About the Music
April 15, 2012
Anton Bruckner
Three Pieces for Orchestra, WAB 97
Anton Bruckner was born in Ansfelden,
Austria in 1824 and died in Vienna in 1896. He
composed this work in 1862 as a student of Otto
Kitzler. He later composed a March in D minor; this is
often added to the three previous movements to make
a set of four. The score calls for 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2
clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, trombone,
timpani, and strings.
Anton Bruckner was perhaps the latest
bloomer of all: though his talent for music
developed when he was very young, he did not
begin the compositions we remember him for
until he was well into middle age. The son and
grandson of teachers, he was expected to carry
on with the family business, and did so through
many years of long hours, arduous work, and
miserable pay.
Through it all he continued practicing
the organ, piano, and violin while finding the
time to compose numerous choral works. In his
thirties he began taking counterpoint lessons
from Simon Sechter (professor of composition
at the Vienna Conservatory), whose course was
demanding and orthodox. Finally he studied
with the conductor at the Linz Municipal
Theater, Otto Kitzler. Kitzler introduced Bruckner
to the radical music of Richard Wagner and, just
as important, allowed his 38 year-old student to
compose freely. It was under Kitzler’s tutelage
that Bruckner composed his Three Pieces for
Orchestra.
Those looking for premonitions of
the colossal forms and spiritual journeys of
the Bruckner symphonies will not find them
here. The work is lightly scored—Bruckner
uses a typical Mozartean orchestra plus a
single trombone—and light in spirit. The
first piece, Moderato, has a serene tune led
by the French horn, punctuated by sudden,
slightly incongruous swells. The second is an
Andante with a yearning oboe theme and more
adventuresome harmonies. The third, Andante
con moto, sounds for all the world like a bit of
Mendelssohn gone astray, with timpani bursts
just shy of being overcooked. A prelude, then, for
the symphonies to come.
Osvaldo Golijov
Sidereus
Osvaldo Golijov was born in 1960 in La
Plata, Argentina. He composed this work in 2010 on
a commission from a consortium of 35 orchestras
including the Portland Symphony Orchestra; it was
first performed by the Memphis Symphony Orchestra
under the direction of Mei-Ann Chen in 2010. The
score calls for 2 flutes, 2 oboes, English horn, 3
clarinets, bass clarinet, 2 bassoons, contrabassoon, 2
horns, 2 trumpets, 2 trombones, tuba, timpani, and
strings.
Osvaldo Golijov was born to Jewish
parents who had emigrated from Russia to
Argentina. After studying piano and composition
in La Plata he moved to Israel in 1983, where he
continued his studies with Mark Kopytman at
the Rubin Academy in Jerusalem. Golijov moved
to the United States in 1986, where he earned
his Ph.D. as a student of George Crumb at the
University of Pennsylvania; he also studied with
Lukas Foss and Oliver Knussen as a fellow at
Tanglewood. Since that time he has brought his
eclectic background to his music, which at any
moment may sound like classical music, Jewish
liturgical and klezmer music, or even the new
tango of Astor Piazolla.
Sidereus was commissioned by a
consortium of 35 American orchestras to
honor Henry Fogel upon his retirement as
President and CEO of the League of American
Orchestras. Fogel had a long and distinguished
career in American music, including 18 years
as President and CEO of the Chicago Symphony
Orchestra and previous stints with the New
York Philharmonic and the National Symphony
Orchestra. The Board of Directors of the League
of American Orchestras hoped to partially repay
the devotion and generosity shown by Fogel by
commissioning this work in his honor.
The word “sidereus” comes from the title
of a book Galileo published in 1610, Sidereus
Nuncius (Starry Messenger). It was here that
Galileo published the observations he made
through a telescope, an instrument he had
greatly improved, revealing the composition
of the heavens and containing the notion that
the sun was at the center of our solar system.
Golijov writes: “The observations of Galileo
included new discoveries on the surface of the
moon. With these discoveries, the moon was no
longer the province of poets exclusively; it had
also become an object of inquiry. It’s a duality:
the moon is still good for love and lovers and
poets, but a scientific observation can lead us to
entirely new realizations.
“In Sidereus the melodies and harmonies
are simple, so they can reveal more upon
closer examination. For the ‘moon’ theme I
used a melody with a beautiful, open nature,
a magnified scale fragment that my good
friend and longtime collaborator Michael Ward
Bergeman came up with some years ago when
we were both trying to develop ideas for a
musical depiction of the sky in Patagonia. I then
looked at that theme as if through the telescope
and under the microscope, so that the textures,
the patterns from which the melody emerges
and into which it dissolves, point to a more
molecular, atomic reality—like Galileo with his
telescope. There is a dark theme that opens the
piece and reappears in the middle. It’s sort of
an ominous question mark that tears the fabric
of the work, which is essentially spacious and
breathes with a strange mixture of melancholy
and optimism.”
Ralph Vaughan Williams
Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis
Ralph Vaughan Williams was born in Down
Ampney, Gloucestershire, England in 1872 and died
in London in 1958. He composed this work in 1910
and revised the score in 1913 and 1919. Vaughan
Williams led the first performance at the Gloucester
Festival in 1910. The score calls for solo string
quartet, a small string orchestra of nine players
(double quartet plus bass) and a conventional string
orchestra.
