Program Notes
The Magic of the Harp
December 5, 2017
Fantasy in A Major for Violin and Harp, Op. 124, Camille Saint-Saëns
Camille Saint-Saëns was regarded by many in late nineteenth century France as the greatest composer their country had produced (“the French Beethoven”). That opinion did not survive for long in the next century. Although his catalog of compositions is long and varied, his works have not achieved lasting popularity, and only a few are often played today. Yet Saint-Saëns was notable for his pioneering efforts on behalf of French music. A child prodigy on the piano, he was also a gifted organist (according to Franz Liszt, the finest organist in the world.) He was professor of piano at the Niedermeyer School in Paris, where his pupils included Gabriel Fauré. From roughly 1880 to the end of his life (1921) his immense production covered all fields of dramatic and instrumental music, including symphonies and opera. Though he lived through the period of Wagner’s influence, Saint-Saëns remained unaffected by it and adhered to the classical models, upholding a conservative ideal of French music that emphasized polished craftsmanship and a strong sense of form.
Saint-Saëns developed a “late style” as he lived on into the 20th century. This stylistic shift was certainly not a concession to the modern techniques of Schoenberg or Stravinsky, but it can be seen as a parallel to similar developments in the later works of his pupil Gabriel Fauré. Saint-Saëns began to write chamber works without a part for his own instrument, the piano, sometimes replacing it with the thinner sound of the harp. He also developed new stylistic ideas on simplicity and clarity.
In February and March of 1907, Saint-Saëns composed the Fantasy for Violin and Harp while touring in the Mediterranean. He stopped in Monte Carlo to hear one of his pieces performed, then moved on to the Italian Riviera city of Bordighera to rest. There he composed the Fantasy and published it later in the same year. The work is dedicated to the sisters Marianne and Clara Eissler.
This 14-minute work is a virtuoso piece for both players, The use of harp rather than the more typical piano lends a delicate if not magical sonority to this duo. As the title suggests, the work is a single movement of relaxed and spontaneous form, comprising a total of seven distinct sections, sometimes separated by complete caesuras, sometimes not. The music is well crafted, clear, balanced and charming.
Over the course of the work the character is lyrical. In the first section the role of each instrument is clearly delineated. The violin plays a single melodic line over arpeggios and broken chords in the harp. In the second section, the violin part is less melodious, with frequent aggressive double stops while the harp accompaniment takes on a heavier pulse and pentatonic passages.
In the second half there is a passage in 5/4 that is filled with flourishes for both instruments. This includes the violin accompanying the harp underneath its bravura arpeggiations. What follows is a switch to the minor mode, and the introduction of a basso ostinato pattern of four bars in the harp, with wonderfully paced, virtuosic variations from the violin in the manner of an old Italian Baroque dance form. Strong elements of the opening music appear again towards the end, adding a light touch of symmetry. Again there is a striking balance between the two instruments, first passing off melodies and gestures, then exchanging arpeggios over the closing bars as the music fades away.
By Robert Molison
Trio for Flute, Cello, and Piano (H.300), Bohusav Martinu
I. Poco Allegro
II. Adagio
III. Andante-Allegretto scherzando
With over 400 works, Martinu was a prolific but not well-known 20th century modernist composer. He is compared with Bartók in his innovative incorporation of Central European ethnomusicology into his music. He continued to use folk melodies, usually from nursery rhymes, throughout his oeuvre. His mature work is in the neoclassical style, associated with Stravinsky’s compositions between the world wars (i.e., not Rite of Spring). It returns to aesthetic precepts of classicism, namely order, balance, clarity, economy, and emotional restraint. It is harmonically more complex than the late 18th century classical style; less emotionally intense, free-form, and programmatic than the romantic style; and lacking in the dissonance of the modern atonal style.
