| Recycling Redefined |  | Johannes Brahms
Variations on a Theme of Haydn, Op. 56a
This set of variations, perhaps Brahms’s most imaginative orchestral work, was composed in 1873 as homage to the classical tradition as epitomized by Haydn. Despite his humble birth, Brahms was by age 40 a musical force to be reckoned with. He had a significant number of piano and chamber works under his belt, as well as the German Requiem and the First Piano Concerto in D minor. Yet, feeling himself ever in the overwhelming shadow of Beethoven, he spent 14 years, from 1862 to 1876, developing the skills and courage to produce his first symphony. The so-called “Haydn Variations” was his first purely orchestral work since the two youthful Serenades and the D minor Piano Concerto (all premiered in 1858-59) This new work demonstrated that he had reached the end of his “apprenticeship” and had completely mastered the orchestral palette.
The origin of the theme is obscure. It was brought to Brahms’s attention by organist and musicologist Carl Ferdinand Pohl, librarian of Vienna’s Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde and a Haydn biographer. Pohl had discovered it in a manuscript of six Feld-Parthien (partitas) for eight wind instruments, or Harmonie, allegedly by Haydn, but possibly by his star pupil Ignaz Pleyel. The Harmonie, or wind band, was a traditional ensemble for outdoor dinner entertainment, consisting of pairs of oboes, clarinets, bassoons and horns. In the Haydn manuscript the movement is titled “Chorale St. Antonii,” indicating that it was probably taken from a much older source. Brahms believed, however, that the theme was genuinely by Haydn; he made his own copy – the partitas were only published in 1932 – and transformed an obscure melody into one of the best-known pieces in the classical repertoire. Originally, Brahms wrote the Variations for two pianos (Op. 56b). He orchestrated it immediately and published it only two months after the original piano version.
The work consists of the theme, eight variations and a Finale. Variation forms date back to the Middle Ages and, until Beethoven, were generally bravura pieces in which, as the variations progressed, a theme collected more and more embellishments – thereby requiring faster and faster finger work. Only Johann Sebastian Bach in the Goldberg Variations provided the exception that proved the rule. One of the legacies of Beethoven was to greatly expand the ways in which a theme could be changed. No longer a matter of decorative accretions bound by a standardized repeat structure, sets of variations could stretch, distort, re-harmonize, bury the theme in an inner voice, or even disguise it. In the introduction of the theme, Brahms follows the original wind instrument scoring of the Feld-Parthie; the following two examples illustrate the original instrumentation by Haydn – or whoever – and the second part of the theme as Brahms orchestrated it.  & Note that Brahms adds pizzicato cellos and basses to the harmony. Brahms retains the original phrase length of the theme but disguises the melody, retaining only the harmonic structure. Even in the original Feld-Parthie, Haydn re-used the harmonic chorale's structure and buried the tune in the inner voices for the Finale.
Brahms sometimes uses rhythmically distorted fragments of the theme to develop, as in Variation V. Most often he retains only the harmonic and formal structures. Nevertheless, it is possible to hum the theme with each variation, where it will nearly always fit into the harmony. The exceptions are Variation II, Variation IV and VIII, which are in the minor mode.
As was his practice in other sets of variations, Brahms made the Finale the climax of the work, a chaconne consisting of 24 mini-variations based on a five-measure ground bass derived from the beginning of the bass line of the original theme. The variations become increasingly involved, using ever-changing orchestral forces, rhythmic and melodic variety, culminating in grand restatement of the complete theme by the full orchestra.
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| | |  | | | | Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky | | | 1840-1893 | | |
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 35
“Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto raises for the first time the ghastly idea that there are pieces of music that one can hear stinking... [the finale] transports us into the brutish grim jollity of a Russian church festival. In our mind’s eye we see nothing but common, ravaged faces, hear rough oaths and smell cheap liquor.” This politically incorrect assessment comes from the pen of the dean of nineteenth century music critics, Eduard Hanslick, reviewing the Concerto’s Vienna premiere.
Why did the Concerto premiere in Vienna and not St. Petersburg? It is difficult to believe that this Concerto, probably the most popular in the literature, was declared to contain passages that were “almost impossible to play” by its first dedicatee, the famed violinist and violin teacher Leopold Auer, concertmaster of the Imperial Orchestra in St. Petersburg. Completed in 1878, it had to wait for three years for its premiere in Vienna where Hanslick was not alone in his opinion.
What Hanslick and the other critics disliked most is what makes the Concerto so appealing today: its athletic energy, unabashed romanticism and rousing Slavic finale. Without diminishing our own enjoyment of the Concerto, attempting to hear it with the ears of its first audience is a fascinating exercise in cultural relativity. First of all, consider the sheer difficulty of the piece. What defeated Russia’s leading violin virtuoso is the stuff teenage prodigies cut their teeth on at Juilliard and Curtis, practicing the killer bits ad nauseam until they get it right or find some other career.
Then there’s the fact that there was no love lost between the two great nineteenth-century imperial behemoths, Russia and Austria-Hungary, who continued to slug it out until the end of World War I. That Tchaikovsky disliked Johannes Brahms, Hanslick’s favorite composer, probably also added fuel to the fire. At the time of the Concerto’s inception, Tchaikovsky was just emerging from under the black cloud of his disastrous marriage. The vibrant energy of the Concerto, however, seems to have been inspired by the visit of Josif Kotek, a young violinist, pupil and protégé who managed to raise the composer’s spirits and helped him with the Concerto, giving advice on technical matters.
It opens with a brief, gentle introduction with motivic germ of the main theme. & After some virtuosic fireworks, the emerging second theme is surprisingly similar in mood to the first. The development, full of technical acrobatics, leads into the very difficult cadenza that the composer wrote himself.
