Glass: String Quartet No. 2 ("Company")

One of the most influential American composers of the twentieth century, if not the most “popular,” is Philip Glass (b. 1937), a descendant of Jewish immigrants from eastern Europe (as were Copland, Gershwin and Bernstein).

At age 78, Glass has been a prolific composer since about 1960, and has created works in a tremendous variety of forms and styles. Often summed up as “minimalist” composer, he prefers to describe his style as “music with repetitive structures,” and even that does not apply sufficiently to his entire catalog of work which is still growing after 55 years.

Glass has often collaborated with artists of every non-musical genre, as well as with musicians working along the edges of popular music like Brian Eno, David Bowie and David Byrne. His first string quartet was written in 1966 after he worked on an experimental film score with the Indian sitarist Ravi Shankar. Exposure to the “additive rhythms” of Indian music would become the most powerful and definitive influence on his music for the next three decades.

The four movements of the String Quartet No. 2 were written for the theatrical production of Company (1983) by Samuel Beckett. At first, Glass considered it incidental music (“like salt and pepper ... just something for the table”), but published it in 1986 as a string quartet and an arrangement for string orchestra.

Just as his minimalist phase gave way to his characteristic non-narrative rhythmic style, his art continued to evolve to encompass choral works, opera, and symphonies. In later years, Glass found renewed interest in historical forms, lyricism, and conventional melody. In his 2015 memoir Words Without Music, Glass says his favorite composer was Franz Schubert, with whom he shares the same birthday.

Williams: Star Wars Suite

Few people alive today will not recognize the music from the 1977 blockbuster movie Star Wars, which along with 1975’s Jaws turned the names John Williams (b. 1932), George Lucas and Steven Spielberg into household words ­— and Hollywood gold.

What fans of his movie scores may not know is that he started out as a talented recording musician whose playing is heard on scores by Jerry Goldsmith, Elmer Bernstein (no relation to Leonard Bernstein) and Henry Mancini. The famous opening riff of Peter Gunn was actually played by John Williams.

His composing career first gained traction with well known television themes from the 1960’s for shows like Gilligan’s Island and Lost in Space. The first of his 49 Academy Awards nominations came in 1967 for his score adaptation for Valley of the Dolls and he is now the second most recognized artist by the Academy, behind Walt Disney.

In addition to his famous original scores for Superman, the Harry Potter and Indiana Jones series, Schindler’s List and Saving Private Ryan (among many others), he has written concertos for some of the world’s finest soloists, a symphony, and numerous works for official occasions. His accomplishments include many awards from around the world, honorary degrees and Hall of Fame inductions. In 2005, the American Film Institute designated Star Wars as the greatest American film score of all time.

All this success is owed to his gift for creating musical imagery of grand scale and force in the manner of Richard Strauss, and his connecting succinct musical ideas to characters and themes in the fashion of great programmatic composers like Richard Wagner.

Besides composing, Williams has been a distinguished guest conductor with many of the world’s greatest orchestras, and succeeded Arthur Fiedler as the Principal Conductor of the Boston Pops Orchestra, a post he held from 1980-1993. As Laureate Conductor, he continues working with the Boston Pops, and frequently performs at the site of Leonard Bernstein’s final concert: the Tanglewood Estate.

The next installment of the famous series — Star Wars: The Force Awakes — is scheduled for release in December 2015, with music written and conducted by — who else? — John Williams.

Gershwin: An American in Paris

Jazz is considered America’s unique contribution to world music, and George Gershwin (1898-1937) was an important pioneer in its development, by combining the blue notes of American roots music with European-style harmonies.

The French fell in love with jazz in the 1920’s, perhaps because its colorful chords sounded like natural extensions of Debussy, Satie and Ravel. Gershwin made multiple trips to Paris during this period, seeking tutelage from Ravel or Nadia Boulanger (both of whom turned him down), and it was these visits which inspired this symphonic poem.

Gershwin had demonstrated an ability to capture musical impressions of haphazard New York City life in his earlier Rhapsody in Blue (1924), which was criticized by classical purists for its lack of discernible form. In applying this gift of urban portraiture to Paris, he offered no apology, writing “My purpose here is to portray the impression of an American visitor in Paris as he strolls about the city and listens to various street noises and absorbs the French atmosphere.” To achieve some of these effects, the score calls for instruments not normally found in a classical orchestra: saxophones, taxi horns and a wide array of percussion.

Gershwin also described his original concept for the piece as a “rhapsodic ballet” because of its free development of scene, mood and gesture. Ironically, his use of rubato (fluid, discretionary changes in tempo) was generally intended to make the point that jazz need not be strictly metrical for dancing purposes.

And An American in Paris indeed became a ballet in the climactic scene of the 1951 film of the same name, starring Gene Kelly and Leslie Caron. The sixteen-minute sequence cost half a million dollars to produce. The film was recently reborn as a Broadway musical, which opened at the Palace Theatre in April 2015, and runs through June 2016.

