THE
R ITE O F
SPRING
WINE PARTNER
Friday
24 March 7.30pm
Federation Concert Hall
Hobart
LIGETI
Lontano
Duration 11 mins
RICHARD STRAUSS
Also sprach Zarathustra
Introduction: Sunrise –
Of the Back-worlds-men –
Of the Great Longing –
Of Joys and Passions –
The Funeral Song –
Of Science –
The Convalescent –
The Dance Song –
Night Wanderer’s Song
INTERVAL
Duration 20 mins
STRAVINSKY
Le sacre du printemps
Part 1 L’Adoration de la terre
(Adoration of the Earth)
Part 2 Le Sacrifice
MASTER 2
Marko Letonja conductor
Musicians from the Australian National
Academy of Music (ANAM)
Duration 35 mins
This concert will end at approximately
9.30pm.
Duration 33 mins
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György Ligeti (1923-2006)
Lontano
Marko Letonja
Marko Letonja is Chief Conductor
and Artistic Director of the Tasmanian
Symphony Orchestra and Music Director
of the Orchestre Philharmonique de
Strasbourg. Born in Slovenia, he studied at
the Academy of Music in Ljubljana and the
Vienna Academy of Music. He was Music
Director of the Slovenian Philharmonic
Orchestra from 1991 to 2003 and Music
Director and Chief Conductor of both the
Symphony Orchestra and the Opera in
Basel from 2003 to 2006. He was Principal
Guest Conductor of Orchestra Victoria in
2008 and made his debut with the TSO
the following year. He took up the post
of Chief Conductor and Artistic Director
of the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra
at the start of 2012. He has worked with
many orchestras in Europe including the
Munich Philharmonic, Vienna Symphony,
Berlin Radio Orchestra, Mozarteum
Orchestra and the Orchestra Filarmonica
della Scala, Milan. He has also worked in
many renowned opera houses such as the
Vienna State Opera, Berlin State Opera,
La Scala Milan, Semper Oper Dresden,
and the Grand Théâtre de Genève.
Additionally, he has conducted at the Arena
di Verona. Future engagements include
the Mozarteum Orchestra Salzburg, Berlin
Radio Orchestra, Bavarian State Opera
in Munich and Wagner’s Der Ring des
Nibelungen for the Royal Swedish Opera
with Nina Stemme as Brünnhilde.
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The Australian National
Academy of Music (ANAM)
The Australian National Academy of Music
(ANAM) is dedicated to the artistic and
professional development of the most
exceptional young classical musicians from
Australia and New Zealand. It is a place in
which young musicians fulfill their potential
as music leaders, distinguished by their
skill, imagination and courage, and by their
determined contribution to a vibrant music
culture. Renowned for its innovation and
energy, ANAM is committed to pushing the
boundaries of how music is presented and
performed. During the year, the academy
invites an impressive list of national and
international guest artists to work with their
musicians and faculty to present over 180
events including concerts, masterclasses
and discussions. In 2017, ANAM presents
concerts featuring the French Baroque,
the iconoclastic genre busting of Frank
Zappa and the extraordinary sound world
created by Jonny Greenwood and Krzysztof
Penderecki. Guest artists include Anthony
Marwood, Brenda Rae, Stefan Dohr (Solo
Horn from the Berlin Philharmonic) Richard
Tognetti, Greta Bradman, Ensemble
Modern and Steve Schick, Jan Williams and
William Winant who will lead a percussion
festival celebrating the centenary of
American icon Lou Harrison. ANAM
encourages audiences to experience the
unrelenting energy of ANAM and share
their musicians’ journey. ANAM and the
Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra have
collaborated on a range of projects
since 2011. Image credit Pia Johnson
Lontano is an excellent example of
the musical style that brought Ligeti
international recognition. It was composed
in 1967 and is one of a number of works
written in the period after his flight from
revolution and the artistically prescriptive
atmosphere of Hungary under Communist
rule. Before his move to the West, approval
for performances or publishing was only
given for his folk arrangements and other
tonal works. Artistic experiments were
considered socially threatening, and access
to the music of foreign contemporaries was
heavily restricted. The death of Stalin only
brought a brief respite and when the Soviet
Union took military control of Hungary
in 1956, Ligeti joined the hundreds who
escaped over the border.
Ligeti found himself in Cologne, the hub
of the avant-garde, surrounded by the
likes of Stockhausen, Boulez, Berio and
Maderna at a time when musical innovation
was at its peak and had a fervent public
following. Free to indulge his hitherto
frowned-on fascination with the essential
building blocks of music, Ligeti began
the assimilation of a new compositional
language. His sonic investigations
(including a great deal of experimentation
with electronic music) eventually led to the
composition of Apparitions (1958-59) and
the birth of an infectious and idiosyncratic
new style.
