| Pure Artistry |  | John Harbison
The Most Often Used Chords
While working in Italy, John Harbison bought some spiral-bound notebooks of blank music paper that contain inside the cover short summaries of the fundamentals of music. In program notes for the piece, Harbison includes excerpts from the “fundamentals” and explanations of how they insinuated themselves into his creative process. Composed in 1992 for the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, The Most Often Used Chords is a piece of whimsy.
Toccata: “Use these charts to form chords in any key. Major, minor, diminished, augmented. The construction of these chords involves simply raising or lowering one or more tones one half step. Here are the two scales you need: major and minor. There are seven modes; each begins on a different white key.”
The Toccata is a romp based on the precepts listed above. Harbison weaves the scales and modes unpredictably into the orchestral fabric.  About halfway through he plays with the chords in a similar manner, combining both scales and chords. The effect is one of polytonality with spiky rhythms recalling Stravinsky.
Variazioni: “The chord of chords is the triad, for example C-E-G.”
With a couple of exceptions, every sonority in this set of a frame and four variations is a triad. By artful orchestration and unusual harmonic progressions, Harbison leaves “the fundamentals” far behind.
Ciaccona: This movement of lush, late romantic harmonies emanates from “the ten most often used chords.” Harbison explains that in the notebook, they were displayed separately, in C, then transposed upward by half steps. “Their Italian chroniclers never meant them to be played in sequence. Nevertheless here they form a ground, against which a melody emerges. The melody presses to break free of the ground, to spin forward in historical time, which causes an interlude after the sixth chaconne statement. At the moment of greatest tension, the melody and the ground resume.”
Finale: “The Circle of Fifths is easy to memorize. Starting with F and moving clockwise, the keys can be learned by saying Fat Cats Go Down Alleys Eating Bread. The keys counterclockwise can be learned by repeating Boys Eat Aging Dogs Good Cold Food. Harbison takes off on another lighthearted escapade based on this mnemonic device. He writes: “In addition to the increasingly crazed appearances of the Circle of Fifths, two other tables from the same notebook appear: the Table of Contracting Note Values (shades of Handel's B-flat Concerto Grosso), and the Table of Expanding Intervals (which leads inexorably to the use of all twelve tones).”
If this highly condensed music theory course is difficult to absorb, the composer reassures us that one really doesn’t need these program notes to enjoy the piece.
A graduate of Harvard, the Hochschule für Musik in Berlin and Princeton, John Harbison has been teaching at MIT since 1969 where he is currently Institute Professor of Music. He is also on the faculty of the Aspen Music Festival. His musical development has been shaped by his experience as an accomplished jazz pianist, violist in a string quartet and conductor of choral music. He has been composer-in-residence with many musical organizations and received the Pulitzer Prize for music in 1987 for his cantata The Flight Into Egypt. In 1989 Harbison was named a MacArthur (“Genius”) Fellow. He has composed in all media, including three operas; he is also recognized as an outstanding poet and wrote his own libretto for his opera The Great Gatsby, which was commissioned by the Metropolitan Opera.
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| | |  | | | | Felix Mendelssohn | | | 1809-1847 | | |
Felix Mendelssohn
Violin Concerto E minor, Op. 64
If ever there was a composer born with a silver spoon in his mouth, it was Felix Mendelssohn. He was raised in affluence and comfort, his precocious musical talent recognized and nurtured by his culturally sophisticated and highly supportive family. His home was a Mecca for the artistic and intellectual elite of Germany who also encouraged the prodigy and his talented sister Fanny. One of his admirers was the formidable grand old man of German literature, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Fortunately for the development of Felix's rare abilities, his carefully selected teachers, however impressed they may have been with him, were demanding. His strict training, especially in fugue composition, familiarized him with the works of Johann Sebastian Bach, who at the time was dismissed as a mere pedagogue. In 1829, Mendelssohn was central to a Bach revival with an historic performance of the Saint Matthew Passion in Berlin, virtually rescuing the great composer's music from the counterpoint classroom.
As a mature artist, Mendelssohn was acclaimed throughout Europe as a composer and conductor, especially in his native Germany and in England, where he had a private audience with the young Queen Victoria, who sang for him after he had played for her. His untimely death from unknown causes created a profound shock, and Mendelssohn societies promoting his music and ideas quickly sprang up all over middle and northern Europe.
Unlike Mozart, Mendelssohn was extremely self-critical, constantly requesting feedback and carefully perfecting his compositions. The Concerto in E minor had a long gestation period. Mendelssohn started the concerto in 1838 but did not finish it until six years later. He wrote it for his friend, the famed violinist Ferdinand David (1810-1873), concertmaster of the Gewandhaus Orchestra of Leipzig where Mendelssohn served as conductor from 1835 to 1843. The composer sought - and took - David's advice on technical aspects throughout its composition. David finally premiered it in Leipzig in 1845, but Mendelssohn was ill and unable to attend. Now one of the staples of violin repertory, the Concerto was considered daring and innovative at the time of its composition.
From the first bar, the Allegro molto appassionato opening broke new ground. Instead of the usual orchestral exposition of the main themes, the violin enters at once to present the principal theme on which the movement is built. Mendelssohn gives the second part of the theme to the orchestra. For the second theme, the roles are reversed, with the winds introducing the theme. The cadenza, largely the creation of David, is placed unconventionally before the recapitulation. Relocating the cadenza away from its traditional place at the end of the movement stresses the continuity with the second movement, which follows without pause.
The Andante emerges out of a single quiet bassoon tone, emanating from the last chord of the opening movement. It is joined by other instruments for a short transitional passage, after which the solo violin introduces the simple, almost religious theme. The middle section in the minor mode turns slightly darker.
