Gustav Holst (1874-1934) was active as a composer and teacher in the first part of the 20th century. He played a number of instruments, including piano, violin and trombone, and is best known for his large-scale orchestral work, “The Planets.”
Holst composed many other works which were emblematic of early 20th-century British music – including a number of pieces for band which have become staples in the concert band repertoire.
He wrote the First Suite in E-Flat Major in 1909. It is a three-movement work based on the musical theme which opens the first movement, the “Chaconne” – itself a throwback to a slow triple-meter dance from the 17th-18th century. The opening 8-bar low brass melody is repeated 15 times, with variations in instrumental combinations, mood, and tonality. The following Intermezzo is a lively variation on the opening melody, but completely different in feel – reminiscent of an English folk song.
The closing March, whose second theme is also based on the “chaconne” theme, has a distinct “military” air about it. Instrumental ruffles and flourishes, and multiple interwoven melodies, lead in the end to a grand climax.
If you walk along 57th Street near Broadway, you can still see it. On the side of an ordinary-looking building, a small bronze plaque: “The great Hungarian composer Béla Bartók (1881-1945) made his home in this house during the last year of his life.”
Each time I pass this spot, I think of the man who, dying of leukemia in a tiny apartment, far from his beloved Hungary, composed this surprisingly positive concerto during the summer of 1945. He wrote it as a birthday gift for his wife, the pianist Ditta Pásztory Bartók. It is likely that he hoped it would provide her with some income after his death. Bartók completed all but the last seventeen bars himself; these last measures were orchestrated by his composer-friend Tibor Serly, based on Bartók’s sketches.
It is easy to hear the second movement (Adagio religioso) as a response to Bartók’s own illness. True or not, there is one other quite definite reference: to Beethoven’s string quartet in A-minor, op. 132, which he composed after a serious illness.
Profoundly beautiful as the concerto’s second movement is, the gracefulness of the first and the impetuous energy of the third are equally compelling. This is about as far from death-haunted music as one can get. I hear it in my mind everytime I’m on 57th Street, and I’m always astonished.
Gershwin composed the Rhapsody in just a few weeks in early 1924. It was orchestrated by Ferde Grofé (of Grand Canyon Suite fame), and premiered in New York, in February 1924, by Paul Whiteman‘s Palais Royal Orchestra band. It had enormous popular success, and instantly catapulted Gershwin to worldwide fame.
This is a quintessentially “American” work – brash, bold and exuberant; a fusion of classical and jazz styles; a piece in which the piano is both featured soloist and very much a part of the whole ensemble.
A long, low clarinet trill and rising “glissando” scale lead into the first triplet-based theme, punctuated by syncopated rhythms in the brass and winds, repeated and developed by other sections of the orchestra and the solo piano, and interspersed by solo piano variations.
Near the middle of the piece, the classic slow “blues theme” makes its appearance in the strings, is amplified by the full orchestra, and develops into the rousing finish.
A gifted and eclectic composer, Griffes was born in western New York in 1884 and died prematurely in 1920 at the age of 35. Although he studied with German pianists and composers, he was most influenced by early 20th-century French and Russian composers, and by oriental music.
He was also interested in Native American music, incorporating it into his compositions. His Poem is a fantasy for solo flute, 2 horns, harp, strings and percussion, with clear impressionist influences. Its alternating tranquil and rhythmically driven sequences and bold tonalities make it a compelling piece for audiences – and a perennial favorite for flutists.
Benjamin Franklin, one of our country’s founding fathers, was well-known as a statesman, diplomat, writer, printer, scientist and inventor – but a composer, too? Franklin’s interest in music is well-known. He printed treatises on music, played several instruments (including violin, harp, viola da gamba and guitar), and designed a four-sided music stand for string quartet players. He even invented the glass harmonica – an instrument made of rotating tuned glass bowls played by holding wet fingers against the edges, for which Mozart and Beethoven wrote compositions!
In 1946, a manuscript of a 5-movement string quartet was uncovered in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, bearing the title “Quartetto a 3 Violini Con Violoncello Del Sigre Benjamin Francklin.” It was originally (and unusually) scored for 3 violins and ‘cello to be played in “scordatura” fashion – all on open strings, with specific string tunings indicated for each instrument!
The quartet was published and attracted immediate attention from musicians and scholars, including Alan Shulman, an American composer and ‘cellist (1915-2002). Mr. Shulman, a pre-eminent ‘cellist and member of the NBC Symphony Orchestra under Arturo Toscanini, used excerpts from the Franklin quartet in his score for the NBC radio series “American Portraits” in 1950. In 1963, he created the present Suite based on thematic material from the quartet, maintaining its original key and structure. One of its notable performances was by the Philadelphia Orchestra during the 1976 Bicentennial.
Copland composed Lincoln Portrait for narrator and orchestra in 1942. It was part of a series of musical portraits of great Americans commissioned by André Kostelanetz shortly after American entry into World War II.
In Copland’s own words: “The composition is roughly divided into three sections. In the opening section I wanted to suggest something of the mysterious sense of fatality that surrounds Lincoln’s personality. Also, near the end of that section, something of his gentleness and simplicity of spirit. The quick middle section briefly sketches in the background of the times he lived in. This merges into the concluding section where my sole purpose was to draw a simple but impressive frame about the words of Lincoln himself.”
Copland used excerpts from a few contemporary songs, including “Camptown Races,” to evoke the spirit of mid 19th-century America. The moving words read by the narrator are taken from Lincoln’s letters, speeches and the Gettysburg Address.