By the time Ligeti came to write Lontano,
his new compositional language had
advanced considerably. He had formulated
a number of principles and established
characteristic techniques including the
“micropolyphony” featured in Lontano.
This is a term describing the use of
chords not as discrete sets of notes in
juxtaposition, but as loose collections
or “clouds” of notes that grow, overlap,
combine and transform, one note at a time.
By applying this technique, the composer
is able to avoid the conventions of melody
and pre-established harmonic systems,
leaving the listener free to concentrate on
the interplay between the various colours
and timbres of the orchestra. The resulting
overall structure of the work is continuous,
fluid and monolithic, a character evoked
by the title Lontano (meaning “distant”).
This suggests that the listener is hearing the
music from afar, or witnessing the largescale emanations of an enormous organic
process in which glacial, cloud or wave-like
forms seamlessly transmute.
The significance of micropolyphony in
Ligeti’s music is great. It is the technique
through which he has continually explored
one of his most important compositional
principles, “clocks and clouds” (so named
after a 1972-73 work). While Lontano
predates Clocks and Clouds, the relevant
principle is clearly in evidence here and
in many others of his works including his
choral work Lux Aeterna (1966, excerpted
in the soundtrack of the Stanley Kubrick
film 2001: A Space Odyssey) and Poème
Symphonique (1962, for 100 metronomes!).
The compositional principle “clocks
and clouds” is generally understood as
describing the two ends of a continuum of
musical textures. Through micropolyphony,
the music can move from one extreme
(“clocks”, the discrete sounding of
notes heard individually) to the other
(“clouds”, the indivisible effect of swarms
of single notes). At the start of Lontano,
the pianissimo entrance one by one of
the flutes followed by the clarinets and
bassoons, while homogenous, is actually
micropolyphony working at the “clocks”
end of the spectrum. The texture is
relatively simple and translucent. As the
piece progresses the notes gradually
become more and more numerous until
the ear can no longer distinguish individual
pitches. Soon the listener’s awareness
shifts to the large-scale effect of the everaccumulating cloud of notes.
Damian Barbeler © 1998
This is the first performance of this work by the
Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra.
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Richard Strauss (1864-1949)
Also sprach Zarathustra (Thus Spake
Zarathustra) – Symphonic poem, Op 30
Introduction: Sunrise –
Of the Back-worlds-men –
Of the Great Longing –
Of Joys and Passions –
The Funeral Song –
Of Science –
The Convalescent –
The Dance Song –
Night Wanderer’s Song
In 1891-92 the usually robust Strauss
suffered a period of serious illness,
including bouts of pneumonia, bronchitis
and pleurisy. In the summer of 1892 he took
leave of his duties at the Weimar Opera and
travelled extensively through Italy, Greece
and Egypt, soaking up the sun, but more
importantly enjoying the awesome physical
remains of the ancient pagan civilisations in
those countries. It was at this time that he
began to think about a musical response
to some of the ideas of the German
philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, particularly
those expressed in his poem Also sprach
Zarathustra (Thus spake Zoroaster), though
the work’s composition had to wait until
1896.
Zoroaster (as he was known to the ancient
Greeks) was a Persian prophet living in
the sixth century BC who taught that the
universe, and humankind in particular,
is subject to the eternal struggle of two
gods, represented by light and darkness;
his religion survives among the Parsees
of modern India. Nietzsche’s relationship
to Zoroastrian ideas is fairly loose, and as
Norman Del Mar puts it, he used these
“as a prop on which to clothe his own ideas
on the purpose and destiny of mankind”.
The most famous – indeed, notorious –
of these is the idea of the Übermensch or
Superman. “Man,” in Nietzsche’s words,
“is a thing to be surmounted…what is the
ape to man? A jest or a thing of shame.
So shall man be to the Superman.” While
Nietzsche (and, it must be admitted,
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the younger Strauss) were disdainful of
Christianity’s compassion for weakness, it
is drawing a long bow to make Nietzsche
responsible for the atrocities of Nazism.
Indeed, Nietzsche scholar Joachim Köhler
argues that Also sprach Zarathustra, with
its celebration of the individual will, partly
grew out of the poet’s freeing himself from
the dominating personality of the composer
Richard Wagner. And Wagner’s widow
Cosima, writing to her son-in-law Houston
Stewart Chamberlain (whose racist ideas
definitely did influence Hitler), condemned
Nietzsche’s book for its “Jewishness”.