Bernstein: Symphonic Dances from "West Side Story"

Standing tall in the middle of a career marked by numerous “firsts” is Leonard Bernstein’s music for the now legendary musical West Side Story. Conceived as a modernized version of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet — set in the culture of New York City ethnic street gangs — it was perfectly timed to appeal to late fifties audiences.

Nearly ten years in on-and-off development, the musical was completed concurrently with Bernstein’s other best-known work, the operetta Candide (1956), and individual songs were actually exchanged between the two.

The original score for West Side Story was orchestrated primarily by Sid Ramin and Irwin Kostal, with later edits by Bernstein, perhaps because of his extremely busy conducting, recording and broadcasting schedule. Despite the great appeal of his music among audiences, Bernstein was often criticized for borrowing and adapting musical ideas rather than developing an original voice of his own, and he attributed this to not spending enough time concentrating on the art. He also was fond of saying his only real composition teacher was Aaron Copland, with whom he never actually studied.

The stunning success of the 1961 soundtrack album for West Side Story was not the only impetus for Bernstein’s arrangement of nine movements of its music that year: he was also celebrating a renewed contract as Music Director of the New York Philharmonic. The Symphonic Dances are ordered for purely musical reasons and do not follow the original plot sequence.

In addition to his countless recordings, media appearances, books, lectures, teaching and conducting positions, Bernstein composed an impressive catalog of works in all of the major forms: operas, symphonies, ballets, musicals, film scores, chamber music, song cycles, and more. This sum total of work places him among the most important American musicians of any century, and his unique gift for incorporating popular musical language into classical forms and instrumentation has made him the second most often played U.S. composer in American concert halls.

Copland: Fanfare for the Common Man

Soon after the start of the Second World War, Aaron Copland (1900-1990) was one of eighteen American composers invited by conductor Sir Eugene Goossens (1893-1962) to write patriotic fanfares to begin the concerts in the Cincinnati Orchestra’s '42-'43 season. Goossens wanted to produce "stirring and significant contributions to the war effort" as he had done so effectively with the help of British composers during World War I.

Copland's piece was titled as a reference to a famous 1942 speech given by Vice President Henry Wallace, who proclaimed the arrival of the "century of the common man." With Copland's vigorous approval, Goossens scheduled the premiere for March 13, 1943 as a tribute to the common man at income tax time.

Goossens left Cincinnati for Australia in 1946, and Copland was one of nine composers who co-wrote the farewell piece, Variations on a Theme by Eugene Goossens. In Sydney, Goossens would later be influential in the development of the Sydney Opera House, but a scandalous love affair clouded the rest of his career.

Copland fared better, despite the suspicions later placed upon him by the House Un-American Activities Committee during the Red Scare. Ironically, he had by that time completed the most prolific period of his career, including such definitively American works as Rodeo (1942), A Lincoln Portrait (1942), and Appalachian Spring (1944).

So stately and momentous are the chords, crashes and timpani strokes of the Fanfare that it has been quoted many times in popular music, television, film and official occasions throughout the western world. Copland himself borrowed it as material for his Third Symphony, in which it appears prominently in the final movement.

Elgar: Variations on an Original Theme ("Enigma")

The pre-eminent figure in Britsh music from 1900-1930 was a self-taught Roman Catholic musician from rural Worcestershire, who hadn’t experienced much success before age forty. Edward Elgar (1857-1934) would eventually achieve widespread fame across three continents, numerous official honors and a title of nobility, though he always considered himself an outsider.

In America, Elgar is best known for a section of his Pomp and Circumstance No. 1 in D Major (1901), which has been played at graduation ceremonies since 1905, when Elgar himself received an Honorary Doctorate from Yale University.

In England, lyrics by A.C. Benson transformed this same tune into “Land of Hope and Glory” a patriotic anthem so popular that it now compares in stature to “God Save the Queen.”

What first launched this remarkable career was Variations on an Original Theme (1899), his orchestral suite of 14 musical sketches based on a single theme, each inspired by an anecdote or personality trait of one of his close friends. The theme is presented in the first six measures of part one, above which appears the composer’s annotation: “Enigma.” The fourteen variations are named as follows.

I. “C.A.E” A four-note melodic fragment repeated here was once whistled by the composer arriving home to see his wife, Caroline Alice Elgar.

II. “H.D.S-P.” The pianist Hew David Steuart-Powell warmed up his fingers by playing scales on the keyboard, remembered by Elgar in this sketch.

III. “R.B.T” Author Richard Baxter Townshend’s portrayal of an old man character in amateur plays relied on a comedic vocal delivery, parodied here.

IV. “W.M.B.” Like this sketch, William Meath Baker was concise and energetic.

V. “R.P.A.” Richard Penrose Arnold was a pianist and son of the poet Matthew Arnold.

VI. “Ysobel” A crossing-string exercise forms the basis for this sketch, named for Isabel Fitton, one of Elgar’s viola students.

