You are currently browsing the tag archive for the ‘Friday Classical Music Interlude’ tag.
Third movement
The third movement is in a traditional ternary form (ABA). It is composed of the Allegretto and contrasting “trio” section, followed by a reprise of the Allegretto material and coda. A notable aspect of this movement is Brahms’s careful attention to symmetry.
The form could be described as: A B A’ B’ C D C’ D’ A’’–Trio–A’’’ B ’’ A’’’’ Coda
[edit] Allegretto
The A theme as stated by the clarinet.
The Allegretto is in the key of A-flat major and begins with a calm, stepwise melody in the clarinet. The four bar figure is extended to an irregular five bars through a small bridge between the phrases by the strings. The clarinet rounds off the “A” theme in the Allegretto with an inversion of the first five bars heard.
The B theme as stated by the flutes
The B theme enters in m. 11 and features a descending dotted-eighth pattern in the flute, clarinet, and bassoon with the strings echoing the rhythm in rising and falling figures. After eight measures, A’ appears with the violins iterating the first theme and a longer, chromatic bridge section that extends the phrase structure to seven bars. B’ is presented with an extension into C.
The C and D themes differ from the first two in that they are shorter and more angular rhythmically. The A and B themes feature an almost constant eighth note pizzicato in the strings, whereas C and D are more complex with an interlocking sixteenth note pattern accompanying the winds. Movement from the major mode to F minor also marks these sections as apart from preceding material. This obvious contrast in character and mood can lend one to think of the C and D sections as a sort of “trio” within the first Allegretto section in the larger ternary form displayed by the movement as a whole.[1] The symmetry within one section reflects the symmetry of the whole.
A’’ closes off the first major section with the clarinet stating the first theme, much as it did in the beginning, finishing with a transition to the trio.
Trio
The trio theme.
The Trio offers a change of key, as well as a change of time. The key moves to B major, an enharmonic minor third away from A-flat. This key movement balances with the C and D sections in F minor, also a minor third away from the home key but in the opposite direction. The time signature changes from a stately 2/4 to a more pastoral and dance-like 6/8. The flute, oboe, and bassoon introduce a joyful melody in stepwise motion as in the A theme. The strings add a downward three-note arpeggio. These two motives make up the bulk of the trio material. Restatement and development of those themes ensue until the brass and winds join together for a final repeat of the melody. The second ending brings the orchestra back into 2/4 time and to A’’’.
Return of the Allegretto
A major difference between A’’’ and the earlier iterations of A is the lingering effect of the trio upon the movement. The monotone call from the opening of the trio melody appears over the clarinet melody in the flute, oboe, and bassoon. The rhythmic effect of triplets also invades the pure eighth note world of the A theme, producing polyrhythms. Instead of the inversion of the theme we expect in the second phrase of A, the strings take over and offer an entirely different melody, but with essentially the same contour as the inversion. B’’ occupies a significantly larger space of the reprise than it does in the previous Allegretto. It leads through an extended transition to the last, quiet statement of A in unison by the strings. Strings of dotted eighth notes end the movement proper with ideas from the B theme.
Coda
The entry to the coda is marked “poco a poco più tranquillo” and the movement ends with the gentle throbbing of triplets quoted from the trio section. The final few bars end somewhat abruptly with the downward arpeggio of the strings in the trio finishing on the downbeat of a new bar.
We had a slight break in routine as Eric Whitacre and his virtual choir took me by complete surprise. I’m sure Brahms would forgive me for inserting a choral work of that magnitude into the play of his first symphony. Catch the first movement here, if you are feeling out of sorts.
Many thanks to JSTOR for more information on the Symphony cited below.
Brahms’s Orchestral Music
J. A. Fuller-Maitland
The Musical Times
Vol. 74, No. 1083 (May, 1933), pp. 401-406
Vol. 74, No. 1083 (May, 1933), pp. 401-406
Published by: Musical Times Publications Ltd.
