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Program Notes - April 20, 2002
Coronation March
Peter I. Tchaikovsky (1840 - 1893)
Tchaikovsky
stands head and shoulders above the nineteenth century Russian musical scene, far and away
its greatest talent. His music is so
approachable and direct that it has been fashionable for musicologists to call it shallow. His formal training stamped him with a Western
approach to musical structure and the intellectual development of thematic materials that
set him apart from his more nationalistic contemporaries such as Rimsky-Korsakov. Yet his spirit is quintessentially Russian, and
this gives rise to the emotional content of his mature works. His genius was for what he himself called the “lyrical idea”, which goes beyond merely composing a beautiful melody line.
His life
was troubled in all its stages, and this clearly influenced his later music. It would be difficult to conceive how a man who
lived through Tchaikovsky’s emotional anguish could write anything purely cerebral
and unemotional, and he did not. Even his
earliest works are visceral rather than intellectual, and “highly charged”. Even a non-programmatic piece is generally
expressive. The Coronation March is one of his earliest finished
pieces, composed for the coronation of the new Czar.
It is the least known of his three concert marches, and seldom performed in
the usual repertory. Yet, even though it is
an immature work, it shows his mastery of orchestration and hints at the towering genius
that would later develop.
Tchaikovsky
loved Russian folk music – looking to it for inspiration throughout his career – and many of the themes of the Coronation March are derived from it. He naturally incorporates the Czarist national
anthem (with several notes that sound jarringly “wrong” by comparison to his
much better-known revised version, used in the 1812
Overture ... those are the right notes, folks, however strange they sound!). But, as in his later works, Tchaikovsky uses these
folk themes as brick and mortar, building them into a finished structure that obscures its
individual pieces. And, even though this is
not the noble monument that his later better-known compositions would become, it is still
a well-crafted bit of musical architecture worth visiting on your tour of the famous
sights!
Music from “Tristan and Isolde”
Richard Wagner (1813 - 1883)
Richard Wagner was a “self-made” genius. His family was connected with the stage (several
of his sisters became actresses) and he naturally gravitated towards the arts. He taught himself to play piano, probably with no
great skill because he never performed publicly, and picked up enough understanding of
music theory to compose an early overture that was performed at age seventeen. From the
beginning, his love of music and his well-endowed ego convinced him that he could rise to
the top as a composer. Although he briefly
studied formally in Leipzig, his real exposure to composing was a self-directed study of
the scores of the masters, particularly Beethoven. This
led him to compose two early symphonies, neither revealing much of the musical style that
he would grow into. He finally turned to
opera, recognizing that this was the only avenue in music that could lead him to financial
success. It turned out that he was eventually
right, but initially this proved a disaster, and he lived a hand-to-mouth existence as a
composer and conductor in musical backwaters while he wrote and promoted his first operas.
Nevertheless,
by his mid-thirties Richard Wagner had completed four moderately successful operas (as
well as two immature failures), and had acquired a bit of a reputation, but had not yet
truly “made his mark”. Still living
in relative poverty while relentlessly promoting his own works, he fell in with the
radical anarchist forces that were fomenting revolution in Germany. In late 1848 a warrant was issued for his arrest,
and he and his first wife fled across the border to Switzerland, using a fraudulent
passport. In a way, this was the best thing
that could happen to him, for he then enjoyed a period of relative isolation in which to
reflect intensely on his art and where it was leading. He spent nearly a decade in exile before an amnesty allowed him to return to
Germany.
During his
exile he completed the series of books he had begun which detailed his concepts of the
music-drama as the ultimate extension of opera. He wrote and published the epic
mythological poems that would later serve as libretto of his masterwork (the four-opera
cycle “The Ring of the Nibelungen”). He composed – but did not publish or stage
– most of the music for this giant cycle, before temporarily abandoning the project
for fear that it was too elaborate and costly to produce. He fell in love with the wife of his financial patron, composed a set
of songs dedicated to her and caused a scandal that resulted in separation from his own
wife and eventually forced him to leave Switzerland for Italy. All the while, his
conception of music was growing and evolving.