Another transition, based on the opening theme of the concerto, leads into the Allegro molto vivace. Mendelssohn saved the demonstration of the violin’s virtuoso possibilities for this sparkling Finale. After an orchestral fanfare for the winds, containing a rhythmic motive that the composer reuses for throughout the movement as part of other themes, the soloist enters with a flourish followed by a delicate, dancing theme that dominates the movement and recalls the atmosphere of the teenaged composer's first great hit, the Overture to A Midsummer Night's Dream. The orchestra answers with a development of the opening fanfare. The soloist then plays a new, more lyrical melody – also based on the fanfare - in counterpoint with the first theme, now in the orchestra, Later, their roles are reversed. |
| | | Maurice Ravel
Pavane pour un infante défunte (Pavane for a dead Infanta)
Of Basque origin but raised in Paris, Maurice Ravel came from a musical family who encouraged his abilities from a young age. He gained admission to the Paris Conservatoire at age 14, but he never got along with his teachers, his free spirit and unconventional musical ideas running counter to the school’s conservatism. By the time he graduated in 1903, he was already a well-established composer, but five attempts to win the coveted Prix de Rome – the obligatory passport to success with the French musical establishment – came to naught, creating a scandal when it was revealed during his last attempt that all the finalists were composition students of a single professor.
Composed for piano in 1899 and premiered by his close colleague Ricardo Viñes in 1902, Pavane pour une infante défunte was Ravel’s first success with the general public, especially in the salons of Paris. The title mystified his colleagues and listeners, who could think of no instance of a royal Spanish funeral dance. Ravel himself, however, explained it clearly: “I let myself be led into writing that title because of the pleasure I got from the sound of the words.” Ravel transcribed the work in 1910 for full orchestra, and there have since been numerous transcriptions for various instrumental combinations.
Starting with the Menuet antique of 1895, Ravel frequently liked to pattern the framework of his music after courtly dance forms from the Renaissance, the Baroque or the Classical eras. The pavane, thought by some to originate from the Spanish “pavón” (peacock) because of the stately movements of the dancers, probably originated in early sixteenth-century Venice, from the Italian “pavano” or “paduano,” both referring to the neighboring city of Padua. The dance, however, became especially popular in Spain.
According to Ravel’s friend, pianist Vlado Perlemuter, the composer was often annoyed at the excessively slow tempi of some artless pianists. After a particularly dragging performance Ravel pointed out that it was the infanta who was supposed to be dead, not the pavane.
The Pavane is in ABA form and consists of three themes that are similar in nature, except for the fact that the first two themes can easily represent a dance, & while the second theme is halting, almost a recitative. |
| | |  | | | | Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart | | | 1756-1791 | | |
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Symphony No. 40 in G minor, K. 550
When listening to any popular and well-known piece of music, it is difficult to keep from being lulled into inattention by its sheer familiarity. And while we can never hear a 200-year-old work from the point of view of its original audience, it is useful to pretend, at least, to be hearing it for the first time.
Despite the fact that most modern listeners tend to regard the key of a work as irrelevant, musicians of the Baroque and Classical periods regarded certain keys as possessing specific emotive qualities, or “affects.” Minor keys in particular were fraught with emotional significance, and few symphonies in this period were written in minor keys. For Mozart, the key of G minor was the key of extreme pathos. He used it sparingly for some of his most heart-wrenching music: the String Quintet K. 516; the Piano Quartet K. 478; Pamina’s aria “Ah, ich fühl’s” from The Magic Flute; and, of course, the stormy so-called “Little G minor” Symphony (No. 25) K. 183 written when he was only 17.
Mozart’s final three symphonies, nos. 39, 40 and 41, were written over a two-month period in 1788, probably as part of a portfolio of new works destined for a series of summer concerts in Vienna. Unfortunately, we lack any information on whether the concerts actually took place, much less about their reception. At this point his career was already in decline despite the success of his two great operas Don Giovanni and The Marriage of Figaro, written in collaboration with his brilliant librettist Lorenzo da Ponte. That is not to say that Mozart’s music was somehow denigrated or considered no longer pleasing; his published scores were selling briskly and his music was being performed all over Europe. It was almost as if there was a surfeit of Mozart – that he was too well known. And although he was in desperate need of funds to support his lifestyle, his legendary productivity faltered as well.
The three symphonies reflect very different moods, the darkest being that of No. 40. It is almost as if the tragedy of this symphony saw its resolution only in the triumph of No. 41 (nicknamed “The Jupiter,” but not by Mozart). Ironically, we know less about the circumstances surrounding this most famous of Mozart’s over 600 creations, nor can we extrapolate any specific, solid evidence of how it might have reflected the circumstances of his life or his emotions.
The opening theme of Symphony No. 40, with its hushed, nervous introductory upbeat in the violas, sets the tone of urgency and anxiety that pervades the entire work. The second movement Andante is the only movement in a major key. But while it begins serenely enough, it, too, turns dark and intense in the course of its development.
Even the Minuet, usually the most lightweight movement in a Classical symphony, retains the original key and is characterized by a series of phrases ending on successively higher and higher notes, ratcheting up the emotional tension. Restatements of the theme in imitative counterpoint pile on top of each other in their agitation. The Trio, at least, provides an emotional break, however slight.
The theme of the finale is a musical portrayal of hysteria, a shrill arpeggio ending in a sighing appoggiatura, followed by a pounding motive in the orchestra that closes with an echo of the sigh in the lower register. Despite a lyrical second theme, the movement is in constant nervous motion. Finally, Mozart subverts the custom of ending symphonies in minor keys in the major, and stays in g minor to the end.
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| | | | Copyright © Elizabeth and Joseph Kahn 2010 |
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