Article Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/917980
[…] When the first Symphony, Op. 68, in C minor, appeared in 1877, it provided the composer’s detractors with a serviceable new weapon, in the curious likeness between the big tune of the Finale and the ‘Hymn to Joy’ of the ninth Symphony. (As Brahms said, ‘Das sieht jeder Narr! ‘) It is true that in the first movement of the Symphony the old accusation is not wholly unjustified; but the opposing scales of the introductory poco sostenuto need a considerable amount of orchestral material to bring them out. Among the great interpreters of the Symphony there seems to have been some difference of tradition as to a certain slackening of the time in this first movement; it is not definitely prescribed in the score, and it seems quite possible that at different times of his life Brahms may have approved of the different readings, or at all events that he did not actively disapprove of any. Unfortunately the exact moment at which Joachim began the rallentando in the exciting first English performance of the work could not be registered, even if the score had been published as early. But whereas Nikisch began his three bars before letter M, Richter started his at the fourth bar after the same letter, and Steinbach did not make a very emphatic slackening until fifteen bars before letter 0, where an unnoted a tempo was made by all; and all drew back in the eight bars before the poco sostenuto that finished the movement. It is in the Andante sostenuto that one of the great moments of the Sym- phony is vouchsafed to us. At the seventeenth bar the oboe, supported by the rest of the wood-wind, has a theme that comes nearer than anything else in music to the point where words will no longer be needed for the trans- mission of thought.
Just when one expects it to be finished by some cadential figure it stops as if at the bidding of a little phrase of warning, which has already appeared in the third bar of the movement. Even when the oboe’s eloquent strain re-appears with horn an octave below it, and a solo violin an octave above, the interruption again takes place, as though the complete utterance of the whole would have transgressed some spiritual law, and let humanity into some divine secret. It is only in comparison with the deep impor- tance of the other movements that the section marked poco allegretto seems to fall short of being as great a movement as the others; the adagio that starts the introduction to the last movement opens with some ominous bars in the violin part of which some have detected a prophecy of the great tune that is soon to bring us its benediction. At the sixth bar begins a figure of quavers, pizzicato, which are soon hurried by a stringendo poco a poco to an a tempo, and the process is gone through twice in immediate succession. A rather tire- some habit was started, probably by Nikisch, under whom it was most evident, of taking the pizzicato quavers almost at the speed of the preceding crotchets, no doubt for the excellent purpose of giving space for the stringendo, but in the meantime throwing the movement out of balance.
Soon we come to the emotional climax of the Symphony, the delivery by the horns of the phrase that could not fail to suggest to every one in the Cam- bridge audience the familiar chimes, the ‘Cambridge Quarters’; the coincidence was so striking that the place of the phrase in the design of the Symphony was overlooked in the pleasure of recognizing the chimes whenever the Symphony was heard. After a short hymn-like phrase on bassoons and trombones, we are plunged into the rapture of the Allegro with its famous unmistakable resemblance to the Beethoven tune. As I have said else- where: ‘ In the two themes there is little, if any, resemblance in the melodic curve or in the sequence of notes; both are strongly and exclusively diatonic in movement and in har- mony, and the younger theme, equally with the older, belongs to the most precious things in the treasury of music.’ The exciting coda is for a moment interrupted by the hymn-like strain just before the close.
Just the first movement in today’s classical music interlude and unfortunately Smalin has not encoded it into his visual performance program. Bells and whistles aside, the majesty of Brahms work shines through and he takes you into his musical fortress demanding only your attention for his stately vision to work its magic.
Brahms began composing his first symphony in 1854, but much of his work underwent radical changes.[2] The long gestation of the symphony may be attributed to two factors. First, Brahms’ self-critical fastidiousness led him to destroy many of his early works. Second, there was an expectation from Brahms’ friends and the public that he would continue “Beethoven’s inheritance” and produce a symphony of commensurate dignity and intellectual scope—an expectation that Brahms felt he could not fulfill easily in view of the monumental reputation of Beethoven.