At the end of
this decade of ferment, he was finally ready for the opera that would eventually transform
the language of music, just as his intellectual concept of the music drama would later
transform its production and staging. Under
the obvious inspiration of his love for Mathilde Wesendonck, he created in an intense two
year period of composing Tristan and Isolde. Although
the idea had been in the back of his mind for some time to create a work based on the
legend of Tristan, it was his unachievable love for Mathilde that prompted it to finally
take shape.
The music
itself is as remarkable as the story leading up to it. The Prelude opens with a short
melodic fragment in the lower strings that ends with a curious sequence of chords. In place of the harmonic resolution that composers
used to give melodies a sense of “completion” during the entire Romantic period,
Wagner ends with a series of chords that are neither consonant nor dissonant, and
definitely not what the listener expects. They leave one in a state of suspension, which
exactly suits the psychodrama that the opera will turn into. The whole thing is then repeated, based on a
different key center, without the traditional modulation to prepare the listener. The motive then returns yet a third time, centered
around a still different key. The net effect
is to leave the listener with an unworldly, almost eerie, sense of detachment. Those first
audiences to hear that sequence must have been truly puzzled. Those strange suspended chords, neither consonant
nor very dissonant, permeate the entire opera.
The plot
is not intricate. Tristan, the nephew of King
Mark of Cornwall, is dispatched to Ireland to escort Isolde back to Wales to be his queen
in an enforced marriage. Enroute, Isolde
discovers that Tristan had previously slain her brother in battle, and vows vengeance (the
Act I aria performed this evening) by poisoning him.
After he drinks the potion, she feels anguish over her own act – and
possibly over the impending enforced marriage – and drinks the remainder herself. However, her maid Brangäne had accidentally used
the wrong ingredients for the fateful draught and prepared a love potion instead. When
they awaken, Tristan and Isolde are hopelessly in love, and caught in a social situation
that would prevent them from ever wholly possessing each other (with obvious parallels to
Wagner and Mathilde). The rest of the opera
unfolds around King Mark’s discovery of the betrayal by his nephew, Tristan’s
shame and loss of his will to live, followed by his death in Isolde’s arms. Isolde’s “love death” (the final
aria this evening, which concludes the opera) resulting from grief over her loss of
Tristan finally mystically unites them in a world beyond this one.
Tristan and
Isolde was a watershed
in music. Wagner’s daring evolution in harmonic language exactly suits the action of
the drama, and would start a movement that broke up the German musical establishment into
factions that praised him and those that detested him.
The conflicts between these groups forced developments in the language of
classical music that are being felt to this day. At one extreme of reactions was a zinger
by Wagner’s enemy, the critic Hanslick: “The Prelude reminds me of an old
Italian painting of a martyr whose intestines are being slowly unwound from his body on a
reel”. Less critical comments range from
the puzzled reaction of the forward-thinking composer Berlioz: “ I have read and
reread this strange piece of music ... I have to admit that I still haven’t the
slightest notion of what the composer was driving at”, to Jean Sibelius: “It
leaves one feeling that everything else is pale and feeble by comparison.” Modern audiences now find it an enduring
masterpiece, finally an accepted part of our musical language.
Scheherezade,
op. 35
Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov (1844 - 1908)
In the
latter part of the nineteenth century five Russian composers banded together to form a
group dedicated to creating music that was not Western European (i.e. German) but truly
Russian. The last to join this “Mighty
Five”eventually became its most influential member – Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov.
Oddly, he was initially the least musically trained of them all.
The
youngest son of an aristocratic family, he originally learned to play piano only as a
means of entertaining himself, and his primary knowledge of serious music was through
playing keyboard transcriptions of operas. His
early dream in life was to follow his brother as an officer in the Russian navy, and to
this end became a Kadet in the Naval Academy in St. Petersburg. It was here that he heard his first life opera,
and he was overwhelmed – not with the singing or the staging, but with the glorious
sound of the full-blown orchestra in the pit! He
fell in love with orchestral music, and this immediately became his new life dream. Nevertheless, he completed his naval training and
took a commission.
He
originally met three of the other members of “the Five” at age seventeen, and
immediately fell under the spell of Balakirev, the only trained musician of the group. Balakirev got Korsakov started on learning
orchestration by asking him to “finish” a symphony that the older composer had
started but abandoned (this eventually became Korsakov’s First Symphony).
Before he could finish the project, though, he was forced to leave St.