VII. “Troyte” Elgar’s close friend Arthur Troyte Griffith was an architect and enthusiastic but clumsy piano novice.

VIII. “W.N.” The Worcester Philharmonic Society were gracious musical patrons, and their secretary Winifred Norbury had a memorable and characteristic laugh.

IX. “Nimrod” Elgar’s close friend Augustus Jaeger was a music editor and caring personal critic. Nimrod is a reference to the Biblical hunter, the German word for which is jaeger. This movement, often played by itself on solemn occasions, was inspired by a memory of Jaeger’s encouraging counsel, and his singing of a theme by Beethoven.

X. “Dorabella” Dora Penny was something of a muse for the composer, and her stutter is lovingly echoed by woodwinds. Penny’s biography of Elgar reveals abundant details about the subjects of these sketches.

XI. “G.R.S.” Walking along the river Wye with Elgar, organist George Robertson Sinclair watched his bulldog suddenly tumble into the water, paddle over to the bank and bark. Sinclair challenged Elgar to “set that to music!” and he did.

XII. “B.G.N.” The cello solos here honor the fine amateur cellist Basil G. Nevinson.

XIII. “* * *” Lady Mary Lygon, a local music festival sponsor traveling on a sea voyage in 1899, was the subject of this nautically imagined sketch. The reason for the elided initials, like much of this work’s back story, is the subject of great speculation.

XIV. “E.D.U.” Elgar’s wife nicknamed him “Edu” from the German Eduard, and this sketch is thus a self-portrait. Its original form was lengthened by 100 bars at the suggestion of Augustus Jaeger.

Elgar created an unsolved puzzle with his “Enigma” annotation, refusing to explain its “dark saying,” and further implied that yet another unrealized theme arches over the entire set of fourteen variations. Many pages have been written in search of solutions to the riddle, based on anagrams, countermelodies, musical quotations, and literary references, but a full explanation remains elusive.

Though regarded among the greatest of British composers, Elgar’s lively and varied material borrows more from diverse elements of continental Eurpoean music, and can’t be summed up by the dignified Pomp and Circumstance, no matter how deeply it inhabits the culture of two nations. In fact, he was an outspoken critic of what he considered to be a passive acceptance of the blandness of English music.

The paradoxes of his life and career would seem to suggest that Elgar might approve of being credited with creating one of the great mischievous mysteries of music history.

Chopin: Piano Concerto No. 2, Maestoso

Contrary to its title, the Piano Concerto No. 2 (1830) was the first of two piano concertos written by Frédéric Chopin (1810-1849), and contrary to the spelling of his professional name, the great Romantic pianist was Polish, not French.

Raised in an academic family on the grounds of the Warsaw Lyceum (a university), Chopin’s musical gifts were cultivated from an early age. His training was grounded in the traditions of Bach, Mozart and Beethoven, which formed the basis for these first attempts at large scale works for piano and orchestra.

However these concertos reveal a shift in the balance between soloist and orchestra. Unlike his predecessors, Chopin used the form to showcase extravagant solo piano technique rather than develop a series of musical ideas through a deliberate give-and-take with the ensemble. It clearly pointed toward the variety of smaller musical forms to which he would later apply most of his creative genius and astonishing skills.

Hundreds of standalone piano works were produced during Chopin’s short life, in the form of études, nocturnes, and interpretations of Polish dances. The fluid and ornate detail of his keyboard textures conceals a sophisticated and disciplined attention to rhythm, articulation and dynamics down to the level of individual notes. With such a delicate style (once described as “embroidery”), he avoided public performances in large concert halls, preferring the intimacy of parlors and salons.

The lighter keyboard actions of nineteenth century pianos made Chopin’s intricate passages easier to execute than on a modern instrument, and the metal frame introduced on the Pleyel piano (Chopin’s favorite) provided more natural sustain than we hear today. This could explain why pedaling is rarely indicated in his scores, yet he prized a legato technique and impressed on his students the importance of “joining two notes together.”

Spending almost all of his adult life in Paris, Chopin became acquainted with the leading artistic figures of the time, notably the piano composers Robert Schumann and Franz Liszt, with whom he shared a mostly friendly rivalry. Though in some ways opposite in style, Chopin and Liszt can be credited with increasing the idiomatic and expressive possibilities of the piano to a degree that had never been heard before, or perhaps since.

Ravel: Pavane pour une Infante Défunte

When a young Joseph-Maurice Ravel (1875-1937) composed Pavane pour une Infante Défunte (1899) for solo piano, he was a student at the Paris Conservatory, from which he would eventually be expelled twice for not winning any composition contests.

The pavane is a slow, processional Renaissance dance, consisting of a series of hesitating steps like those of a modern-day wedding procession. It was just stately enough to have an occasional link with somber ceremonies (such as royal funerals), but that was not Ravel’s creative impetus.

He had written the piece for his Patron, the Princesse de Poignac, and described it as “an evocation of a pavane that a little princess (infanta) might, in former times, have danced at the Spanish Court.” As for the title, he confessed “I simply liked the sound of those words.”