The value and importance of Brahms’ achievements were recognized by Vienna‘s most powerful critic, the staunch conservative Eduard Hanslick.[2] The conductor Hans von Bülow was moved in 1877 to call the symphony “Beethoven’s Tenth“, due to perceived similarities between the work and various compositions of Beethoven.[3] It is often remarked that there is a strong resemblance between the main theme of the finale of Brahms’ First Symphony and the main theme of the finale of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. Also, Brahms uses the rhythm of the “fate” motto from the opening of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. This rather annoyed Brahms; he felt that this amounted to accusations of plagiarism, whereas he saw his use of Beethoven’s idiom in this symphony as an act of conscious homage. Brahms himself said, when comment was made on the similarity with Beethoven, “any ass can see that.”[4] Nevertheless, this work is still often referred to as “Beethoven’s Tenth”.[5] However, Brahms’ horn theme, with the “fate” rhythm, was noted in a letter to Clara Schumann (dated 1868), overheard in an alphorn‘s playing.[6]
Beethoven’s 9th, the fourth movement is not out yet, so we’ll kick it back a bit to the late baroque era, please enjoy and learn about Domenico Scarlatti.
Giuseppe Domenico Scarlatti (Naples, 26 October 1685 – Madrid, 23 July 1757) was an Italian composer who spent much of his life in the service of the Portuguese and Spanish royal families. He is classified as a Baroque composer chronologically, although his music was influential in the development of the Classical style. Like his renowned father Alessandro Scarlatti he composed in a variety of musical forms although today he is known almost exclusively for his 555 keyboard sonatas.
Only a small fraction of Scarlatti’s compositions were published during his lifetime; Scarlatti himself seems to have overseen the publication in 1738 of the most famous collection, his 30 Essercizi (“Exercises”). These were rapturously received throughout Europe, and were championed by the foremost English writer on music of the eighteenth century, Dr. Charles Burney.
The many sonatas which were unpublished during Scarlatti’s lifetime have appeared in print irregularly in the two and a half centuries since. Scarlatti has, however, attracted notable admirers, including Frédéric Chopin, Johannes Brahms, Béla Bartók, Dmitri Shostakovich, Heinrich Schenker, Vladimir Horowitz, Emil Gilels, Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli, and Marc-André Hamelin.
Frédéric Chopin, as a piano teacher, notably wrote:
“Those of my dear colleagues who teach the piano are unhappy that I make my own pupils work on Scarlatti. But I am surprised that they are so blinkered. His music contains finger-exercises aplenty and more than a touch of the most elevated spirituality. Sometimes he is even a match for Mozart. If I were not afraid of incurring the disapprobation of numerous fools, I would play Scarlatti at my concerts. I maintain that the day will come when Scarlatti’s music will often be played at concerts and that audiences will appreciate and enjoy it”.[1]
Scarlatti’s 555 keyboard sonatas are single movements, mostly in binary form, and mostly written for the harpsichord or the earliest pianofortes. (There are four for organ, and a few for small instrumental group). Some of them display harmonic audacity in their use of discords, and also unconventional modulations to remote keys.
Other distinctive attributes of Scarlatti’s style are the following:
- The influence of Iberian (Portuguese and Spanish) folk music. An example is Scarlatti’s use of the Phrygian mode and other tonal inflections more or less alien to European art music. Many of Scarlatti’s figurations and dissonances are suggestive of the guitar.
- A formal device in which each half of a sonata leads to a pivotal point, which the Scarlatti scholar Ralph Kirkpatrick termed “the crux”, and which is sometimes underlined by a pause or fermata. Before the crux, Scarlatti sonatas often contain their main thematic variety, and after the crux the music makes more use of repetitive figurations as it modulates away from the home key (in the first half) or back to the home key (in the second half).
The harpsichordist Ralph Kirkpatrick produced an edition of the sonatas in 1953, and the numbering from this edition is now nearly always used – the Kk. or K. number. Previously, the numbering commonly used was from the 1906 edition compiled by the Neapolitan pianist Alessandro Longo (L. numbers). Kirkpatrick’s numbering is chronological, while Longo’s ordering is a result of his grouping the sonatas into “suites”. In 1967 the Italian musicologist Giorgio Pestelli published a revised catalogue (using P. numbers), which corrected what he considered to be some anachronisms. See [1] for a list converting Longo, Kirkpatrick and Pestelli numbers of Scarlatti’s sonatas.
