Ralph
Vaughan Williams

Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958) was one of the leading nationalist composers who ventured out into the countrysides of their respective nations in search of indigenous sources of music. Unlike the earlier school of nationalist composers who were satisfied with collections of already published 'folk' music, this new school went to the villages, the farms, the churches, and the meeting places to capture on paper and on cylinder phonograph discs the raw, unfiltered words, inflections, and tonal quality of the native peoples. Around 1903, Vaughan Williams began collecting English folk music from the various regions of the island nation, arranging them in suites and collections for publication and performance. This work led to his selection as music editor for The English Hymnal, for which he wrote several pieces, including "For All the Saints."

As a student at the Royal College of Music, Vaughan Williams studied under two noted composers of the English renaissance of music, Charles Villiers Stanford and Charles Hubert Hastings Parry. He also studied briefly with Max Bruch in Berlin. Following a three-month composition study with Maurice Ravel, Vaughan Williams received the ultimate praise from the Frenchman, who said that he "is the only one of my students who does not write my music." But his study with these great practitioners of composition gave his music the very sound that he and the other rising English composers were trying to avoid. The music of Parry and Stanford even in its striving to be "English," nevertheless, reflected the dominant influence of continental Europe and particularly the sway of Johannes Brahms. And Vaughan Williams, along with his good friend and fellow composer, Gustav Holst, hoped to change all that by developing a unique English sound by incorporating the tenor, tone, and quality of English folk music into his works.

Toward the Unknown Region (1906) is a major orchestral/choral composition that clearly shows the transition period in Vaughan Williams' development. Here he illustrates the merging of Brahmsian techniques with his own developing less dense, more ethereal English style that culminates in his Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis (1910). The incidental music to The Wasps falls between these two major compositions and shows quite distinctly the introduction of English sentiments into his music.

The Overture to The Wasps is taken from the incidental music that Vaughan Williams composed for a stage production at Cambridge University of Aristophanes' play of the same name. The complete score runs to more than one hour and forty-five minutes from which the composer later drew an orchestral suite of five parts. The overture is often performed and recorded independent of the suite itself. It is noted for the whirring figurative writing at the beginning representing the wasps - the Athenian judiciary busily being officious - and which recurs in various forms as a motif. But the essence of the work is not Greek, but English, as witness the lively march-like tune and the splendid string melody that follows.

W. A. Mozart

The winter of 1777-78 Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-91) and his mother spent in the German city of Mannheim, a city famed for its masterful musicians and composers, and whose "Orchestra of Generals" was renowned throughout Europe. Mannheim was the third stop on a tour of major musical cities proposed by young Mozart's father Leopold with the purpose of securing a permanent position for the son. Once Amadeus was gainfully employed, then the father and family would move from Salzburg to the new home. Earlier stopovers in Munich and Augsburg proved to be fruitless, but Mozart felt Mannheim offered a good chance of employment, or at the least, the opportunity for him to benefit from his skills as a composer. And, yes, there was a more pressing reason to sojourn in Mannheim - young love.

Twenty-one-year-old Wolfgang became enamored of sixteen-year-old singer Aloysia Weber, and, to his father's dismay, planned to throw his carrer to the winds and undertake a concert tour of Italy to promote the object of his infatuation. Leopold, who even at a distance still controlled the fame and fortune of his son; quickly staunched this feeble attempt at youthful rebellion. Determined to remain near Aloysia, Mozart sought out commissions to justify to his father his lengthening stay in Mannheim. To this end, a friend, Mannheim flautist, Johann Baptist Wendling presented Mozart to a wealthy Dutchman named De Jean or De Jong, whose careers included sea captain and surgeon for the Dutch East India Company. De Jean, an amateur flautist, commissioned Mozart to write three easy, short flute concertos and an equal number of quartets for flute and strings, to which Mozart gladly agreed.

Mozart completed only one of the commissioned concertos, thus bringing down on himself the wrath of his father, who warned him of the dangers of prolonged sloth. Wolfgang  offered a defense that has been a source of controversy among musicologists for centuries. In a letter to Leopold, he reminded his father: "You know how laggard I become when obliged to write for an instrument which I cannot bear." Some scholars doubt the veracity of young Mozart's claim to dislike the flute, seeing in the remark an attempt to rationalize his lethargic work habits. One skeptic writes that Mozart's "compositions for the instrument are works of characteristically rich melodic invention and equally characteristic clarity of form and texture." If Mozart despised the flute, the feeling is not reflected in the love and care he gave to it in his compositions.

When Mozart offered to De Jean two flute concertos and three flute quartets, the Dutchman recoiled, and refused to pay the composer the amount specified until the contract was completed. It's entirely possible that De Jean recognized the second flute concerto as a reworking of an earlier, popular Oboe Concerto in C major, K314 Mozart wrote for Salzburg oboist Giuseppe Ferlendis the previous summer. Regardless, the commission remained incomplete and Mozart received only half of the stipulated fee.

The Flute Concerto No. 1 in G major, KV313 is the original concerto of the two Mozart gave to De Jean and is noted for its beauty and structure. The first movement is designated Allegro maestoso, an unusual designation for a movement during Mozart's era that became more common during the Romantic age.

Aram Khachaturian

A ballet based on the revolt of Thracian slaves against their Roman masters was first proposed to Armenian composer Aram Khachaturian (1903-1978) in 1938 by Nikolai Volkov, a noted librettist who had also provided a scenario for Serge Prokofiev's ballet Cinderella. Khachaturian at first was quite taken with Volkov's idea, but despite the announcement of the proposed ballet in the Soviet press two years later, the composer's enthusiasm seemed to wane after committing a few sketches to paper. No progress was made on the project until five years after World War II, when in the summer of 1950, Khachaturian began work on the score of Spartacus "with a feeling of great excitement."