Such explanations, and the comparisons of his style to that of Claude Débussy, later earned Ravel the label of “impressionist,” though he (and Débussy both) rejected that term.

Born just inside the French border with Spain, Ravel adored his Basque mother, and felt a nostalgic love for Spanish culture throughout his life. Rapsodie Espagnole (“Spanish Rhapsody”) (1908) was his first major work composed for orchestra, and L’Heure Espagnole (“Spanish Time”) (1911) was the more successful of his two comic operas. Ravel orchestrated many of his own piano works, and the Pavane was scored for orchestra during this same period.

Its clear melody, surrounded by soft harmonies shifting from archaic modes to modern jazz-like gestures reveal the influence of Chabrier and Fauré (Ravel’s teacher), and that of a contemporary, Erik Satie. Though he was routinely criticized for an overly-cerebral style, Ravel was his own worst critic, and insisted this piece was unoriginal, and “poor in form.”

By the time of its 1911 orchestral debut in England however, the Pavane was praised for its “remote beauty” and is now well received in the repertoire. Only his Boléro (1928), named after the slow Spanish dance, is better known to audiences.

Despite the acknowledged “impersonal” quality of his music, Ravel’s imaginative instrumental colorings and love of dance extend, well into the twentieth century, a sound that to us seems quintessentially French.

Resurgent Judson Civic Orchestra Continues to Impress

The fact that a city of 100,000 people can support more than three entirely separate symphony orchestras is amazing in itself, but the incredible regenerative powers of the Judson Civic Orchestra offers proof that Elgin indeed has a distinguished past—and future—as a center for the fine arts.

Formerly known as the Elgin Community College Civic Orchestra and later, the Judson University Community Orchestra, this ensemble has had roots in the area for twenty years or more. Made up of students, teachers, and accomplished amateurs, the Judson Civic Orchestra (JCO) is now a semi-independent organization in residence at Judson University with a core of dedicated artists and a base of community support.

Their nicely programmed Fall Concert, held Sunday afternoon in Judson's Herrick Chapel, held itself to professional standards with three works from the classic repertoire, including an appearance by a guest soloist destined for great achievement. In tuxedos and formal black dress, the players were indistinguishable from their counterparts at the Hemmens or Chicago's Symphony Center.

Judson Civic Orchestra, conducted by Jim Franklin

The arresting opening of Franz Schubert's "Overture to Rosamunde" (1820) was a perfect entree for this well-rehearsed orchestra, which sounds superb at forte and above. In this hall, less friendly to quiet passages and high voices, the more introspective moments of Schubert were, at times, hard to hear in the balcony over a large double bass section.

Yet the comparatively small space exposed intimacies of the music not usually heard in recordings or larger venues. Where other orchestras would take pains to hide the musical seams in these great works, this JCO performance offered a more transparent view into the craft and structure of the music.

Guest artist Jakob Gerritsen, a Jacobs High School senior and winner of the JCO Concerto Competition, presented Concerto No. 2 for Double Bass and Orchestra (1767) by Carl Ditters von Dittersdorf, one of only a few double bass solos in the professional repertoire. Playing entirely from memory, Gerritsen faced the technical challenges with aplomb, and delighted the audience with a rare look at highly skilled playing on an instrument not normally entrusted with melody.

JCO conductor Jim Franklin looked like a seasoned professional marshaling the resources of the 49-piece orchestra through Johannes Brahms' substantial Symphony No. 1 in C Minor (1855-1876). Highlighted by brilliant solos from the principals of nearly every section, this diverse and stalwart group of musicians proved capable of reproducing all the shades and textures of a colorful and historic score.

A civic orchestra brings out the best in a community: the passion of amateur artists, the discipline of educators, and the enthusiasm of audiences, combined with the vision of institutions like Judson University whose ongoing support is vital to the JCO's success. And filling a gap between high school and an elusive professional career, this excellent civic orchestra meets the needs of a growing number of dedicated amateur musicians who call the Fox Valley home. 

Brahms: Symphony No. 1 in C Minor

Legend has it that Johannes Brahms (1833-1897) threw more of his compositions into the fireplace than he ever performed or published. Facts notwithstanding, his reputation for high personal standards—even perfectionism—might explain why his first symphony was twenty-one years in the making.

Another theory suggests that Brahms’ early love of piano solos, songs and small ensembles delayed his acquiring the experience needed to write pure symphonic music for the orchestra.

But it was at age twenty, when Robert Schumann first introduced him to musical society as a young man destined to carry on the great tradition of Beethoven, that he began to carry the weight of great expectations and the persistent fear of failing to meet them.

With a marble bust of Beethoven looking down on him, Brahms began work on what would become Symphony No. 1 perhaps as early as 1854, but he did not produce a complete draft until at least 1868. Even after its premiere in 1876, the symphony was not finished: the original second movement was destroyed and replaced by another.

Brahms acknowledged the musical similarities of his work to the great symphonies of his venerable predecessor, and from its very debut, Brahms’ first symphony acquired the popular nickname of “Beethoven’s Tenth.”