Strauss’ work is, as he said, “freely after
Fr Nietzsche” which afforded him “much
aesthetic enjoyment” rather than any
profound philosophical conversion. Strauss
takes some of the chapter headings of
the poem as the defining images for each
section of his tone poem. It begins with
the famous invocation to the sun, with low
rumbling accompanying the trumpets’
simple C-G-C theme (which in much of
Strauss represents primeval nature).
The increasing blaze of full chords
establishes C major as one pole of the
work (and as Del Mar notes, the sound of
the organ at the end of the section adds
a liturgical note). Of the Back-worlds-men
depicts humanity in its primitive, or rather
naïve state (in B minor, significantly –
B being the other tonal pole of the
piece). Strauss includes those who profess
Christianity in this category, quoting a
fragment of the plainchant for the Credo
to underline his point, but the movement
still reaches a gorgeous climax for multi
divided strings.
Passions section with a theme that Strauss
described as “A flat (brass: dark blue)”.
Actually the section tends to be in C minor,
linking it to the idea of nature, whereas the
following Funeral Song is in B minor, and
therefore linked to the idea of man.
Of Science is based on a deeply-voiced
fugue that Strauss described as “spinechilling” and Del Mar regards as having
a “strangely mysterious quality” despite
its dour timbre. In The Convalescent,
Nietzsche describes Zoroaster’s spiritual and
physical collapse, after which he emerges
as the Superman. The Dance Song of the
Superman is, like the “Dance of Seven
Veils” in Salome, a Viennese waltz – a
Straussian joke, perhaps. Here poet and
composer part company: Strauss’ Zoroaster
displays none of the triumphalism that
Nietzsche’s does, and the work closes with
a mysterious and tranquil Night Wanderer’s
Song in which the keys of nature and man
still quietly contend.
After the final rehearsal for the premiere,
Strauss, with characteristic modesty, wrote
to his wife: “Zarathustra is glorious…of all
my pieces, the most perfect in form, the
richest in content and the most individual
in character…I’m a fine fellow after all, and
feel just a little pleased with myself.”
Gordon Kerry © 2004
The Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra first
performed this work with conductor Patrick
Thomas in Hobart on 18 and 19 November 1980
and, most recently, with Sebastian Lang-Lessing
in Hobart on 30 September 2011.
Of the Great Longing, which follows,
is a depiction of humanity’s search for
something beyond mere superstition,
but Strauss’ music dramatizes the conflict
between nature (the trumpet theme) and
humanity’s tendency to create dogma with
more hints of plainchant and the unresolved
conflict between the keys of C and B. A new
chromatic motif leads into the Of Joys and
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Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971)
Le sacre du printemps (The Rite of Spring)
Part 1 L’Adoration de la terre (Adoration
of the Earth)
Introduction
Danse des adolescentes (Dance of the
Young Girls)
Jeu du rapt (Ritual of Abduction)
Rondes printanières (Spring Rounds)
Jeux des cités rivales (Games of the Rival
Tribes)
Cortège du sage (Procession of the Sage)
L’Adoration de la terre (Adoration of the
Earth)
Danse de la terre (Dance of the Earth)
Part 2 Le Sacrifice
Introduction
Cercles mystérieux des adolescentes
(Mystic Circles of Young Girls)
Glorification de l’élue (Glorification of the
Chosen Virgin)
Evocation des ancêtres (Evocation of the
Ancestors)
Action rituelle des ancêtres (Ritual of the
Ancestors)
Danse sacrale – L’élue (Sacrificial dance –
The Chosen Virgin)
The first performance of Stravinsky’s
Le sacre du Printemps was one of the
greatest scandals in the history of any of
the arts, not just music. An evening in 1913
remains the defining date of “modern”
music. A new millennium has begun, and
there still hasn’t been anything to top
it. The ballet, whose completely novel
choreography was part of the offence it
gave to traditionalists, has rarely been
re-staged. It is Stravinsky’s music which has
endured as an icon of modernism, and its
power and originality can still be felt, even
now that its lessons have been absorbed by
so much music that followed. Stravinsky’s
assistant Robert Craft called Le sacre du
printemps the prize bull that inseminated
the whole modern movement. Although
Stravinsky later composed two orchestral
works called symphonies, it is his music for
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this ballet which has achieved “symphonic”
status in the world’s concert halls.
Le sacre is composed for a very large
orchestra, including five of each of the wind
instruments, eight horns, and five trumpets.
The Russian impresario Sergei Diaghilev
had very generous financial backing for
the 1913 season of his Ballets Russes in
Paris, and Stravinsky had an orchestral
palette even richer than for his two previous
full-scale ballets for Diaghilev, The Firebird
and Petrushka. Even so, and in spite of the
clear acoustic of the then-new Théâtre des
Champs-Elysées, the playing of the music
was almost drowned out by the noise which
broke out in the auditorium, as people
shouted insults, howled and whistled.
