PROGRAM NOTES

Romeo and Juliet Fantasy Overture  | Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1869; rev 1880)

Even a cursory review of the lives of most of the significant composers of the nineteenth century–from Berlioz to Verdi–shows them to have been fascinated with the timeless art of Shakespeare.  In fact, it is a major trait of Romanticism as an intellectual movement to have plumbed the depths of his work for archetypes of the human condition.  And it is telling that generations of young composers took personal initiative to school themselves so.  Tchaikovsky is representative, and his concert overture, Romeo and Juliet, is typical of the many compositions of the times that drew inspiration from the playwright. 

Composed just as Tchaikovsky turned twenty-nine years old, it’s a relatively early work.  The composer had composed his first programmatic work, Fatom (fate)—he soon tore up the original score—only the year before, and the first version of his first symphony three years previous.  So, almost all of the orchestral music that has established his durable popularity was yet to come.  In fact, his beloved fifth and sixth symphonies, as well as The Nutcracker, lay roughly two decades in the future.  But, withal, this work has taken its place with the masterpieces of his maturity.  That being said, Romeo and Juliet did not take that place without a somewhat checkered history.

Three versions of it evolved, as the composer labored to create the successful, final iteration.  The première (1870) of his first take was not successful at all, owing to numerous technical and conceptual problems, and Tchaikovsky made extensive changes, most of which are in the final version.  Finally, about ten years later, the composer made a few more changes, and that is the version we all hear, today.   All throughout the initial composition of Romeo and Juliet Tchaikovsky was guided in great detail by Mily Balakirev, the informal leader of the famed group of Russian nationalistic composers known as the “mighty handful,” the others being Cui, Borodin, Mussorgsky and Rimsky-Korsakov.  Located in St. Petersburg, they were self-taught followers of Glinka, and sought to establish a Russian school of musical style.   Balakirev and Tchaikovsky (by then, living in Moscow) had established an informal relationship earlier, and Romeo and Juliet was the result of a kind of collaboration between the two men.  Balakirev had suggested the subject matter, and even the rough sonata form, which associated the introduction with Friar Laurence, the first theme with the conflict between the Capulets and the Montagues, and the second theme with the lovers.  Balakirev made significant suggestions for revisions to the composition, and evidently Tchaikovsky took several of them to heart–even dedicating the work to him.  On the other hand, most scholars seem to agree that the result is still totally Tchaikovsky’s composition, and that Balakirev cannot legitimately be considered the younger man’s mentor.

The “Friar Laurence” introduction is a solemn evocation of the church through skillful writing for low woodwinds that masterfully imitates a small reed organ.  Little by little Tchaikovsky draws the ominous mood out, teasing us with intimations of the conflict to come, in the manner with which so much of the drama in his later ballets is spun out.  Eventually, the main theme explodes as the Capulets and the Montagues battle, and, after a bit of teasing, the familiar “love theme” is heard, colored poignantly by the English horn.  Now, that all three protagonists have been introduced, Tchaikovsky builds the conflict with a vengeful return to the battle, replete with palpable swordplay from the percussion section.  You’ll find the same pictorial talent displayed years later in the attack of the mice in the Nutcracker.  But, love triumphs—if only for a bit—and the theme of the lovers soars out in the quintessential orchestration so familiar from a thousand cultural uses:  lush strings and “heart-throbbing” horns.  Conflict resumes, this time with sinister bits of Friar Laurence’s theme, and finally the death of the star-crossed lovers is clear.  The timpani taps out a dirge as an epilogue, with an intimation of the pair’s transfiguration in the rest of the orchestra.  Dramatic orchestral hammer-strokes seal their fate and conclude the tragedy.

Written by William E. Runyan.

Knoxville: Summer of 1915, op. 24  | Samuel Barber (1947)

From the time of his student days until his death in 1981, Samuel Barber has stood in the first echelon of outstanding American composers.   While not exactly a household word, his reputation as a composer of elegant, finely-crafted art is stellar.  Notwithstanding the adulation of Aaron Copland’s populist music from the 1930s and 40s, most of the latter composer’s compositions in other musical styles are not well received by the American public–too dissonant and modern!  On the other hand, no major American composer of the twentieth century was a more ardent and eloquent champion of a lyrical, accessible, yet modern idiom than Samuel Barber.  His musical style is founded in the romantic traditions of the nineteenth century, whose harmonic language and formal structures were his point of departure.  Unlike so many of his peers, he was not powerfully swayed by the modernism emanating from Europe after World War I, but pursued his own path.

Consistently lyrical throughout his career, it is telling that his songs constitute about two-thirds of his compositions in number.   His vocal works include two major operas, Vanessa (1956), and Antony and Cleopatra (1966), the latter composed for the opening of the Metropolitan Opera House in Lincoln Center.  He composed at least one work for almost every musical genre, and unlike most composers, he was a recognized and published composer from his student days

Knoxville:  Summer of 1915 was composed in 1947, and given its première by the Boston Symphony Orchestra.  Like the best of vocal music, its success and reputation rests equally with the quality of the corresponding text.   In this case, Barber chose selections from the prose poem by James Agee of that title that was first published in The Partisan Review in 1939.  His poem has been called “arguable the most beautiful prose poem in English.”  Agee’s heart-tugging evocation of simple childhood memories in the South, directly expressed through the gauzy mists of time, is irresistible to almost any reflective adult.  It must be said that in this case, as in a great Schubert song, text and music here have met perfect artistic partners.  Barber’s sensitive, lush music aptly matches the equally lyrical words of Agee in a rhapsodic melding of imagery and sound.