Born in Policka, now in central Czech Republic, Martinu was a child prodigy on the violin. He went to the Prague Conservatory but was dismissed for “incorrigible negligence.” Meanwhile he attended concerts of new music, primarily French impressionism, and, according to his roommate (who was a successful student), Martinu afterwards wrote out large parts of the score! He achieved notoriety for his cantata Czech Rhapsody, celebrating Czechoslovakia’s emergence from World War I as an independent nation. He moved to Paris in 1923, where his compositions drew on modernist trends such as jazz, cabaret music, and neoclassicism (Stravinsky being the model). Nevertheless, Bohemian and Moravian folk music that he heard on summer visits maintained their influence. He met Serge Koussevitsky, who sponsored concerts of new music in Paris and became music director of the Boston Symphony in 1924 while continuing his Parisian concerts until 1929. By 1930, Martinu ended his experimentation and settled on a neoclassical style.
In 1939, he wrote the Field Mass, a tribute to the Czech émigré resistance in Paris. It was broadcast in England and picked up in Czechoslovakia, which resulted in his blacklisting and sentencing in absentia by the Nazis. He and his wife fled Paris and ended up in New York City in 1941. Like many other émigrés from war-torn Europe, he was helped along by Americans and earlier émigrés who appreciated his stature as a composer. Serge Koussevitsky premiered one of his works the next season, commissioned him to write his first of six symphonies, and enabled him to teach composition at Tanglewood, the Boston Symphony’s summer home. Martinu was hired for a lectureship at Princeton University, as was Albert Einstein, and the two became friends. Martinu composed Five Madrigal Stanzas, dedicated to Einstein, who was able to play it. Martinu returned to Europe in the 1950s but chose not to live in communist Czechoslovakia.
The Trio for Flute, Cello, and Piano, a work of 20 minutes, was composed in 1944. It has remained a favorite in the trio repertory and has been recorded frequently. The opening Poco Allegro steps out like a child on a fine spring day. The flute establishes a motif of a simple unstressed downward scale. The music becomes more pensive in a middle section, with the cello in the lead for a while or doubled by the flute, with some upward flourishes, and with some building of intensity. It finally returns to the joyful lilt of the opening and builds to a strong finish.
The second movement is marked Adagio, and the solo piano plays an extended opening in a more somber mood. The flute takes over the melody and then the instruments play polyphonically. It builds in intensity at times, but it remains contained. A variation of the downward scale motif appears. As in the first movement, it returns to the opening theme but with many inventive changes.
The third movement has two tempi, Andante and Allegretto, with the second noted as scherzando, that is, in a playful manner. Its structure is more complex than previous movements. It opens with an extended solo flute that gives rise to playful dance music reminiscent the first movement. The descending scale makes its reappearance. The solo piano marks the return to the opening tempo, then taken over by the flute and cello. The solo piano eventually marks the return to the playful second theme. The rhythm has in turn regular 1-3 stresses, syncopated 2-4 stresses, and all four beats equally stressed. The final section builds in intensity to a happy resolution. All the aesthetic precepts of classicism are adhered to: order, balance, clarity, economy, and emotional restraint.
By David Patton Barone
Sonata for Flute, Viola, and Harp (L. 137), Claude Debussy
I. Pastorale
II. Interlude
III. Finale
Debussy fought against many musical traditions, such as form, tonal relationships, and placement of phrases. Over his lifetime his music varied from sentimental salon pieces to works that are almost neo-classical. The common factor is innovation. After many years of compositions that achieved success because of their originality, in 1910 Debussy began a period of inactivity as a composer. He continued to conduct, play piano on occasion, and edit some works of other composers (notably Chopin). The year 1914 was particularly difficult; he had been diagnosed with colorectal cancer and World War I erupted at that same time.