Born in 1865, Jean Sibelius grew to be considered a national hero in his native Finland. A Romantic Nationalist, Sibelius even had his picture on the $100 Mark for a time.
Sibelius’s rise to fame came as Finland was fighting for independence against Lenin and the Soviet Union. “Finlandia,” one of Sibelius’s most famous works, was written during this period and at one point was considered the Finnish national anthem.
As a boy, Sibelius had dreams of becoming a famous virtuoso violinist. However, he started his training as a lawyer at the University of Helsinki. His love for music eventually got the best of him, and he transferred to what is now the Sibelius Academy of Music, which at the time was called the Helsinki School of Music.
Widely known as a symphonist, Sibelius wrote seven symphonies and had agreed to write an eighth, which was scheduled for a premiere but never came to fruition.
Sibelius’s Violin Concerto (the only concerto he wrote) is symphonic in scope and is marked by melancholy melodies and dark harmonies. Sibelius uses the violin as part of the texture while displaying the instrument’s virtuosic qualities and giving the orchestra equal importance.
Though Sibelius was himself a violinist, he composed only one violin concerto. This music did not come easily, perhaps because he was so close to the instrument.
The violin concerto was premiered in Helsinki in February 8th, 1904 and was considered a disaster. This was partially Sibelius’ fault as he didn’t finish the piece until the last minute and therefore didn’t give the soloist enough time to learn it.
After the first performance, Sibelius revised the work extensively to the version we know today. It was given a second “premeire” in Berlin, conducted by Richard Strauss, and was received very well. After this performance it was played a few more times, but slipped into obscurity until 1991 when the Sibelius estate allowed one performance and one recording to be published. Since that time it has become a mainstay in the violin repertoire.
By 1903, Sibelius had already composed his first two symphonies and a series of overtly nationalistic works: the Karelia Suite; the choral “Kullervo” symphony; the four Lemminkäinen legends; and the famous tone-poem Finlandia. All of these bore the hallmarks of late Romanticism; but his style was about to undergo a marked change.
By the time of the Third Symphony (1907), his music had become harder-edged, condensed, and rigorously organized. The Violin Concerto thus stands at a turning point in Sibelius’s output. Janus-like, it looks two ways at once: back towards the expressive romanticism of his earlier years, and forwards toward the concise, rugged, highly concentrated music of his future. Both of these elements can be heard in this work, which remains one of the pinnacles of the violin concerto repertoire.
This song is taken from the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta Ruddigore, or the Witch’s Curse. This delightful operetta features (among other things) a roomful of portraits of ghostly noble ancestors – who actually step out of their picture frames and come to life! The song that follows – “When the night wind howls” – is sung by the lead ghost (Sir Roderic Murgatroyd). It describes ghostly revels amidst the graveyard “at midnight – “the dead of the night’s high noon.”
Sir Peter Maxwell Davies (called “Max” by many of his friends) has long been one of Britain’s most respected composers. He was born in Manchester, England, and studied music at the University of Manchester and the Royal School of Music. After further study in the United States and Australia he returned to England where he created a virtuoso chamber group called The Fires of London to perform works by himself and his colleagues. For a time they were the rage in avant garde musical circles.
But Maxwell Davies was drawn increasingly to write music that was not only modern but that was communicative and accessible. You will see this reflected in his composition An Orkney Wedding, with Sunrise.
Composer’s Note:
“An Orkney Wedding was written for the Boston Pops Orchestra as a commission for its centenary, and conducted at the first performance by John Williams. It is a picture postcard record of an actual wedding I attended on Hoy in Orkney.
At the outset, we hear the guests arriving, out of extremely bad weather, at the hall. This is followed by the processional, where the guests are solemnly received by the bride and bridegroom, and presented with their first glass of whisky. The band tunes up, and we get on with the dancing proper. This becomes ever wilder, as all concerned feel the results of the whisky, until the lead fiddle can hardly hold the band together any more.
We leave the hall into the cold night with echoes of the processional music in our ears, and as we walk home across the island, the sun rises, over Caithness, to a glorious down. The sun is represented by the highland bagpipes, in full traditional splendor.”
By the time Prokofiev wrote his first symphony, he was already well-known as a child prodigy and the enfant terrible of twentieth century Russian composition. His pugnacious rhythms, violent melodic gymnastics and experiments with multi-tonality had already become recognizable trademarks (Stravinsky once said his music had ‘personality’, whatever its supposed aesthetic failings), and audiences had come to expect these elements of conflict in his music.
However, staying in 1917 in the Russian countryside (he was exempt from military service as the only son of a widow), he became interested in writing a work completely away from the piano. As a renowned virtuoso, the piano was his usual compositional tool, but by working without its aid, he hoped that the orchestra would sound more natural. The result was his first symphony: his one foray into Neo-classicism, it harks back to the symphonies of Haydn and Mozart in its reduced instrumentation and formal plan, although maintaining the biting wit (or is it sarcasm?) that is so much a part of his natural expression.
The work opens with a light, airy, exhilarating first movement, with gravity-defying leaps in the second subject. Later he expands on this high string register when the theme of the second movements floats in on stratospheric violins. Prokofiev replaces the typical third movement minuet of Haydn and Mozart with an even older dance, the gavotte, classically partnered with a droning musette; he was later to incorporate this movement into his Romeo and Juliet suite. The joyous finale is full of inventive counterpoint and bursting with irrepressible energy.
If you walk along 57th Street near Broadway, you can still see it. On the side of an ordinary-looking building, a small bronze plaque: “The great Hungarian composer Béla Bartók (1881-1945) made his home in this house during the last year of his life.”