The overall shape and form of the music, while following clear, a contrasting succession of ideas, is not so important as the palpable nuances of mood, tone, and imagery of the text.  The light orchestration gives full opportunities to the colors of the woodwinds, horn, and harp in partnership with the discreet string section.  When Agee wrote the poem, he was remembering the time just before his father was killed in an accident.  When Barber set it, his own father was dying.  So, there is a clear congruence in the context of both men’s frame of mind.  While there are some obvious examples of Barber’s word painting in the music to reflect the exact text of the moment—as in the section setting the streetcar reference—the overall tone and atmosphere is the key.  There’s no cartoonish “Mickey Mousing” of every word/music coincidence.  Barber wisely varied the tempos and moods to suit Agee’s text, and that generates the form and the agreeable variety of the work.  And of course, he built it around unifying ideas and motives, but that’s not the point of it all.  Rather, it is the continuing weft of expressive, lightly-scored musical reflections of the implications in this magical, haunting memoir of childhood—and our universal resonance with it.

Written by William E. Runyan.

Symphony No.5 in E minor, op. 64  | Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1888)

Tchaikovsky completed six symphonies during his lifetime, the last three of which have long been concert staples.  The three, while exhibiting both the tangible and intangible characteristics of the composer that endear him to music lovers everywhere, are each unique expressions of his musicianship and personality.  Symphony No. 4 (with good reason associated with “fate”) came out of an especially troubled time in his life with regard to his ill-starred (and short) marriage—among other factors was his attempted suicide.  Symphony No. 6 was, of course, his last one (he died of cholera nine days after its première), and its title bore the French equivalent of “pathos.”  And its tragic pianississimo ending truly evokes the finality of his great personal anguish.  So, where does that leave us with No. 5?

In some ways, we find ourselves in a similar kettle of fish.  The sixth symphony was composed and premièred in 1888, when the composer was 48 years old, and it too–based upon the composer’s own testament–more or less is concerned with “fate.”  He was already in contemplation of death:  many close friends had recently died, he was in poor mental and physical health, and had made out his will in contemplation of his demise.   But the preoccupation on fate in the fifth symphony is perhaps not the hammering fate of the fourth symphony, but rather a more acquiescing acceptance of what Tchaikovsky called “providence.”  The first movement starts right out with the so-called fate motive, played by both clarinets, ominously down in their lowest register; this motive will be easily heard in all four movements, and is a strongly unifying element in the composition.  The movement proper begins with a dark march—with a characteristic Tchaikovskian stuttering syncopation–initiated by solo clarinet and bassoon, accompanied by pizzicato strings.  The whole movement centers around this theme, but there are others, most notably a winsome waltz-like theme.  Although the movement moves through a variety of intense, dramatic (read loud) utterances, it ends in soft darkness—just as it began.

The second movement is perhaps the most well known of the four movements, owing to its use in a pop arrangement by Glenn Miller and others, shortly before World War II—luckily time has faded most of that particular memory.   The melody is primarily a solo for the principal horn, and a glorious, beautifully spun out affair it is.  A related idea for solo violin follows shortly.  The middle of the movement generates considerable interest from its vivid harmonic surprises, a new theme in the clarinet, and general sense of unrest and instability.   But then, the so-called fate motto from the first movement interrupts, and we’re back at a return to the lovely first theme, although with changed orchestration and a dramatic buildup of emotion before quietly subsiding.

There are those who opine that no one equaled Tchaikovsky in walzes—even the Strausses—and I concur.  The third movement is a series of incredibly elegant waltzes that make you wish that we all still danced them.   But before they start, a soft, but ominous series of chords in the strings lures you into thinking that the dark mood of the ending of the first movement will prevail.  But a wonderful modulation brings us to the novel and beguiling key of D major.  The waltzes commence.  The middle of the movement provides some relief from the waltzes in the form of a short scherzo in duple meter, contrasting nicely with all the ONE-two-three of the waltz.  It’s a frenetic affair, not so much unlike the suggestion of little rodents scampering around when they should be gracefully waltzing.  The scampering continues for a while when the waltzes return, signaling the end of the movement—but not before the low clarinets menacingly interrupt for a moment with the motto that opens the whole symphony, and which we will hear in spades imminently in the last movement.

A sure-fire spiritual narrative in art during the romantic period—or any period, for that matter—is the journey from darkness to light, from defeat to victory, and perhaps death to transfiguration.  Beethoven, Brahms, and other great composers wrote any number of works with this theme, and it is Tchaikovsky’s and ours in this symphony.  The long introduction to the last movement is based upon the motto theme of fate, but now opens in E major, the happy key of redemption.  But, victory cannot be won so easily, so the main movement returns to E minor to begin the battle, and Tchaikovsky works it out with a dramatic review of familiar materials, as we gradually find our way into the world of light.  The victory is hammered out in the motto of fate by stentorian unison brasses, and a tumultuous gallop to the end wraps up the triumph.

Written by William E. Runyan.

PROGRAM SCHEDULE

Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Romeo and Juliet Fantasy Overture <1869; rev 1880>

Samuel Barber
Knoxville: Summer of 1915, op.24 <1947>

INTERMISSION

Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Symphony No.5 in E minor, op.64, TH 29 <1888>