Programme Notes

compiled by Anne Ku

 

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Orchestra Concert, Vredenburg Great Hall in Utrecht
Sunday 12 March 2006 at 3 pm

Conducted by Jan Willem de Vriend

about programme notes - Anne Ku brings 20 guests to this concert

Photo credits: Bin from Nijmegen

De Vlakte - premier of new work by Tom Dicke, 4th year composition student at Utrecht Conservatory

Tom says, "My piece originated from the idea of leaving a city, to enter the Dutch flatlands (polders). The impression this simple landscape has on me is quite big; I was raised in Dordrecht, a city surrounded by polders and rivers. Everytime I wanted to (temporarily) escape the business and narrow-mindedness of the town, I could step on my bike and enter this silent land. This is what 'De Vlakte' (The plain) is about: stepping out of the normal, plain life for a while, by drowning in grass, wind, water and solitude."

Schubert songs:

first three text by Goethe, orchestrated by my classmate Dawid Boverhoff from South Africa, sung by soloists from Utrecht Conservatory

Erl Konig : It depicts the death of a child assailed by a supernatural being, the "Erl King." It was Schubert's most popular song during his lifetime.

Ganymed : Ganymed's journey leads him through several keys, from his beginning in A-flat major to the concluding section in F major.

Gretchen am Spinnrade : Gretchen has trouble attending to her spinning wheel when she thinks of Faust. Listen to the accompaniment --- can you hear her spinning?

An die musik - "To Music" Schubert's ode to the wonders of music, on a poem by Franz von Schober

Franz Schubert (1797 - 1829)

from Classical Music Pages at http://w3.rz-berlin.mpg.de/cmp/schubert.html

Schubert effectively established the German lied as a new art form in the 19th century. He was helped by the late 18th-century outburst of lyric poetry and the new possibilities for picturesque accompaniment offered by the piano, but his own genius is by far the most important factor. The songs fall info four main structural groups - simple strophic, modified strophic, through-composed (e.g. Die junge Nonne ) and the 'scena' type ( Der Wanderer ); the poets range from Goethe, Schiller and Heine to Schubert's own versifying friends. Reasons for their abiding popularity rest not only in the direct appeal of Schubert's melody and the general attractiveness of his idiom but also in his unfailing ability to capture musically both the spirit of a poem and much of its external detail. He uses harmony to represent emotional change (passing from minor to major, magically shifting to a 3rd-related key, tenuously resolving a diminished 7th, inflecting a final strophe to press home its climax) and accompaniment figuration to illustrate poetic images (moving water, shimmering stars, a church bell). With such resources he found innumerable ways to illuminate a text, from the opening depiction of morning in Ganymed to the leaps of anguish in Der Doppelgänger .

Schubert's discovery of Wilhelm Müller's narrative lyrics gave rise to his further development of the lied by means of the song cycle. Again, his two masterpieces were practically without precedent and have never been surpassed. Both identify nature with human suffering,   Die schöne Müllerin evoking a pastoral sound-language of walking, flowing and flowering, and Winterreise a more intensely Romantic, universal, profoundly tragic quality.

From Franz Peter Schubert - Master of Song at http://www.carolinaclassical.com/articles/schubert.html

In the history of music, no composer ever displayed true genius for melodic writing in quite the same way as Franz Schubert, whose remarkable gifts are most widely remembered today through his prolific composition of songs for voice and piano. These masterpieces poured freely from his mind so quickly and with such a degree of perfection that his ability to produce many musical works in a short time has become legendary. Although he composed for every available medium, he was least successful when writing operas or duos for solo instrument with piano. Among his one thousand compositions that survive, his art songs or Lieder comprise the largest portion of his works. This is not really surprising since some of the greatest singers of his native Vienna were among his circle of friends and musical collaborators.

Early in his adult life, Schubert abandoned a financially secure career as a teacher in order to devote himself completely to his music. He once said, "I have come into the world for no purpose but to compose." Schubert never again worked in a public profession; he went on just a few short journeys; and he lived basically an inconspicuous life which has caused many to speculate on the nature of his personal activities. Whatever these obscure details may have been, they matter little to those who cherish his glorious music and his noble spirit.

PAUZE - intermission

Beethoven's 6th Symphony, Opus 68 - "The Pastoral"

was written almost simultaneously with famous 5th symphony but differs from it in theme. If the Fifth deals with the struggle and the joy of victory, "The Pastoral" represents the expression of the love the composer holds for nature.

from All about Beethoven website at http://www.all-about-beethoven.com/symphony6.html :

Symphony No. 6 in F major, op. 68 ,"The Pastoral" was written almost simultaneously with The Fifth Symphony "Eroica" but differs from it in theme. If Eroica deals with the struggle and the joy of victory, "The Pastoral" represents the expression of the love the composer holds for nature.

