Program Notes
Masterworks III
Baroque Jewels
Feb. 19, 2010

Valse Triste from the Incidental Music                                                Jean Sibelius

to Arvid Järnefelt’s Play Kuolema, Op. 44

Though Sibelius is universally recognized as the Finnish master of the symphony, tone poem and concerto, he also produced a large amount of music in the more intimate forms, including the scores for eleven plays — the music to accompany a 1926 production of Shakespeare’s The Tempest was his last orchestral work. Early in 1903, Sibelius composed the music to underscore six scenes of a play by his brother-in-law, Arvid Järnefelt, titled Kuolema (“Death”). Sibelius conducted the small string orchestra (joined by bass drum and church bell in one number) behind the scenes at the drama’s premiere in Helsinki’s Finnish National Theater on December 2, 1903. Among the music was a piece accompanying the scene in which Paavali, the central character, is seen at the bedside of his dying mother. She tells him that she has dreamed of attending a ball. Paavali falls asleep, and Death enters to claim his victim. The mother mistakes Death for her deceased husband, and dances away with him. Paavali awakes to find her dead.

Sibelius gave little importance to this slight work, telling a biographer that “with all retouching [it] was finished in a week.” Two years later he arranged the music for solo piano and for chamber orchestra as Valse Triste (“Sad Waltz”), and sold it outright to his publisher, Fazer & Westerlund, for a tiny fee. The piece became immediately popular as a salon bonbon, and when the German firm of Breitkopf und Härtel acquired the rights to Sibelius’ music from Fazer & Westerlund late in 1905, they issued it in arrangements for all manner of performing forces, from solo flute to military band. The Valse Triste was the music by which Sibelius first became known in America (Rachmaninoff had experienced a similar instant notoriety because of his little C-sharp minor Prelude a decade earlier), and he conducted it on his first concert in the United States, at the Norfolk (Connecticut) Music Festival on June 4, 1914. It was among the most ubiquitous melodies in the years just before World War I, but Sibelius, having sold away his rights, shared in none of its royalties.

Sibelius, like Brahms and Richard Strauss, was a great admirer of the waltzes of Johann Strauss. Sibelius’ biographer Cecil Gray claimed that he once spent an evening in a café with the composer, and was surprised at the constant stream of Viennese waltzes dispensed by the establishment’s orchestra. When he asked his companion why they were playing in the staid, old style rather than in the more fashionable jazz idiom, Sibelius smiled, and said, “That is because I am here; they play it because they know I love it.” Gray saw the Valse Triste as an “Hommage à Strauss,” and its success prompted Sibelius to add a Valse Romantique to the incidental music for a 1911 revival of Kuolema. Like the Viennese examples on which it is modeled, the Valse Triste comprises several continuous sections. It was the melancholy opening section that suggested the work’s name. This quiet, introspective paragraph is followed by a gossamer strain played with the utmost delicacy at the very tips of the string bows, a lyrical episode led by the woodwinds, and a more vigorous section for the full ensemble before the wistful mood of the opening returns briefly to round out this lovely, haunting miniature.

Concerto for Harp in B-flat major, Op. 4, No. 6          George Frideric Handel

When Italian opera in England began to sink under the weight of its own conventions in the 1730s (hastened by the added ballast of the parodical Beggar’s Opera), Handel chose to go down with the ship, and lost a fortune. Not one to accept defeat for long, however, the rotund, thickly accented Saxon soon bobbed up once again as the inventor of that most quintessential British art form, the English oratorio. Between Esther of 1732 and The Triumph of Time and Truth of 1757, Handel produced some two dozen magnificent examples of the species (all but a handful unjustly neglected), made a second fortune, and registered such an impact on British music that well over a century passed before anyone even tried to break from his example.

The oratorios gained an immediate popular success, but Handel, good businessman that he was, concocted yet another marketing device with which to lure the public to his performances. Though he was one of Europe’s greatest organists, he had little opportunity to perform on that instrument in public. (He slid onto the organ bench at St. Paul’s just often enough to keep his reputation current.) Since the performance of an oratorio demanded an orchestra and a small chamber organ for accompaniment, Handel devised a new variety of music utilizing the available instruments, thereby becoming the originator of the organ concerto. So popular were these concertos that Handel usually offered two at each performance, one as an interlude during Act I, the other as the prelude to Act II. He played the solo part himself, often with a florid introductory passage and much extemporizing, thus adding some flashing virtuosity to the proceedings, one valued characteristic of Italian opera that found no counterpart in English oratorio. Handel wrote sixteen of these organ concertos. They were advertised prominently as part of his oratorio performances, and he continued to play them until 1757, even though total blindness in his last years required that he be led to his instrument.