Aside from his many sonatas he composed a quantity of operas and cantatas, symphonias, and liturgical pieces. Well known works include the Stabat Mater of 1715 and the Salve Regina of 1757 that is thought to be his last composition.
Seems like we have a Friday mini-theme going as last week was the second movement, so why stop now? :)
Adagio molto e cantabile – Andante Moderato – Tempo Primo – Andante Moderato – Adagio – Lo Stesso Tempo. Duration approx. 16 mins.
The lyrical slow movement, in B flat major, is in a loose variation form, with each pair of variations progressively elaborating the rhythm and melody. The first variation, like the theme, is in 4/4 time, the second in 12/8. The variations are separated by passages in 3/4, the first in D major, the second in G major. The final variation is twice interrupted by episodes in which loud fanfares for the full orchestra are answered by double-stopped octaves played by the first violins alone. A prominent horn solo is assigned to the fourth player. Trombones are tacet for the movement.
Music has history unto itself, listen to the second movement and read(from wikipedia) about how it came into being and its form.
The Philharmonic Society of London originally commissioned the symphony in 1817. Beethoven started the work in 1818 and finished early in 1824. However, both the words and notes of the symphony have sources dating from earlier in Beethoven’s career.
Second movement
Scherzo: Molto vivace – Presto. Duration approx. 10 mins.
The second movement, a scherzo, is also in D minor, with the opening theme bearing a passing resemblance to the opening theme of the first movement, a pattern also found in the Hammerklavier piano sonata, written a few years earlier. It uses propulsive rhythms and a timpani solo. At times during the piece Beethoven directs that the beat should be one downbeat every three bars, perhaps because of the very fast pace of the majority of the movement which is written in triple time, with the direction ritmo di tre battute (“rhythm of three bars”), and one beat every four bars with the direction ritmo di quattro battute (“rhythm of four bars”).
Beethoven had been criticised before for failing to adhere to standard form for his compositions. He used this movement to answer his critics. Normally, scherzi are written in triple time. Beethoven wrote this piece in triple time, but it is punctuated in a way that, when coupled with the speed of the metre, makes it sound as though it is in quadruple time.
While adhering to the standard ternary design of a dance movement (scherzo-trio-scherzo, or minuet-trio-minuet), the scherzo section has an elaborate internal structure: it is a complete sonata form. Within this sonata form, the first group of the exposition starts out with a fugue.
The contrasting trio section is in D major and in duple (cut) time. The trio is the first time the trombones play in the work.
Music has history unto itself, listen to the first movement and read(from wikipedia) about how it came into being and its form.
The Philharmonic Society of London originally commissioned the symphony in 1817. Beethoven started the work in 1818 and finished early in 1824. However, both the words and notes of the symphony have sources dating from earlier in Beethoven’s career.
The title of Schiller’s poem “An die Freude” is literally translated as “To Joy”, but is normally called the “Ode to Joy“. It was written in 1785 and first published the following year in the poet’s own literary journal, Thalia. Beethoven had made plans to set this poem to music as far back as 1793, when he was 22 years old.
Beethoven’s sketchbooks show that bits of musical material that ultimately appeared in the symphony were written in 1811, and 1817.[citation needed]
In addition, the symphony also emerged from other pieces by Beethoven that, while completed works in their own right, are also in some sense sketches for the future symphony. The Choral Fantasy Opus. 80 (1808), basically a piano concerto movement, brings in a chorus and vocal soloists near the end to form the climax. As in the Ninth Symphony, the vocal forces sing a theme first played instrumentally, and this theme is highly reminiscent of the corresponding theme in the Ninth Symphony (for a detailed comparison, see Choral Fantasy). Going further back, an earlier version of the Choral Fantasy theme is found in the song “Gegenliebe” (“Returned Love”), for piano and high voice, which dates from before 1795.[4]
The theme for the scherzo can be traced back to a fugue written in 1815.