Petersburg on a two year naval assignment. (Ironically,
the assignment came about because he had petitioned his brother, now a high naval officer,
to leave service to concentrate on composing. The
elder Korsakov reminded Nicolai of his obligation, and sent him away to sea instead!)
After finishing
his obliged tour of duty, Nicolai described himself as a “gentleman-officer-dilletante”
who sometimes enjoyed playing at the composing of music. Through the influence of a friend
(not his brother!) he finagled a shore assignment that only required about three hours a
day, which left him free to compose. He left
the Navy a couple of years later, and won an appointment as Professor of Composition at
St. Petersburg Conservatory (even though he was absolutely ignorant of many of the
fundamental techniques, such as counterpoint). Apparently, in that day as in this, it
never hurt to have influential connections.
Korsakov’s
composing career proceeded by fits and starts. Although
he initially scorned the Germanic traditions of composing, to handle his new position at
the Conservatory he was forced to either learn them or develop viable alternative
techniques. Consequently, his early
compositions depend more on his flair for brilliant orchestration and sonic effects than
on genius with inventing new musical substance. Much
of his most significant work was in the orchestration of unfinished or flawed compositions
after the death of his two closest friends within “the Five”. He completed the scores of the opera Prince Igor after Borodin’s death, as well as
the most frequently played version of Mussorgsky’s Night on the Bald Mountain.
In spite
of his disdain for non-Russian musical traditions, his own later orchestral compositions
depend heavily on the developments of the Romantic period in German music. His three masterworks (Russian Easter Overture, Cappriccio Esapagnole – both recently performed by ISO – and Scheherezade) were completed in a single summer,
while on vacation from his position at the Conservatory.
What an intense summer that must have been!
In spite
of their heavy use of Russian musical themes, all reflect the techniques that had
developed in the West. Scheherezade, in particular, owes a huge debt to
the concept of symphonic tone poem, invented by Franz Liszt. Termed by Korsakov a symphonic suite, it is really
a set of four symphonic portrayals inspired by episodes from Tales of the Arabian Nights.
In his
autobiography “My Musical Life” Korsakov states his intent to present a
kaleidoscope of fairy-tale images, connected by a single element: the character of
Scheherezade (represented by the recurring violin solo that begins the Suite). In The Arabian Nights, Scheherezade was an Arabian
princess who entertained her husband the Sultan with stories every night. The Sultan had murdered several previous wives
when he grew tired of them. Knowing this,
Scheherezade devised a strategy of telling him a story each night that left him in
suspense. He couldn’t afford to get rid of her, or he wouldn’t know how the
current tale worked out. The strategy worked
for a thousand and one nights, after which he relented his diabolical plans and accepted
her as his permanent wife.
The
menacing opening statement, whether intended by Korsakov or not, is a perfect depiction of
the stern Sultan. It contrasts exquisitely
with the creatively lyrical theme that follows immediately on the solo violin,
representing Scheherezade herself. At the end
of the first statement of her theme on the violin, the orchestra presents five wistful
chords that almost perfectly depict the opening of the book and the words “Once apon
a time”. (Almost identical four-chord
sequences are used in the same way by Mendelssohn in A
Midsummer Night’s Dream, and Andrew Lloyd Webber to end The Phantom of the Opera.) At the beginning of each tale (and in the middle
of the love story of the prince and princess) the violin solo reappears, as Scheherezade
abandons the tale – to be finished the
following evening. At the end of the work,
the five-chord sequence reappears, as if the book is finally closed: The End.
The
original titles of the four movements refer to stories told by Scheherezade: the Sea and
Sindbad’s Ships, the Tale of Prince Kalendar, the Tale of the Prince and the
Princess, and finally Festival in Bagdad and Shipwreck on the Rock With the Bronze Warrior
(how those two images are juxtaposed boggles the mind!).
Although Korsakov originally gave a title to each movement, he disavowed the
titles in later editions of the work, and consistently denied that any of the four
followed any particular story line. The
titles were intended only to provide the listener with a context and an inspiration. He wanted the music to be heard as a symphonic
development of related themes, reminiscent of the literary settings rather than depicting
any narrative scenarios. Whatever his
intentions, Korsakov created one of the most dramatic and memorable programmatic pieces in
the orchestral repertory, and it remains on of the all-time audience favorites today.
Program Notes by C.
Michael Kelly
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