As a young composer Vaughan Williams
felt himself to be without a clear compositional
direction, and in this respect he mirrored the
state of British music generally. For some two
hundred years after the death of Purcell, the
British were seemingly overwhelmed by the
influx of German and Viennese music, starting
with their adopted son Handel and continuing
through Mendelssohn and those that followed.
Later in life Vaughan Williams would become
one of the originators and custodians of the new
British musical idiom.
When Vaughan Williams was offered
the task of editing a new edition of the English
Hymnal, he accepted reluctantly. He feared
the project would prevent him from pursuing
original compositions, but as he later said, “I
know now that two years of close association
with some of the best (as well as some of the
worst) tunes in the world was a better musical
education than any amount of sonatas and
fugues.” It was during this project that Vaughan
Williams encountered nine melodies which
Thomas Tallis had contributed to the 1567
English Psalter.
Tallis (c. 1505-1585) was one of the most
distinguished composers of the Tudor period. His
tenure at the English court spanned the reigns
of several monarchs, and likewise spanned
changes of the state religion from Protestant
to Catholic and back to Protestant again; no
doubt such religious flexibility improved one’s
employment prospects at court!
The Fantasia is based upon the third of
the Tallis tunes, a melody in the Phrygian church
mode that sets the words “Why furmeth in sight:
the Gentiles spite, in fury raging stout.” Vaughan
Williams calls for an orchestra of strings divided
into three groups: a quartet of soloists, a massed
string orchestra, and a smaller orchestra of nine
players. In true Renaissance tradition the groups
are to be separated in the performance space if
possible.
As the title implies, the Fantasia is a
free-form work in which the theme undergoes
metamorphosis in a continuous flow, as
distinguished from a strict theme and variations.
The ancient melody (heard first in the low
strings) is used as a whole and in fragments and
is set off by Vaughan Williams’ own innovative
melodic contributions. Harmonies range from
those dating from the time of the original
theme to those of the most modern sort. As a
result, you’re never quite sure whether you are
listening to old music or new, or to some alloy
of the two. In this curious mixture Vaughan
Williams can be heard developing his own
musical voice while producing a work that is in
the truest sense of the word, “timeless.”
Ludwig van Beethoven
Symphony No. 4 in B-flat Major, Op. 60
Ludwig van Beethoven was born in Bonn in
1770 and died in Vienna in 1827. He composed his
Fourth Symphony in 1806 and it was first performed
at a private concert in Vienna the following year. The
score calls for flute, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2
horns, 2 trumpets, timpani, and strings.
Because it stands between two
symphonic powerhouses—the Eroica and the
Fifth—Beethoven’s Fourth Symphony is often
overlooked. (The same can be said of the Eighth.)
The “revolutionary” symphonies take the
limelight, and perhaps they should. But there’s
more to the Fourth than meets the eye: it is a
dazzling musical accomplishment.
Beethoven had already been working
on his Fifth for some time when he abruptly
dropped what he was doing and composed the
Fourth. The Fifth was going to be a titanic work,
and Beethoven surely knew it. When he was
commissioned to write a symphony for a patron
who admired his earlier symphonies, Beethoven
decided not to rush the Fifth to completion but
to compose a new work that didn’t wear its
radicalism on its sleeve.
Both the Eroica and the Fifth dispense
with the traditional slow introduction to the
first movement, but Beethoven restores the
practice in the Fourth. Here time seems to
stand still, but that sense of stasis belies the
wild harmonic underpinnings that make the
exuberant allegro that follows a complete
surprise. Beethoven continues his harmonic
sleight-of-hand throughout the movement,
along with off-kilter syncopations, astonishing
episodes and instrumental combinations, places
where the music seems to get stuck—note the
interplay between the violins and timpani in
the development—all conspiring to make this a
movement of limitless surprise.
The Adagio is a long-lined arioso, but with
a twist: the “ticking” accompaniment seems
to have a life of its own, and every so often it
threatens to take over and displace the songful
melody. This willful accompaniment is never far
away, and the two contrasting ideas make the
movement a suspenseful waiting game.
The Scherzo is one of Beethoven’s finest,
full of cross-rhythms that rarely let it settle into
a triple-meter groove until the sweet sounding
trio. This is about as far from a minuet as one
can get: we trade elegance for galumphing good
humor.
The Finale is a Haydn-esque perpetual
motion machine, utterly merry and slyly
rambunctious. This movement is full of musical
“in-jokes,” including one at the end artfully
cribbed from Haydn’s Symphony No. 102. Artful
though it is, the craftsmanship on display in this
movement is easy to overlook because every
note seems inspired.
That’s what Berlioz meant when
he said that in Beethoven’s Fourth “the art
of workmanship disappears completely.”
Beethoven’s irrepressibly sunny Fourth has no
story-line, no failed heroes and no struggles
with Fate. The music’s the thing, and never has it
been more fun.
—Mark Rohr is the bass trombonist for the PSO.
Questions or comments? [email protected]
Visit Online Insights at PortlandSymphony.org
to learn more about this concert.