Program Notes - May 8, 2010
Robert Alexander Schumann
Born on June 8, 1810 in Zwickau, Germany
Died on July 29, 1856 in Endenich, Germany
Schumann: Konzertstück for four horns and orchestra, Op. 86
1848 and 1849 were Schumann’s most prolific years, which he attributed to the raging revolutions sweeping Germany, and the consequent “inward turn” of many older artists (the young Wagner, in something of a political contrast to his later views, was busy on the revolutionary side). With three symphonies and his celebrated Piano Concerto completed, Schumann had reached a high level of confidence in his orchestral technique, though the unique athleticism of his musical ideas rarely transferred smoothly to either orchestra or keyboard. Throw in the brand-new possibilities of the valve horn (the French horn more or less as we know it today, but a totally new concept at the time), and the Konzertstück’s musical invention emerges as nothing if not quirky. Freed from the melodic limitations of the natural (valveless) horn, Schumann treats the four soloists more or less in string quartet fashion, with perfect blend and the independence to produce exciting imitations and counterpoint.
The soloists burst in at the work’s opening with a symmetrical fanfare (the fourth horn’s low notes are as much a demonstration of virtuosity as the first horn’s high notes), which the orchestra develops into the ceremonious main theme. Every possibility of the new, valved instrument is exploited, with chromatically ornamented melodies passed around the soloists and fanfares that change key mid-way. The climax of the movement is an extended scale for the upper two horns, the first horn reaching a high written E, two steps higher than the standard top note on the instrument. The timpani also have a prominent role, to be reprised in the finale.
The slow movement is in Schumann’s Nachtmusik vein, with the dark tonality of D minor and a lullaby-like melody that undulates mysteriously. A chorale that provides the central section recalls the woodland Romanticism of Weber’s 1821 opera Der Freischütz. The return of the main theme is cut short by a trumpet call and vigorous response from the strings, provoking the swift transition to the finale’s hunting dance. Here again the versatility of the valve horn produces some spectacular figurations and scales to trump those in the first movement, and the violin passage in the central section is notable as one of the most challenging in the orchestral literature. By the close, it is clear that Schumann’s sensibilities are absolutely suited to the bravura of the new instrument, and this is confirmed by the flamboyant horn parts of the Rhenish symphony composed the following year, which went on to have a sizable impact on the horn writing of Mahler, Strauss and even John Williams.
Anton Bruckner
Born on September 4, 1824 in Ansfelden, Austria
Died on October 11, 1896 in Vienna Austria
Bruckner: Symphony no. 7 in E major
Often unfairly compared to Mahler, Bruckner was an altogether different musical animal, a teetotal cathedral organist and schoolteacher with none of Mahler’s worldly intellectualism or its accompanying existential angst. Both shared a love of Wagner’s music, but while Mahler became a legendary conductor of Tristan und Isolde and Die Meistersinger, Bruckner found his most profound interaction with Wagner as a devout listener who closed his eyes at Bayreuth to avoid the profanity of the plot material. He expanded his mainly liturgical compositional work relatively late in life to apply Wagner’s sound to the symphonic stage. Raised on a diet of liturgical music and secular Schubert, Bruckner’s appetite for study with various professors of counterpoint, form and orchestration was the key to his development of a first-rate compositional voice. He heard Wagner’s Tannhaüser in 1862, at the age of thirty-eight, which prompted him to turn from the composition of church music to symphonies; by the time the Seventh was premiered in 1883, he had befriended Wagner, who had expressed an interest in conducting Bruckner’s works at the premiere of Wagner’s final opera Parsifal. Wagner’s death that year reached Bruckner as he was working on the slow movement of the Seventh, prompting a coda dominated by horns and Wagner tubas (baritone French horns) in tribute; some scholars have called the whole symphony a eulogy to Wagner. Certainly it was Bruckner’s greatest public triumph during his lifetime, and became one of Hitler’s favorite works too – the Führer reportedly thought it greater than Beethoven’s Ninth, but we will probably never know what musical qualities prompted his judgment.
Listening to the opening of the Seventh, Lohengrin is in fact the Wagner opera that comes to mind, with a swan-like theme for cellos, endlessly unfolding under violin tremolando, the organ pedal points and lush harmonies typical of their highly religious composer. The second theme on woodwinds is also gentle, following the climax of the first and incorporating a Tristanesque turn figure. The climax of this passage gives way suddenly to a third theme that brings folk dance rhythms. The development section begins with inversions (upside down versions) of the initial cello theme, and plays with many different transformations and combinations of all three themes. Bruckner’s propensity for counting measures and ensuring the balance of sections is also apparent in the way the music shifts in large blocks of predictable duration. The close of the movement, after a shortened recapitulation, has a typical pile-up of sound with the brass especially providing the background of the organ-like sonority, while the busy violins add the kind of sparkle associated with the high reed pipes.
The slow movement juxtaposes quiet, intricate choral writing for Wagner tubas and horns with more volatile string passages. As with the first movement, Bruckner presents three themes (here rather closely related in shape) and develops them, the spacious arpeggio of the first and the nervous propulsion of the third bearing some intricate fruits. A dotted motive, buried in the first string entry, gains in prominence and length during the development section, and after capping a climax based on the main theme, emerges as the principal idea of the coda. Here a chorale of Wagner tubas is the foundation for a heroic fanfare on the horn, yielding to a yearning string motive very much in the character of Parsifal; this, according to Bruckner, was the “master’s funeral music.” The Scherzo is one of Bruckner’s most immediately attractive, with an undulating bass ostinato (riff), and a trumpet call whose wide-ranging intervals contrast with both the ostinato’s tightness, and the slalom of violins that follows it. The central (trio) section, typical of the Austrian Ländler dance on which the movement is based, offers a smooth melodic texture as a foil. The finale then begins as a lighthearted reminiscence of the symphony’s opening, with fleet melodic figures over string tremolandi, but the figures interrupt the lyrical material that follows with a noisy Wagnerian robustness. The finale then becomes a game of pious chorale versus vigorous drama, distilling into a single musical structure the conflict Bruckner must have felt between his simple Christian spirituality and the lurid, sensuous theatrics of his musical idol.