Khachaturian gave an explanation of why he again found the Thracian revolt of 74-71 B.C. worthy of contemporary musical treatment:

However, the Soviet Armenian composer's reason for tackling the subject may have been less noble that he intimates, for he had along with other Soviet composers among who were numbered Dmitri Shostakovich and Serge Prokofiev, run afoul of state guidelines and was denounced publicly for the "formalism" of his music. This denouncement came in 1948; the grand sweeping score of Spartacus most likely was the composer's attempt to once again gain the approval of the Soviet authorities. His ploy obviously worked, for following dictator Joseph Stalin's death in 1953, Khachaturian was rehabilitated and restored to the good graces of the regime.

Because of his teaching duties, Khachaturian could work on the ballet only during the summer months, thus the composition consumed the better part of four years. It was another two years before the massive ballet - four acts lasting three hours and forty-five minutes - was premiered on December 27, 1956, at the Kirov Opera and Ballet Theatre. The composition was awarded the Lenin Prize in 1959.

The Adagio of Spartacus and Phrygia from the ballet is a soaring, passionate section representing the reunion of Spartacus and his wife after her rescue from the house of the Roman leader. It is sometimes referred to as The Love Theme from Spartacus. The version on tonight's program is an arrangement for smaller orchestras by David Stone.

Johannes Brahms

"I shall never write a symphony. You don't know what it's like to hear the footsteps of a giant behind you," or words to that effect were spoken by Johannes Brahms (1833-1897) to those critics and friends who were constantly after the composer to produce a symphony - a work of monumental import that would clearly show that he was - as Robert Schumann had prophesied - heir to the Beethoven legacy. The giant that shadowed Brahms was the ghost of Beethoven or at least that composer's last completed symphony - the 'Choral' Symphony No. 9 in D minor.

Brahms hesitated, for he knew that the initial symphony he wrote would be judged by critics and audiences not on its own merits as his first but more likely as Beethoven's tenth. It would have to be an accomplished work, worthy of Beethoven, but in his own voice. The Symphony No. 1 in C minor, Op 68 is the result of Brahms' hesitation and his years of successful composing.

At the urging of Robert and Clara Schumann, Brahms began work on a symphony as early as 1854, mindful of Robert's prior musing that

[w]hen the German speaks of symphonies, he means Beethoven. The two names are for him one and the same - his joy, his pride.

Nevertheless, Robert praised Brahms' piano sonatas as "disguised symphonies for piano." Clara, too, felt that Brahms needed to get a symphony on record in order to certify his bona fides as a serious composer, much as she had pushed Robert to pen his first symphony over a decade before. Brahms took the challenge with some trepidation and completed three movements of a symphony in D minor, before abandoning the idea. Some of the material of the incomplete symphony later showed up in his Piano Concerto No. 1 in D minor, Op 15 (1859), particularly in the first and second movements. Some scholars have referenced the concerto as "more a symphony with piano obbligato" than as a true concerto.

After this first failed attempt at a symphony, Brahms concentrated his efforts in producing piano pieces and songs that increased his popularity but at the same time left his audiences wanting for works of a larger nature. And Brahms, always aware of his public, sought to appease some of that longing by producing his first orchestral works, two serenades for orchestra, one in D major (1857) and the other in A major (1859). Still striving to produce the elusive symphony, Brahms confided to friend and violinist Joseph Joachim that he proposed to remake the D major serenade into a symphony. To this end, the composer reworked the score and expanded the instrumental forces so that they resembled the usual symphonic form. The refurbished piece was premiered in March 1860 as the Symphony-Serenade in D major. Then, after second thoughts, Brahms removed "symphony" from the title and republished the score as Serenade for Large Orchestra. When a patron confronted Brahms that surely the Serenade was a symphony in reality, the composer blurted in frustration

Oh, God! If one still dared after Beethoven to write symphonies, they would have to look completely different!

The only purely orchestral work that Brahms composed after the A major serenade in 1859 was the Variations on a Theme by Haydn, Op 56 (1873). True, the Hungarian Dances were orchestrated by Brahms and published in 1869, but he considered these adaptations, not original works, and thus did not assign them an opus number.

The Symphony No. 1 in C minor, Op 68 premiered in Karlsruhe, Germany, on November 4, 1876. Otto Dessoff conducted with the composer present. Only in its second performance in Vienna did the symphony receive the scutiny one would expect of a major work of an eminent composer such as Brahms. As Brahms feared, his symphony was compared to those of Beethoven, and he became annoyed at the suggestions of similarities between certain themes because they implied plagiarism on his part. Edward Hanslick, the most prominent of Vienese music critics, pointed out the similarities between Brahms' First and various compositions of Beethoven, including the "Ode to Joy" theme of Beethoven's Ninth. In truth, Brahms, a master of the variation form, does pay homage to Beethoven in his own finale with a somewhat subtle variation of the "Ode to Joy" theme, that transforms the exultant Beethoven theme to one of a calm, reflective melody, as memorable and hummable as Beethoven's. Conductor Hans von Bülow dubbed the symphony "Beethoven's Tenth," a moniker that is still viable today.

In his own way, Brahms came to terms with the "giant" that had shadowed him for a full twenty years, not by challenging the Master, but rather by showing deference to him.

Click Here to hear an excerpt of the "great theme" from Brahms' First Symphony.

Program Notes © 2010-2011 William H. Driver and Clinton Symphony Orchestra Association

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