Careful listeners can hear echoes of the famous “fate” motif of the Fifth, horn calls like the Sixth, and shades of the Ninth’s “Ode to Joy.” The seriousness of expression throughout, and suggestion of powerful natural and spiritual forces are indeed worthy of the giant whose musical shadow loomed over Brahms for so long.

But far from imitation, or even homage, Symphony No. 1 solidifies a unique place for Brahms among the greatest musical minds of all time, and along with Bach and Beethoven, the last of the “three B’s.”

Dittersdorf: Concerto No. 2 for Double-bass and Orchestra

A less heard though equally prolific contemporary of Haydn and Mozart, Karl Ditters von Dittersdorf (1739-1799) is also known to have played first violin alongside both of them in what might be considered history’s first Million Dollar Quartet in the musical “small world” of eighteenth-century Vienna.

The mutual influences are apparent throughout Dittersdorf’s substantial catalog of works spanning all the major genres of his time. Adding to his dozens of symphonies, operas, cantatas, and assorted chamber music are concertos for almost every instrument in the early classical orchestra.

The oldest surviving concertos for double-bass are the two by Dittersdorf, written for and premiered by Friedrich Pischelberger, a virtuoso player whose instrument would likely have had five strings and used the “Viennese tuning” (F-A-D-F#-A).

Modern editions of Concerto No. 2 (by far, the better known) are played with “solo tuning” on the double-bass, which retains the now standard string intervals (fourths) raised one step above concert pitch. Thus, the soloist plays a transposing part in the historically accurate key of D, while the orchestra accompanies in the concert key of E.

The technical challenges of the piece include numerous passages in the high register, and the use of double-stops and harmonics. These, along with traditional solo cadenzas offer a rare glimpse of highly skilled playing on an instrument normally relegated to the background.

Not to be overlooked, the beautifully written orchestral accompaniment scored for horns, flutes and strings attests to the considerable talents of a composer to whom history has perhaps not devoted enough space.

Schubert: Overture to "Rosamunde"

The short life of Franz Schubert (1797-1828) produced a treasury of music that reflects the impulsive, opportunistic career of the world’s first freelance composer. Not remembered for his performing talent, Schubert survived on paid commissions, publishing royalties, some teaching appointments and numerous theatrical projects, mostly in and around Vienna.

The piece now known as the “Overture to Rosamunde”—the four-act play by Helmina von Chézy—was neither written nor performed for it. In fact, the overture actually used for Rosamunde in 1823 was itself borrowed from Alfonso und Estrella, Schubert’s 1820 opera which had yet to reach the stage.

When the Gesamtausgabe (“collected works”) of Schubert was published in 1891, the overture to Die Zauberharfe (“The Magic Harp”) was inexplicably included with the incidental music for Rosamunde, thus creating the historical misnomer that has persisted ever since.

Theatrical music, particularly comic opera, was at the height of fashion throughout the Napoleonic empire during Schubert’s formative years, and whether for artistic or commercial reasons, he embraced “the Italian style” in his early overtures.

After an introspective opening section that alternates between ominous chords and melancholy Alpine melodies, Rosamunde tumbles into a lively sequence of rising rhythmic episodes reminiscent of Rossini, whose music Schubert and the rest of Viennese society greatly admired.

Like so many of the unfinished musical sketches and fragments that comprise this great composer’s legacy, the misplaced “Overture to Rosamunde” is essentially Schubertian not only because of the clarity and spontaneity of the music, but because, like the life of the man himself, it is just simply incomplete.

Mozart: Serenade No. 13 "Eine kleine NachtMusick"

Even those who don't know the name Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791) have probably heard at least part of his Serenade No. 13 for strings (K525), one of the most recognizable works in all of classical music.  It derives its more familiar title from the composer's own handwritten catalog entry: "Eine kleine NachtMusick, bestehend in einem Allegro, Menuett und Trio. -- Romance. Menuett und Trio, und finale. -- 2 Violini, Viola e Bassi."  

The listing of five movements here has remained a mystery: no one knows when or why the first minuet was omitted from the piece.  Even so, this light-hearted work in four movements is considered a shining example of Mozart's ebullient creative genius and mastery of classical symphonic structure.  Probably commissioned as party music to be played by a string quartet (as it is sometimes heard today), the piece is said to evoke the feeling of after-dinner conversation, an accurate reflection of Mozart's own loquacious personality and zest for entertainment.  It was one of several masterpieces of chamber music written in 1787, at the height of his career, while he was simultaneously at work on the brilliant opera Don Giovanni.

During an age when most composers relied on steady employment by church or state institutions, Mozart spent essentially his entire life in commercial pursuits.  As a child prodigy, he was introduced to the life of a traveling virtuoso by his enterprising father Leopold, and he later acquired his own keen style of self-promotion among wealthy and influential circles in many of Europe's great cities.  However, his personal fortunes tended to rise and fall at the whim of contemporary fashion, and he struggled to remain solvent despite his incredible volume and variety of work.