In 1915 he determined that, in his last years, he would write six sonatas for various combinations of instruments. It is said that these works were intended to reflect on his dying patriotic desire for the preservation of French music, and his intent was to return (in his 20th century way) to the style of the French Baroque. He left Paris in the summer of 1915 for the little town of Pourville on the English Channel. He finished his Sonata for Cello and Piano by August of that year. Then he began composition of the work played here, intending it to be for flute, oboe and harp. He later decided that the viola’s timbre would work better with the flute. After he finished this work in early fall he returned to Paris for surgery. The Sonata for Violin and Piano was begun in October 1916 and completed in 1917 and was his last important work – he did not complete the other three planned sonatas. On piano Debussy premiered that work with violinist Gaston Poulet, repeating the performance that September at St.-Jean-de-Luz. It was his final public appearance. He died in March of 1918 while Paris was under bombardment by German planes. Buried temporarily at Pere Lachaise cemetery (during more bombing) his remains were later moved to a small cemetery in the suburb of Passy. There his only monument is a granite slab on the ground bearing the words “Claude Debussy, musician francais,” the way he signed the last of his compositions.
The Sonata for Flute, Viola and Harp, a work of 16 minutes, was first performed more than a year after its completion, on November 7, 1916, in a private affair in Boston. It was introduced in France a month later at the home of Debussy’s publisher, Jacques Durand. The violist in that performance was the composer Darius Milhaud, age 24 at the time. Milhaud subsequently wrote a touching description of meeting Debussy, then very ill, and watching him play through the work on the piano twice.
Each movement of this Sonata is based on a single motive, elaborated in a decorative manner. The opening movement begins with the harp, joined then by the flute, with the viola emerging soon thereafter. A later section is more animated. The second movement is perhaps the most reminiscent of the old form of the minuet, with a whole-tone theme and modal harmonies to remind the listener that this is, after all, 20th century music. The Finale recalls previous motives and has some Eastern-sounding harmonies occasionally used by Debussy in earlier works. (He was influenced by his exposure to Japanese and Bali gamelan music during the famous Paris Exhibitions.) The composer reflected on this sonata in a letter to a Swiss friend when he said: “The music is so terribly melancholy, that I can’t say whether one should laugh or cry. Perhaps both at the same time?”
By Roberta Mielke
Piano Trio in d minor, Felix Mendelssohn
I. Molto Allegro agitato
II. Andante con molto tranquillo
III. Scherzo. Leggiero e vivace
IV. Finale. Allegro assai appassionato
This Trio for violin, cello, and piano is one of Mendelssohn’s most popular chamber works, along with his String Octet, Op. 20, which FRCP performed two seasons ago. The period around the Trio’s composition in 1839 was an intensely busy time in Mendelssohn’s life. In 1835, he became music director and conductor of the Leipzig Gewandhaus orchestra and later, in 1843, founded the Leipzig Conservatory. Throughout the rest of the 19th century, it was the most highly regarded institution of its kind in the world. In 1837, Mendelssohn was married. He composed feverishly all his life and performed as a pianist often, beginning with his days as a child prodigy. During the summer of 1839, he conducted elsewhere in Germany, finished this piano trio that July, and soon thereafter presented his St. Paul oratorio in Brunswick, widely regarded at the time as his greatest work. In 1841, he was named director of the Music Section of the Academy of Arts in Berlin. Despite the Prussian emperor’s interest in cultural advancement, the position did not turn out as planned and Mendelssohn returned to Liepzig.
This level of activity was nothing new to Mendelssohn. Grandson of the philosopher Moses Mendelssohn, he was born in Hamburg and schooled as a child in Paris, Berlin, and elsewhere. He was introduced to the elderly Goethe, who had a powerful influence on Mendelssohn for the rest of Goethe’s life. He conducted and performed extensively in London and Scotland and lived at various times in Italy, Switzerland and Munich. He was also a serious mountaineer. Mendelssohn is credited with exposing the public to the works of J. S. Bach, somewhat ignored until that time. As a conductor he used a baton, not common at that time, but did not read a score since he had a photographic memory. He was fluent in several languages and was a serious painter. In an alpine village in Switzerland in 2009, the 200th anniversary of his birth, there was an exhibit of 13 of his watercolors that he painted while spending time there. All of this is remarkable for a man who died at the young age of 38. Returning from London in the spring of 1847 Mendelssohn became ill, possibly from a stroke. He and his wife spent the summer resting in Switzerland, then returned to Leipzig, where he died later that year.