In a letter to Therese Malfatti in the summer of 1808, Beethoven said "   How happy I am to be able to walk among the shrubs, the trees, the woods, the grass and the rocks! For the woods, the trees and the rocks give man the resonance he needs. "

Beethoven's great love of nature, the delight in strolling through the woods of Heilllingenstadt, the fact that he always found his equilibrium in the heart of nature, all these led to the creation of his sixth symphony.

This programmatic endeavor is clearly expressed through the suggestive title of the symphony, as well as through the titles of each segment of it, through this initiating the later direction of his programmatic symphonies and even of his symphonic poems.

When he found refuge in the midst of nature, he jotted down themes inspired by the trill of birds, the trickling of creeks or the rustle of leaves. In a notebook from 1803 was found an outline of a river's trickling with the additional note: " The greater the river, the more grave the tone. "

Beethoven rose much higher than his predecessors who tried to capture the gist of nature, because he places man with his feelings and sensitivity in the heart of nature. And this is confirmed by the very title he places on the cover of the first edition (Breitkoph & Hartel) and that is: " Pastoral-Sinfonie oder Erinnerung an das Landleben. (Mehr Ausdruck der Emphindung als Mahlerey.) " - "Pastoral Symphony or Recollection of the Life in the Countryside"

Part I - Allegro ma non troppo - has as programmatic indication "Gefuhle bei der Ankunnft auf dem Lande" - " Awaking the emotions full of life upon arriving in the village ". This part has genuine popular sonority through the choice of instruments and the use of typically rural instrumental music. Musical themes are short, allowing shifts from one psychological state to another through their repetition.

Theme I (one) brings a new climate, more of a motif, which through segmentation will ultimately create a natural setting in which man is shrouded in pleasure.

Part II - Andante molto moto - Szene am Bach (Scene at the creek) is a wonderful scene of nature, with exceptionally musical themes in the pure pastoral air. It is more of a description of sensations rather than images. Only in the final part - the Coda - do we find the onomatopoeic sounds of birds. The title of the flute theme is Wachtel (quail) and that of the clarinet theme Kuckuck (cuckoo).

Part III - Allegro - "Lustiges Zusammensein der Landleute"(Joyful reunion of peasants) is particularly interesting from the point of view of the construction. The theme is built through the repetition of a motif, only on totally different structures (F major and then D major), as if it reflects the external position of the viewer with regard to the others.

Part IV - Allegro - "Gewitter, Sturm" (The Tempest) has a free form. The composer seeks to render the stages of the storm as it unravels on the horizon and it moves closer more and more threatening. The instruments with grave chords - cellos and double basses - through their sounds announce the storm, then, the staccato sounds of the violins render the falling raindrops, and through the timpani and the flutes we sense the thunder and lightning. But above all these images we feel the tense disposition that captures man helplessly facing the state of nature. When the storm is over, all living creatures come to the surface, taking their place in the natural cycle; this is rendered by a choral of flutes, which come as a true sunray.

Part V - Allegretto - "Hirtengesang - Frohe und dankbare Gefunhle nach dem Sturm" (Pastoral Song - Feelings of joy and gratitude after the Storm) is a hymn of gratitude towards nature. This part, constructed as a sonata with rondo elements, impresses through its simplicity and constitutes a true idyll, a pastoral scene. This is a genuine idyll, infinitely strain from false musical-idyllic fantasies, so often reminding of Arcadian shepherds, in satin bowed shoes and sheep with pink or blue-sky ribbons. Beethoven's Pastoral is just as majestic, through its simplicity, as Eroica, just as sincere and natural, wandering away from the artificial in the rhetoric parts.

from Classical Music pages at http://w3.rz-berlin.mpg.de/cmp/beethoven_sym6.html

  One often hears of Beethoven as a misfit iconoclast, boorishly dressed, with no regard for established conventions, a man famed for bellowing at princes who paid insufficient attention to his music. To say that he had few social skills would be understating the case. He simply didn't get along with people, but perhaps those people never saw him at his best, for, in the composer's own words, "I love a tree more than a man." Beethoven was always most at ease when vacationing in the countryside, where he could take long solitary walks through the fields and the woods. As he wrote once to a friend, "How glad I am to be able to roam in wood and thicket, among the trees and flowers and rocks. No one can love the country as I do ... my bad hearing does not trouble me here. In the country, every tree seems to speak to me, saying 'Holy! Holy!'. In the woods, there is enchantment which expresses all things." Those words could have been written by Thoreau. Here, they come from the pen of a man who felt trapped by human society. Although this love of nature is heard in several Beethoven works, no piece is more clearly in that spirit than the Symphony no. 6.

This was certainly not the first time that nature found its way into concert music. Baroque composers were fond of hunting scenes and bird calls. Leopold Mozart produced a bit of fluff called A Musical Sleighride, complete with barking dogs, and Haydn's The Seasons, which dates from 1801, is filled with scenes from country life. Although these examples are familiar, one probable influence on Beethoven is often overlooked. In 1784, the publisher Bossler issued a set of piano trios by Beethoven. He advertised the works in the newspaper, and, on the same page, listed another composition, also published by Bossler, a five-movement symphony by the now-forgotten Justin Heinrich Knecht, a work entitled A Musical Portrait of Nature. Each movement of that symphony carried a descriptive title, remarkably similar to those used a dozen years later by Beethoven, who also made the same unusual choice of five movements. Beethoven almost certainly knew of this precedent for his own symphony and for his titles, but, since the secret to successful plagiarism is to be better known than your source, Beethoven was never questioned. Still, regardless of the shady origin of the titles, the music itself is all Beethoven.