Mozart's legendary reputation as a superstitious bon vivant, thriving on competition and personal politics, is not documented nearly as well as the excellence of his art, an astonishing record of over 600 separate works that practically define the Classical era in music.

Gounod: Petite Symphonie in Bb

The French composer Charles Gounod (1818-1893) was one of two sons born into an artistic family, his father an accomplished painter and draftsman, and his mother a talented pianist.  He showed natural musical talent as a child, but it was at the age of thirteen when a peformance of Mozart's Don Giovanni first truly awakened his interest in composition.  By age 21, he had won the Grand Prix de Rome and moved to Italy where he concentrated on the renaissance works of Palestrina, and began a period of rather intense devotion to sacred music and theology.  

By 1850, a thirty year-old Gounod decides to seek more career satisfaction by composing for the theatre and the concert hall, writing the first of the twelve operas for which he will later be best remembered.  Gounod also writes his only two orchestral symphonies in 1855, perhaps following the personal advice of Felix Mendelssohn whom he had met in Leipzig years before, and whose music he considered a "precious model."  That same year, a young Georges Bizet writes his first and only symphony as a student (and later friend) of Gounod, and while their compositional similarities do not go unnoticed, it is Bizet's work that is the more widely performed.

Gounod's operatic output reaches its climax in 1867 with Romeo and Juliet, and for the next few years the composer seeks respite in Rome — and finds trouble in England — a period when his deep religious conviction and artistic gifts eventually come together in the makings of an overlooked Christian opera based on the story of the martyred saint, Polyeucte.

Among the works of Gounod's later years is the Petite Symphonie in Bb (1885), in four movements for wind instruments.  The piece was composed for a noted wind ensemble called "La Trompette," and features passages written specifically for its conductor, flautist Paul Taffanel (1844-1908).  The work is a charming tribute to the French wind instrument tradition, while exhibiting the classical formal structure that Gounod so admired in the craft of Mozart, his most important compositional influence.

Warlock: Capriol Suite

Philip Heseltine (1894-1930) was born in London into a family of bankers, solicitors and impresarios, but after losing his father at an early age, he was taken to his mother's family home in Wales, where he spent his childhood and would later return as an adult to produce some of his best work.  Throughout his youth he explored a variety of subjects, discovering in himself a particular fascination with music, but he achieved little satisfaction or success in any of his schooling, and at one point abandoned his hopes of a musical career.  Yet he gravitated toward artistic and literary circles as a young adult and spent his frequent periods of unemployment studying early music.

Among his close friends were the writer D.H. Lawrence; composer, critic (and later, biographer) Cecil Gray; and composer E.J. Moeran, with each of whom he indulged at different times in various aspects of publishing, intellectualism and bohemian lifestyle.  By spending alternating periods in Cornwall, England and Ireland, Heseltine managed to avoid military service during World War I instead finding opportunities to cultivate his love of Celtic languages and antiquities.  In 1916, not yet a composer, he published his first scholarly music article under the pseudonym Peter Warlock.  The following year he wrote his earliest, and some say his finest, songs for solo voice with piano accompaniment.

More musicologist than composer, the self-taught Warlock produced more editorial work than original music, including nine books and hundreds of articles, reviews, and early music transcriptions.   He was a champion of the music of the Dutch composer Bernard van Dieren, and also the Hungarian Bela Bartok; he authored a biography of his friend and mentor, the English composer Frederick Delius, whose music was his childhood inspiration.  Each of these, combined with his vast knowledge of Elizabethan music, had a decided influence on Warlock's own style.  

The years 1922 to 1928 were Warlock's most productive period as a composer, during which he wrote primarily solo and choral works, including the masterful song cycle The Curlew, scored for tenor and chamber ensemble.  However his best known piece may be the Capriol Suite (1926), originally written as a piano duet.  Warlock would often release music in multiple arrangements, and the Suite was indeed scored for string orchestra, and then in 1928, for full orchestra.

The Capriol Suite is based on Renaissance dance tunes published in Thoinot Arbeau's landmark 1589 manual on the subject, Orchesographie.  The suite consists of six movements, with which Warlock takes varying degrees of creative liberty: Basse-Danse ("low dance"); Pavane, for a line of couples; Tordion; Bransles, a country round dance; Pieds en l'air ("feet in the air"); and Mattachins, a sword dance.  The piece is dedicated to Paul Ladmirault, a French composer with whom Warlock shared a mutual admiration, and who had published a flattering article about him in 1927.

A period of deepening depression affected Warlock in 1930, and his mysterious death in December of that year could not be classified as either accident or suicide.  Since then the complexities of his character have been ignored, exaggerated, or given askance looks in print and film, especially his reputed interested in the occult (hence the name "Warlock").  Yet in this particular respect he is scarcely different from the other great English composers of this impressionist period like Delius, Holst and Vaughan Williams, who took far greater inspiration from nature and folklore than from established religion or scholarly technique.