There were even punches thrown, as the
supporters of artistic novelty confronted
well-dressed patrons who were shocked
by what they heard and saw. The dancers
could hardly hear the music, and the
choreographer of Le sacre, Vaslav Nijinsky,
had to shout numbers to them from the
wings. Conductor Pierre Monteux, with
admirable sang-froid, piloted his musicians
through to the end.
The curtain had risen on Nicholas Roerich’s
setting for the tableaux of pagan Russia
which were his scenario (argument, sets
and costumes) for the ballet. He and
Stravinsky were later to dispute who first
had the idea of a primitive, pagan sacrifice
as a subject for a ballet, with Stravinsky’s
vision (in a dream) of a maiden sacrificed
and dancing herself to death given priority.
But Le sacre was a collaborative project,
and Nijinsky’s choreography was, in its
way, as radical as Stravinsky’s music. The
stylised gestures, the spare, restricted
dancing, with heads in profile contrasted
with bodies full-on, elbows hugged into
the waist, the convulsions of the Chosen
Virgin, the renouncing of conventional
dance ensembles and storytelling in favour
of primitive immediacy – these were
Nijinsky’s inventions, and many of the public
thought he was pulling their leg – or that
the dancers were imitating epileptic fits.
Admirers accepted Nijinsky’s choreography
as Spring seen from inside, biological
ballet, with surges, spasms and fissions.
Stravinsky’s music had required Nijinsky to
develop a new way of rehearsing the dancers
by numbers, and his preparations seemed
to one observer like arithmetic classes.
Stravinsky claimed later that the music, which
broke every mould of convention, had to be
written that way, that it transcended him:
“I was the vessel through which
Le sacre passed.” Rhythm was one basis
of Le sacre’s innovation, not surprisingly
since it developed within the bosom of an
adventurous ballet company. Stravinsky
was to say, “There is music wherever there
is rhythm, as there is life wherever there
beats a pulse.” The rhythmic novelties in Le
sacre du printemps include its static ostinati:
repeated figures, which are nevertheless
not regular, but additive in rhythm, so that
the strong beats are irregularly spaced,
and the time-signature for the musicians is
constantly changing, often from bar to bar.
Even the composer was baffled as to how
to write out the final Danse sacrale. These
patterns, thrillingly projected with almost
unprecedented orchestral impact, reach a
state of hypnotic motion, which can only be
broken by the start of the next dance.
This was music which made a quantum leap
into a new sound world. The discordant
effect heard through the growing fracas
in the theatre resulted from Stravinsky’s
harmonic innovations. These are linked
to his rhythmic inventions, since they also
function by accumulation: of notes and
chords, creating polyharmonies which
textbook writers have been busy trying
to codify ever since. The paradox is that
this complexity was really simplicity –
the reduction of harmonic language to
essentials allowed rhythmic subtlety to
claim a dominant place. As a modernist
composer much influenced by Stravinsky,
Pierre Boulez, explains, “Before worrying
about what chord we are hearing, we
are sensitive to the pulse emitted by this
chord.”
It was clever of Diaghilev to capitalise
on fashionable Paris’ fascination with the
Russian and the primitive. Stravinsky later
emphasised the newness and musical
necessity of Le sacre du printemps, and
played down its Russianness. But this work,
the fountainhead of international modernism,
with which Stravinsky left Russia for good,
was Russian in every way. The leading
revisionist among students of Stravinsky’s
works, Richard Taruskin, has proved this
against Stravinsky’s own mythologising.
The bad reception Le sacre received in
Russia, his home, where he expected it
to be received with joy, was, according to
Stravinsky himself, the greatest rebuff of his
career. It was this which encouraged him to
deny its Russianness. The opening bassoon
solo, said Stravinsky, “is the only folk melody
in The Rite”, concealing the indebtedness
of most of its musical material to Russian
folksongs, to which Taruskin traces the
limited range of the melodies, the ostinato
structure, and the modal formulas. Even the
instrumentation is based on Stravinsky and
Roerich’s ethnological research, particularly
the “reed pipes” of the Introduction scored
for wind instruments.
It was the Russian spring which Stravinsky
celebrated – that spring which bursts out so
quickly with a terrifying noise. The libretto
really boiled down to the succession of
episodes described by the titles in the
score, and listed above. The music took
over, and created the dance. As Boulez
says, the composition doesn’t depend on
the argument of the ballet, which is why it
transfers so well to the concert hall: “This
ritual of ‘Pagan Russia’ attains by itself a
dimension quite beyond its formal point
of departure: It has become the ritual –
and the myth – of modern music.”
David Garrett © 1999
This is the first performance of this work by the
Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra.
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