The slow movement was Tchaikovsky's second try; he discarded his first attempt, eventually publishing it separately as a violin and piano piece, Op.42, no.3. It opens with a gentle melancholy song on the woodwinds that pervades the movement. The violin enters with an equally wistful counter-melody that renders the seamless merge into the raucous Final such a surprise.
It is the unabashed use of Russian peasant dance rhythms in the third movement that so upset Vienna's critics but which was even at the time becoming a signature of much Russian orchestral music. Another peculiar bit that must have raised a few Viennese eyebrows is the spectacular cadenza that follows immediately on the fiery orchestral introduction & and leads right into the main theme. This quick-footed dance demands of the soloist enormous agility and rhythmic control. After a second dance that ramps up on speed like a typical Cossack trepak, there follows another slower lyrical section introduced by solo oboe and taken up by clarinet, bassoon and finally the violin. The Concerto concludes, of course, with flash and flamboyance.
At the time of the Concerto's inception, Tchaikovsky was just emerging from under the black cloud of a disastrous marriage to an emotionally unstable woman who threatened suicide if he refused to marry her. It was also undertaken to silence rumors about his homosexuality. The vibrant energy of the Concerto, however, seems to have been inspired by the visit of a young violinist pupil and protégé who managed to raise the composer's spirits and helped him with the Concerto, giving advice on technical matters.
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| | |  | | | | Sergey Rachmaninov | | | 1873-1943 | | |
Sergey Rachmaninov
Symphonic Dances, Op. 45
In 1901, after the great success of his Piano Concerto No. 2, Sergey Rachmaninov launched a triple career, as a pianist, conductor and composer. But in the following years, as his self-confidence grew and his economic situation improved, he cut back on his commitments to performing and conducting in order to concentrate increasingly on composing. This balancing act continued until it was cut short in 1917 by the Russian Revolution.
A conservative and traditionalist in politics as in art, Rachmaninov viewed the Revolution with horror. He left the country with his family in 1917, never to return, eventually settling in the United States. As his property in Russia was confiscated and his sources of income dried up, he realized that in order to provide for his family he had to become a full-time pianist, since it was as in this capacity that he was best known in the West. These economic constraints consumed him, leaving him little time to compose. “For 17 year, since I lost my country, I have felt unable to compose. When I was on my farm in Russia during the summers, I had joy in my work. Certainly, I still write music – but it does not mean the same to me now,” he said during a 1933 interview. After 1917, his only major works were his Piano Concerto No. 4 (1926), Variations on a Theme of Corelli (1931), Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini (1934), Symphony No. 3 (1938) and the Symphonic Dances.
Composed in 1940 and dedicated to Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Symphonic Dances are Rachmaninov’s last work and often considered his best orchestral composition. Surprised by its favorable reception, Rachmaninov commented: “I don’t know how it happened. It must have been my last spark.”
The work is something of a retrospective nostalgic piece that recalls pre-Bolshevik Russia, with its romantic sentimentality and the Russian Orthodox Church. Two of the three movements contain references to previous works: The principal theme from the First Symphony appears in the coda of the first movement and a modified version of the syncopated chant “Blessed be the Lord” from the Vespers in the last.
The first dance, marked Non allegro, is written in ABA form, the B section providing a sharp and often un-dance-like, contrast. Rachmaninov demonstrates a particular interest in the texture of individual instruments; in the opening, he introduces the principal motive gradually via several solos for English horn, clarinet, bassoon and bass clarinet over a light violin ostinato, each of which gives a different character to the theme. The dance proper has a primeval quality with its pounding ostinato and large percussion section, including piano. The middle section features the oboe and the alto saxophone – Rachmaninov’s only scoring for this instrument. It begins with an introduction of birdcalls for violin, oboe and clarinet, followed by another of the composer’s broad romantic themes on the saxophone, accompanied by the birdcalls on the oboe. The transition back to the first dance theme is a long, gradual build-up of dynamics, speed and instrumental forces. A muted coda – the quote from the First Symphony – with glockenspiel finishes the movement.
The second movement, Andante con moto (Tempo di Valse), introduced by a fanfare on muted trumpets, followed by a mini-cadenza for solo violin that quotes the main theme of the first dance. The second dance is a dreamy serenade, recalling the waltzes of Glazunov and Tchaikovsky but with more of the whirling chromaticism of Ravel’s La valse. Also in ABA form, the second section begins with more wind solos and duets. Much of the movement is lightly orchestrated with solos passed off from one instrument, or section, to another in mid-phrase. It never settles on a key, creating a more uneasy – even, at times, menacing – than festive quality to the dance. As the waltz approaches the end, the tempo becomes increasingly erratic in tempo, ending with a frantic coda.
Following a slow introduction, the dark final movement ensues with the syncopated rhythm of the Vespers theme combined with dance-like allusions to the Dies irae plainchant melody – Rachmaninov’s signature theme from the Roman Catholic Mass for the Dead. In fact, throughout this dance, Rachmaninov plays a clever game with the listener, never quoting exactly either the Vespers theme or the chant melody, but rather, insinuating ever more obvious hints of them into the fabric of the dance.
Like the first dance, this one has a contrasting middle section in which the tempo slows considerably; only instead of featuring the winds, this one focuses on the strings, especially the cellos and violas. After the initial tempo has resumed, the solo trumpet begins hinting more broadly at the Dies irae by extracting it from the Vespers dance rhythm and returning it to the non-metrical rhythm of the original chant. Finally, near the end, Rachmaninov states it openly as part of the climax to the movement with the full battery of percussion instruments accompanying it. Now the character and meaning of the entire movement is revealed as a dance of death.
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| | | | Copyright © Elizabeth and Joseph Kahn 2010 |
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