Music by Sir Arthur Sullivan

Trained at the Royal Academy of Music and Leipzig Conservatory, this son of an Irish bandmaster spent ten years as a cathedral organist while conducting and composing in all the major classical genres, including his first one-act comic opera Cox and Box in 1867. It was during its run that he met his future creative partner, William Gilbert, a former clerk and barrister who had become a successful theatrical writer. The two first collaborated in 1871, and followed up with a string of productions whose lively combination of clever lyrics and brilliant musical parodies created a style all its own, referred to as “Savoy Opera,” so named after the London theater where their greatest works were first produced.

Of the twelve productions co-written by Gilbert and Sullivan, the most successful were H.M.S. Pinafore (1878), The Pirates of Penzance (1879) and The Mikado (1885), which remain immensely popular in Britain and the USA. Composer of “The Lost Chord” (1877) and the hymn tune “Onward Christian Soldiers” (1871), Sullivan is remembered not just for his show music, but as an artist of depth, inspiration and tremendous versatility.

Dvorak: Suite in A Major ("American")

A little unlike many of history’s great composers, this innkeeper’s son from a rural Czechoslovakian village was not necessarily a child prodigy. While some biographers claim he became a butcher’s apprentice at his parents’ insistence, he nonetheless received modest training in organ, violin and viola which prepared him for his first job as a member of a dance orchestra in the capital city. In 1862, this ensemble formed the foundation for the newly created Prague Provisional Theater Orchestra, and during the next nine years as a member, Dvorak gained a broad exposure to the operatic works of Wagner, Verdi and Mozart. He also began work on some of his own first large scale compositions.

In his early thirties, Dvorak caught the attention of Brahms and his friend, the famous Viennese critic Eduard Hanslick, with his entries in the annual Austrian state composition contests. Eventually, Brahms’ influence with his German publishers made possible the 1878 release of Dvorak’s first set of Slavonic Dances, whose broad appeal soon brought him international acclaim. For the next fifteen years, his fame and fortune would continue to rise through numerous commissions and conducting appearances throughout Europe, notably many in England.

He accepted a position as Director of the National Conservatory of Music in America (New York) in 1892, and thus began a fertile three-year period of creativity that produced his famous Ninth Symphony (“From the New World”), which premiered in the Spring of 1894. Dvorak spent the following summer in the Czech-speaking community of Spillville, Iowa, where he finished his lesser known Suite in A Major, first written for solo piano and scored for orchestra in the following year.

Its five movements convey a wide range of moods, including hints of homesickness for his native Czechoslovakia in the folksy strains throughout the work; a loving embrace of the Native American and Afro-American idioms he was hearing anew on the prairie; and even a foreshadowing of the Humoresques he was to write a year later. Though Dvorak later felt his greatest contributions were to European opera, his American-period synthesis of dance rhythms, five-tone folk melodies, and tuneful phrasing had a profound influence on American music, right into the jazz age.

Beethoven: Symphony No. 6 in F Major

Beethoven was the eldest of three brothers born into a musical family in Bonn, Germany. Introduced to the piano and music theory by his father, he began composing as a child and became a skilled keyboardist in the court of the Elector of Cologne at Bonn. After seeking instruction from Mozart in Vienna at age 17, he was called home to handle family responsibilities after his father’s illness and mother’s death. While still in Bonn at age 21, he met Joseph Haydn and arranged to study with him in Vienna, where Beethoven arrived in 1792 (the year after Mozart’s passing), and would eventually spend the rest of his life.

For the next ten years, Beethoven steadily developed his career through performing his own piano works, which display the essence of his music: complex and innovative, with heavy textures and focused development of musical themes that evoke a seriousness of style for which he has always been known and admired.

By age thirty, Beethoven’s progressive loss of hearing (of unknown cause or cure) began to have a profound effect on him emotionally as well as artistically, and he sought refuge in the rural village of Heiligenstadt near Vienna. Long solitary walks in the country cheered him, and he wrote “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!’.” The first sketches for his Sixth Symphony were made here in 1802, and he would later finish this symphony, along with the Fifth, in Heiligenstadt in the summers of 1807 and 1808.

Symphonies No. 5 and 6 (cataloged originally in the opposite order) were premiered on December 22nd, 1808 at a single four hour concert of all new music in the Theater an der Wien. Initial enthusiasm for the works was dampened by the unheated hall and under rehearsed orchestra.

Historians suggest Beethoven may have borrowed the idea for his five-movement “pastoral” symphony from his now-forgotten predecessor Justin Knecht, whose “Musical Portrait of Nature” was published in 1784 and also contained five movements (unusual for a classical symphony) bearing similar titles.

Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony is, in the composer’s own words, “a matter more of feeling than of painting in sounds,” a concept that is evident in the names of its five movements (the last three of which are played without intervening pause).

I. “Awakening of cheerful feelings upon arrival in the country,” (Allegro) evoking the rhythms of nature through repetition of short, light melodic themes. 