The Concerto in B-flat, Op. 4, No. 6 is of mixed pedigree. Though it was published in 1738 for organ or harpsichord, Handel’s autograph score is headed “Concerto per la Harpa,” while the continuo part describes it as “Concerto per il Liuto e l’Harpa.” One contemporary account suggested it could be played on “Harp, Lute, Lyricord and other Instruments,” and Sir John Hawkins commented in his monumental General History of the Science and Practice of Music that it was really for the flute. The evidence indicates that it was conceived for the harp and was first heard in that version on February 19, 1736 as an interlude during the first act of the oratorio Alexander’s Feast, or, The Power of Musick, the opening production of Handel’s Covent Garden season that year. The adaptations for other solo instruments seem to have been the inventions of either Handel or various publishers to make the work more widely marketable.

Of the use of harp rather than the more usual organ in the B-flat Concerto, Eric van Tassel noted, “Alexander’s Feast [a setting of Dryden’s ode] posed special problems, in that its climax was the praise of St. Cecilia, the patroness of musicians, and of her special instrument — the organ. The introduction of the organ in the entr’acte concertos, prior to its entrance at the climax of the ode itself, would have been a serious miscalculation: so the second concerto was for oboes and strings, and the first was our Harp Concerto.” Further encouraging the use of harp rather than organ as the solo instrument was the presence in London at that time of the excellent Welsh harpist John Powell.

Charles Burney, the peripatetic English raconteur of 18th-century music, may well have had this lovely B-flat Concerto in mind when he wrote of this set of works, “The full harmony of the instrumental parts, contrasted with those eloquent solo passages interspersed in it, protracting the cadences, and detaining the ear in a delightful suspense, have a wonderful effect.” The opening Andante allegro is largely given over to the soloist, with the orchestra serving, except for two brief interjections, as a musical frame at the movement’s beginning and conclusion. The second movement is more stately in gait and more tender in expression, with frequent exchanges between soloist and orchestra. The finale sways with an elegant buoyancy reminiscent of that most characteristic of Baroque dances, the minuet.

Concerto for Oboe and Violin in C minor, BWV 1060 Johann Sebastian Bach

Any father with twenty children is bound to have a problem at sometime or other. Papa Johann Sebastian Bach must certainly have had his share of family crises during his lifetime (more than half of his immense brood did not survive him), but one bit of puerile misadventure had an important impact on his musical legacy. At Bach’s death, many of his manuscripts were divided between his two oldest sons, Wilhelm Friedemann and Carl Philipp Emanuel. Carl took loving care of his inheritance, but Wilhelm did not. Though, as a boy, his father had given him excellent training, and he held some responsible positions as a young man, Wilhelm was never able to fulfill his early promise. His presence of mind seems to have deserted him after his father’s death, and Wilhelm gave way in his later years to dissipation, pretty well making a mess of his life. The manuscripts from Johann Sebastian’s estate that came into his possession were lost or destroyed or perhaps sold for a flagon of Asbach-Uralt. At any rate, it is known that Wilhelm let the originals of at least three of his father’s solo violin concertos slip through his unsteady fingers, as well as many other works. Despite Wilhelm’s profligacy, however, much of Bach’s violin music has been recovered through scholarly ingenuity. When Johann Sebastian took over the direction of the Leipzig Collegium Musicum concerts in 1729, he expanded the ensemble’s repertory by arranging several of his earlier wind and string concertos for one or more harpsichords. Since Bach apparently made few changes beyond some additional ornamentation and (usually) transposition to another tonality better suited to the keyboard, authorities on his manuscripts and working methods have been able to recreate the original scores from the later harpsichord transcriptions with considerable confidence, as is the case with this Concerto for Oboe and Violin.