The introduction for the vocal part of the symphony caused many difficulties for Beethoven. Beethoven’s friend Anton Schindler, later said: “When he started working on the fourth movement the struggle began as never before. The aim was to find an appropriate way of introducing Schiller’s ode. One day he [Beethoven] entered the room and shouted ‘I got it, I just got it!’ Then he showed me a sketchbook with the words ‘let us sing the ode of the immortal Schiller'”.[citation needed] However, Beethoven did not retain this version, and kept rewriting until he had found its final form, with the words “O Freunde, nicht diese Töne” (“O friends, not these sounds”).
Premiere
Beethoven was eager to have his work played in Berlin as soon as possible after finishing it, since he thought that musical taste in Vienna was dominated by Italian composers such as Rossini. When his friends and financiers heard this, they urged him to premiere the symphony in Vienna.
The Ninth Symphony was premiered on May 7, 1824 in the Kärntnertortheater in Vienna, along with the Consecration of the House Overture and the first three parts of the Missa Solemnis. This was the composer’s first on-stage appearance in twelve years; the hall was packed. The soprano and alto parts were interpreted by two famous young singers: Henriette Sontag and Caroline Unger.
Although the performance was officially directed by Michael Umlauf, the theatre’s Kapellmeister, Beethoven shared the stage with him. However, two years earlier, Umlauf had watched as the composer’s attempt to conduct a dress rehearsal of his opera Fidelio ended in disaster. So this time, he instructed the singers and musicians to ignore the totally deaf Beethoven. At the beginning of every part, Beethoven, who sat by the stage, gave the tempos. He was turning the pages of his score and beating time for an orchestra he could not hear.
There are a number of anecdotes about the premiere of the Ninth. Based on the testimony of the participants, there are suggestions that it was under-rehearsed (there were only two full rehearsals) and rather scrappy in execution. On the other hand, the premiere was a great success. In any case, Beethoven was not to blame, as violinist Josef Böhm recalled: “Beethoven directed the piece himself; that is, he stood before the lectern and gesticulated furiously. At times he rose, at other times he shrank to the ground, he moved as if he wanted to play all the instruments himself and sing for the whole chorus. All the musicians minded his rhythm alone while playing”.
When the audience applauded—testimonies differ over whether at the end of the scherzo or the whole symphony—Beethoven was several measures off and still conducting. Because of that, the contralto Caroline Unger walked over and turned Beethoven around to accept the audience’s cheers and applause. According to one witness, “the public received the musical hero with the utmost respect and sympathy, listened to his wonderful, gigantic creations with the most absorbed attention and broke out in jubilant applause, often during sections, and repeatedly at the end of them.” The whole audience acclaimed him through standing ovations five times; there were handkerchiefs in the air, hats, raised hands, so that Beethoven, who could not hear the applause, could at least see the ovation gestures.
At that time, it was customary that the Imperial couple be greeted with three ovations when they entered the hall. The fact that five ovations were received by a private person who was not even employed by the state, and moreover, was a musician (a class of people who had been perceived as lackeys at court), was in itself considered almost indecent. Police agents present at the concert had to break off this spontaneous explosion of ovations. Beethoven left the concert deeply moved.
Form:
First movement
Allegro ma non troppo, un poco maestoso. Duration approx. 15 mins.
The first movement is in sonata form, and the mood is often stormy. The opening theme, played pianissimo over string tremolos, so much resembles the sound of an orchestra tuning, many commentators have suggested that was Beethoven’s inspiration. But from within that musical limbo emerges a theme of power and clarity which will drive the entire movement. Later, at the outset of the recapitulation section, it returns fortissimo in D major, rather than the opening’s D minor. The introduction also employs the use of the mediant to tonic relationship which further distorts the tonic key until it is finally played by the bassoon in the lowest possible register.
The coda employs the chromatic fourth interval.
bleatmop
Mystro
The Arbourist
Dead Wild Roses 
Your opinions…