II. “Scene at the brook,” (Andante) depicting flowing water and calls of the nightingale (flute), quail (oboe) and cuckoo (clarinet). 

III. “Happy gathering of country folk,” (Allegro) a jubilant dance movement, later claimed to have been his impression of a village band. 

IV. “Thunderstorm,” (Allegro) whose bursts of brass and percussion punctuate a dark, dissonant background of strings. 

V. “Shepherd’s song; cheerful and thankful feelings after the storm,” (Allegretto) following familiar form, with moments of harmonious ease and prayer-like whisper.

First titled “Recollections of Country Life,” Beethoven’s Symphony No. 6 has become a standard in symphonic literature, and a favorite of orchestras and listeners alike, showing us not the surly, frustrated and eccentric bachelor of popular lore, but a deeply sensitive, observant and joyful artist at home among the natural elements.

Prokofiev: Peter and the Wolf

In 1891, Sergei Prokofiev was born on a country estate in a rural area of the Russian Empire which is now part of Ukraine.  His parents, though of modest means, were nonetheless educated and ambitious.  His father was the estate manager; his mother, an accomplished pianist in her own right, nurtured the young Prokofiev's obvious musical precocity but allowed him to discover it largely on his own.  By age 12, he had become a student of pianist-composer Reinhold Gliere, and had already composed two operas, a symphony, and dozens of piano works.  He was accepted at the St. Petersburg Conservatory and completed ten years of study with some of the best known Russian musicians of the day — Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Alexander Glazunov, and Anatol Liadov. As a student, he was commended for his astonishing piano performances much more so than for his compositions, whose adventurous rhythms and harmonies were considered shocking and uncivilized. 

Prokofiev traveled Europe and Asia through the turbulent 1910's, but eventually sought new audiences in the United States, Paris and London, and remained in the West for 25 years, composing and performing a wide range of choral, symphonic and virtuoso piano pieces.  By 1935, however, almost all of his commissions were coming from within the Soviet Union, and he moved to Moscow permanently in 1936, the same year he wrote "Peter and the Wolf" for the Central Children's Theater. 

The intent of this work was to "cultivate musical tastes in children from the first years in school," an idea to which he warmly related.  Sources say he completed this "symphonic tale" in less than two weeks, perhaps as little as four days, supplying his own narrative based on memories of his childhood.  Prokofiev introduces sections of the orchestra to the audience as characterizations, with Peter portrayed by the strings, the Bird by the flute, the Duck by the oboe, the Cat by the clarinet, the Wolf by the horn section, the Grandfather by the bassoon and so on.  Though the composer was disappointed at its premier, “Peter and theWolf” has gone on to become a favorite of children as well as sophisticated adult listeners since that time. 

In the period that followed, Prokofiev continued a vigorous and productive composing and performing career, all the while struggling to stay on good terms with the ever more repressive and paranoid Communist government.  By 1950, the political climate in the Soviet Union became increasingly isolationist, and a number of composers and other artists suffered official denouncements for their international ties, among them Prokofiev, Shostakovich and Khatchadourian.

In his final eight years life, suffering from poor health triggered by a fall and concussion, Prokofiev produced more symphonies, concertos, sonatas and other works, some rather blandly patriotic.  His last public appearance was at the premiere of his popular, but somber Symphony No. 7, also composed for young audiences, for which he received the 1957 Lenin Prize (posthumously) after his death in 1953. 

Vaughan Williams: Fantasia on "Greensleeves"

Ralph (pronounced "Rafe") Vaughan Williams (1872-1958), often regarded as the most "English" of English composers, owes much to the early influences of his Brahmsian composition teachers (Parry and Stanford), and something also to his years as a soldier in WorldWar I, but neither so much as to his love of English folksong, a source of endless creative inspiration for him throughout his long, prolific musical life. 

The "Fantasia on Greensleeves" is but one song from Vaughan Williams’ tuneful third opera Sir John in Love, (1924-1928). Like Verdi's "Falstaff," the work is based on Shakespeare's Merry Wives of Windsor, and though "Sir John" has not held the stage like its rival, it is beloved for its sequence of buoyant, memorable song melodies. Legend has it that the tune of "Greensleeves" was written by King Henry VIII himself for his lover and future queen Anne Boleyn, and multiple references to the tune in Shakespeare's "Wives" indicate that it has been well-known since at least that time.  In "Sir John," Vaughan Williams conjoins it with another folk song from his extensive collection, "Lovely Joan," heard in the middle of this 1934 adaptation by Ralph Greaves. 

Though he would have considered himself a religious agnostic, Vaughan Williams served brilliantly as editor of the highly successful English Hymnal of 1900, and many of his works deal directly or indirectly with Christian subjects. To some, his best-known work may be the tune "Sine Nomine" ("without a name") set for the hymn "For All the Saints.”  Vaughan Williams was buried in Westminster Abbey, one of only a handful of composers, like George Frederick Handel and Charles & John Wesley, to be so honored.