Bach’s violin music was written as part of his duties at the court of Anhalt-Cöthen, where he was “Court Capellmeister and Director of the Princely Chamber Musicians” from 1717 to 1723. Since he was responsible for the secular rather than the sacred music at Cöthen, those years saw the production of many of his purely instrumental works, including the Brandenburg Concertos, the orchestral suites, numerous suites and sonatas for solo instruments and clavier, the sonatas and suites for unaccompanied violin and violoncello, and much solo clavier music. Bach tried to present his noble employer with compositions that would be both of high quality (Prince Leopold was a good and appreciative musician) and in tune with the latest styles. For his concertos, Bach avidly studied the recent creations of the Italian masters, notably Vivaldi’s L’estro armonico, which had been published in 1712. He transcribed several Italian compositions as solos or concertos for keyboard for his own use, and utilized their formal and technical components as the models for his original works in the genre. In addition to his knowledge of the fashionable Italian music of the day, Bach also drew on his own experience as a practicing violinist to polish his style of writing for strings. His son Carl wrote, “He played the violin cleanly and penetratingly. He understood to perfection the possibilities of the stringed instruments.”

The C minor Concerto for Oboe and Violin is derived from the Concerto No. 1 for Two Claviers, BWV 1060. The structure of the opening movement follows the ritornello form customary for Baroque concertos: a returning orchestral refrain separated by episodes for the soloists. This is music of austere countenance but vigorous rhythmic energy which embodies the Baroque ideal of touching sentiment allied with visceral stimulation. The lovely second movement, supported by a delicate pizzicato accompaniment in the strings, resembles an operatic duet in its flowing lyricism and thematic interchanges between the soloists. The finale returns the bracing vitality of the first movement. This work of clearly etched, contrasting moods recalls the words of the distinguished conductor Sir Thomas Beecham concerning the art of making music: “For a fine performance only two things are absolutely necessary: the maximum of virility coupled with the maximum of delicacy.”

Symphony No. 41 in C major, K. 551, “Jupiter”   Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Mozart’s life was starting to come apart in 1788 — his money, health, family situation and professional status were all on the decline. The beginning of the year seemed to hold a promise of good things. When Gluck died in November 1787, his position as composer to the court of Emperor Joseph II fell vacant. Mozart had sufficiently ingratiated himself with the aristocracy to win the job, but with the offer came a salary of only 800 florins, less than half the 2,000 florins Gluck had been paid. For this amount, Joseph, who apparently did not care much for Mozart or his music, required only some dances for his grand balls and not the career-advancing operas and symphonies that the composer was hoping to provide. The position at court, so long sought, did little to alleviate Mozart’s financial worries. He was a poor money manager, and the last years of his life saw him sliding progressively deeper into debt. One of his most generous creditors was Michael Puchberg, a brother Mason, to whom Mozart wrote a letter which includes the following pitiable statement: “If you my worthy brother do not help me in this predicament, I shall lose my honor and my credit, which of all things I wish to preserve.”

Other sources of income dried up. His students had dwindled to only two by summer, and he had to sell his new compositions for a pittance to pay the most immediate bills. He hoped that Vienna would receive Don Giovanni as well as had Prague when that opera was premiered there the preceding year, but it was met with a haughty indifference when first heard in the Austrian capital in May 1788. (“The opera is divine, finer perhaps than Figaro, but it is not the meat for my Viennese,” sniffed the Emperor, to which Mozart tartly replied, “We must give them time to chew it.”) He could no longer draw enough subscribers to produce his own concerts, and had to take second billing on the programs of other musicians. His wife, Constanze, was ill from worry and continuous pregnancy, and she spent much time away from her husband taking cures at various mineral spas. On June 29th, his fourth child and only daughter, Theresia, age six months, died.

