (“Eine kleine Nachtmusik”), the second movement is entitled Romanze. The third movement, Gavotte, bears no resemblance to the 18th-century dance, but is instead a playful scherzo based on a chromatically descending three-note theme. The fourth and final movement is called Introduction [sic] und Fuge, a title that once again evokes the image of the ear of Johann Sebastian Bach. Strauss’s mastery of counterpoint in this movement is impressive.
The composer himself later in life dismissed the Suite, Op. 4 as “nothing more than the respectable work of a music student.” Be that as it may, this work set the table for the mature Strauss, who once again evoked the Baroque era in his music for the suite based on Molière’s 1670 comedy, Le bourgeois gentilhomme, Op. 60 composed in 1911-1917.