Although early sketches for this symphony date from 1802, its actual composition waited until the summers of 1807 and 1808. Beethoven spent these months in the town of Heiligenstadt. Today, Heiligenstadt is just another suburb of Vienna, but, back then, it was a rural retreat, a green escape from the heat of the city, and a perfect place for the reclusive Beethoven. In Heiligenstadt, his mind was at rest, and he was able to compose not only this symphony, but also the Symphony no. 5, the A-major Cello Sonata, and the two op. 70 Piano Trios. Beethoven produced so much music during this period that he was uncertain which symphony was finished first. He initially cataloged the Pastoral Symphony as number five and the c-minor Symphony as number six. The error was only corrected at publication.

On returning to Vienna in the fall of 1808, Beethoven organized a gala concert to premiere the two symphonies, together with other new works. The concert took place at the Theater an der Wien on December 22nd. Here's the program: first, the Symphony no. 6, followed, in order, by the concert aria, "Ah, perfido", two movements from the Mass in C major, the Fourth Piano Concerto, the Symphony no. 5, and, last but not least, the Choral Fantasy. It was four hours of music, new music to their ears. The theater was unheated, the orchestra was under-rehearsed, and the soprano soloist had a bad case of stage-fright. The whole experience led one listener to comment later that "one can have too much of a good thing --- and still more of a loud".

The titles of each of the Pastoral Symphony's five movements give a clear picture of what the composer had in mind. The first, "Awakening of Cheerful Feelings on Arriving in the Country," sets the idyllic mood which continues throughout the piece. A sort of skipping rhythm is heard throughout this movement, as if the composer were imagining village children at play. The second movement is "Scene by the Brook," in this case, a brook frequented by quails, cuckoos, and nightingales, whose voices are evoked by the woodwinds. In the third movement, Beethoven turns to human inspiration, for "Merry Gathering of the Country Folk," a portrayal of a village dance. Years later, a friend of the composer's claimed that it was meant to depict a village band, valiantly playing through a haze of alcohol. Like all merry-making, this party too comes to an end, in this case, with a change in the weather, as the fourth movement, "Thunderstorm," arrives. The storm rages away throughout the orchestra, then gradually subsides with the beginning of the fifth movement, "Shepherd's Song --- Happy, Thankful Feelings after the Storm." The last three movements are played without pause, and the entire symphony ends on a tranquil note. Perhaps it's dusk in Heiligenstadt, and Beethoven, enjoying a rare bit of peace of mind, is resting from his labors.

from Grove Dictionary of Music:

Hardly less original than the Fifth Symphony is the Sixth (' Pastoral ', 1808), though here for once the first movement is made as quiet as possible. This is done with the help of a development section devoid of tensions, a recapitulation approached hymn-like from the subdominant, and countless pedal points throughout. In compensation, a passage of fury comes elsewhere in the piece, as an extra movement (trombones and piccolo enter for the first time in the symphony to enforce this 'Storm'). Each of the five movements bears a programmatic inscription, and one of these is frankly pictorial in nature - the 'Scene by the brook' inscribed over the slow movement, which includes a series of stylized birdcalls at the end, in a sort of woodwind cadenza ( Beethoven was careful to identify the quail, nightingale and cuckoo - see fig.12). On the other hand, he stressed the word 'Gefühle' ('feeling') in two other inscriptions and so could quite properly observe that his reference was less to musical 'Malerei' ('painting') than to emotions aroused by the countryside. A sequence of such feelings guides the listener through the familiar therapeutic progress of a Beethoven symphony, in a somewhat gentler version.

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770 - 1827)

Beethoven's early achievements, as composer and performer, show him to be extending the Viennese Classical tradition that he had inherited from Mozart and Haydn. As personal affliction - deafness, and the inability to enter into happy personal relationships - loomed larger, he began to compose in an increasingly individual musical style, and at the end of his life he wrote his most sublime and profound works. From his success at combining tradition and exploration and personal expression, he came to be regarded as the dominant musical figure of the 19th century, and scarcely any significant composer since his time has escaped his influence or failed to acknowledge it. For the respect his works have commanded of musicians, and the popularity they have enjoyed among wider audiences, he is probably the most admired composer in the history of Western music. (Grove Dictionary of Music)


Next event:

Premiere of mini-opera "The Jetsetter" by Anne Ku for mezzo soprano, harpsichord, recorder, violin, and cello
Friday 17th March 7 pm at Utrecht Conservatory --- composition concert (free) includes works of my classmates

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