Yet, astonishingly, from these seemingly debilitating circumstances came one of the greatest miracles in the history of music. In the summer of 1788, in the space of only six weeks, Mozart composed the three greatest symphonies of his life: No. 39, in E-flat (K. 543) was finished on June 26th; the G minor (No. 40, K. 550) on July 25th; and the C major, “Jupiter” (No. 41, K. 551) on August 10th. It is not known why he wrote these last three of his symphonies, a most unusual circumstance at a time when every piece was intended for a specific situation. There is no record that he ever heard the works, nor are they mentioned anywhere in his known correspondence after they were completed. They may have been intended for a series of oft-delayed concerts originally planned for June which never occurred. Or perhaps in these glorious symphonies, as in many other aspects of his art, Mozart looked forward to the Romantic era and its belief in artistic inspiration divorced from practical requirements. Or perhaps he needed, at that stressful time in his life, to prove to himself that he could still compose great music. Or perhaps, wrote R.L.F. McCombs, “he felt he had, at this point in his life, achieved maturity as an artist and mastery as a craftsman — an occasion at least as worthy of celebration as a twenty-first birthday. These symphonies are the monument with which he commemorated that crisis in his creative life.” Or — perhaps — we are richer for allowing the mysterious creative urge which produced these works to hover, unknown, above them forever, a perceptive point of view espoused by Robert Schumann when he wrote, “There are things in the world about which nothing can be said, as Mozart’s C major Symphony, much of Shakespeare and pages of Beethoven.”

The Symphony’s sobriquet, “Jupiter,” did not originate with Mozart. The composer’s son Franz Xavier Wolfgang said that it was the invention of the impresario Salomon, famous as the instigator of Haydn’s London visits. Weightier evidence for author of the subtitle, however, points to John Baptist Cramer, a German musician who moved to London and opened a publishing house. He may have been the first to deify this work when he appended the word “Jupiter” to its title for a concert of London’s Royal Philharmonic Orchestra on March 26, 1821. The cognomen has no meaning other than to indicate the Symphony’s grand nobility of style, and Tovey dismissed it as “among the silliest injuries ever inflicted on a great work of art.” Philip Hale even warned that the sobriquet might lead away from the true nature of the music, “[which] is not of an Olympian mood. It is intensely human in its loveliness and its gaiety.” Mozart would probably have agreed.

The “Jupiter” Symphony stands at the pinnacle of 18th-century orchestral art. It is grand in scope, impeccable in form and rich in substance. Mozart, always fecund as a melodist, was absolutely profligate with themes in this Symphony. Three separate motives are successively introduced in the first dozen measures: a brilliant rushing gesture, a sweetly lyrical thought from the strings, and a marching motive played by the winds. After a unison held note, yet another idea is presented, this comprising an octave leap followed by a quick scale passage in the woodwinds. These motives are woven together to form a climax leading to the formal second theme, a simple melody first sung by the violins over a rocking accompaniment. This, too, accumulates several component motives as it progresses. The closing section of the exposition (begun immediately after a falling figure in the violins and a silence) introduces a jolly little tune that Mozart had originally written a few weeks earlier as a buffa aria for bass voice to be interpolated into Le Gelosie Fortunate, an opera by Pasquale Anfossi. Much of the development is devoted to an amazing exploration of the musical possibilities of this simple ditty. The second portion of the development is dominated by the rushing figure which opened the movement. The thematic material is heard again in the recapitulation, but, as so often with Mozart, in a richer orchestral and harmonic setting.

The second movement is one of the most intensely expressive essays in Classical-era music. “There is spiritual seriousness; there is perfect form, exquisite proportion, and euphony,” wrote Philip Hale. This ravishing Andante is spread across a fully realized sonata form, with a compact but emotionally charged development section. The third movement (Minuet) is a perfect blend of the light-hearted rhythms of popular Viennese dances and Mozart’s deeply expressive chromatic harmony.

The finale of this Symphony has been the focus of many a musicological assault. It is demonstrable that there are as many as five different themes played simultaneously at certain places in the movement, making this one of the most masterful displays of technical accomplishment in the entire orchestral repertory. But the listener need not be subjected to any numbing pedantry to realize that this music is really something special. Eric Blom, good sensible Englishman that he was, wrote of this movement, “There is a mystery in this music not to be solved by analysis or criticism, and perhaps only just to be apprehended by the imagination. We can understand the utter simplicity; we can also, with effort, comprehend the immense technical skill with which its elaborate fabric is woven; what remains forever a riddle is how any human being could manage to combine these two opposites into such a perfectly balanced work of art.” Mozart was the greatest genius in the history of music, and he never surpassed this movement.

Of this remarkable work, Charles O’Connell wrote, “Mozart put aside the exigencies of time and circumstance, and, we imagine, wrote a symphony after his own heart. There has been nothing, and there are no indications that there will be anything, in music to surpass it in its special virtues. In it, the inner Mozart spoke. He wrote not for the age, but for the ages.”

©2009 Dr. Richard E. Rodda