The Trio No. 1 consists of four movements. The first movement, primarily in d minor, has the main theme played first by the cello. The violin then joins, with a murmur of chords from the piano. A second theme dominates the middle of this movement, with a lovely return to the first theme, utilizing a counter-melody from the violin (a device used later in this work). The second movement resembles a beautiful “Song Without Words,” and it is sometimes used as a wedding processional. (More often the processional is that other well-known Mendelssohn piece, the traditional wedding march.) The Scherzo movement is a form at which Mendelssohn excelled. The three instruments are equal partners here, all light and lively. The Finale evolves from a specific motive, and the piano part is especially challenging. The movement begins in d minor, but shifts to D major near the end. The entire work displays Mendelssohn’s craftsmanship as a creative genius.
By Roberta Mielke
Program notes may draw on open-access web resources.
Camille Saint-Saëns was regarded by many in late nineteenth century France as the greatest composer their country had produced (“the French Beethoven”). That opinion did not survive for long in the next century. Although his catalog of compositions is long and varied, his works have not achieved lasting popularity, and only a few are often played today. Yet Saint-Saëns was notable for his pioneering efforts on behalf of French music. A child prodigy on the piano, he was also a gifted organist (according to Franz Liszt, the finest organist in the world.) He was professor of piano at the Niedermeyer School in Paris, where his pupils included Gabriel Fauré. From roughly 1880 to the end of his life (1921) his immense production covered all fields of dramatic and instrumental music, including symphonies and opera. Though he lived through the period of Wagner’s influence, Saint-Saëns remained unaffected by it and adhered to the classical models, upholding a conservative ideal of French music that emphasized polished craftsmanship and a strong sense of form.
Saint-Saëns developed a “late style” as he lived on into the 20th century. This stylistic shift was certainly not a concession to the modern techniques of Schoenberg or Stravinsky, but it can be seen as a parallel to similar developments in the later works of his pupil Gabriel Fauré. Saint-Saëns began to write chamber works without a part for his own instrument, the piano, sometimes replacing it with the thinner sound of the harp. He also developed new stylistic ideas on simplicity and clarity.
In February and March of 1907, Saint-Saëns composed the Fantasy for Violin and Harp while touring in the Mediterranean. He stopped in Monte Carlo to hear one of his pieces performed, then moved on to the Italian Riviera city of Bordighera to rest. There he composed the Fantasy and published it later in the same year. The work is dedicated to the sisters Marianne and Clara Eissler.
This 14-minute work is a virtuoso piece for both players, The use of harp rather than the more typical piano lends a delicate if not magical sonority to this duo. As the title suggests, the work is a single movement of relaxed and spontaneous form, comprising a total of seven distinct sections, sometimes separated by complete caesuras, sometimes not. The music is well crafted, clear, balanced and charming.
Over the course of the work the character is lyrical. In the first section the role of each instrument is clearly delineated. The violin plays a single melodic line over arpeggios and broken chords in the harp. In the second section, the violin part is less melodious, with frequent aggressive double stops while the harp accompaniment takes on a heavier pulse and pentatonic passages.
In the second half there is a passage in 5/4 that is filled with flourishes for both instruments. This includes the violin accompanying the harp underneath its bravura arpeggiations. What follows is a switch to the minor mode, and the introduction of a basso ostinato pattern of four bars in the harp, with wonderfully paced, virtuosic variations from the violin in the manner of an old Italian Baroque dance form. Strong elements of the opening music appear again towards the end, adding a light touch of symmetry. Again there is a striking balance between the two instruments, first passing off melodies and gestures, then exchanging arpeggios over the closing bars as the music fades away.
By Robert Molison
Trio for Flute, Cello, and Piano (H.300), Bohusav Martinu
I. Poco Allegro
II. Adagio
III. Andante-Allegretto scherzando
With over 400 works, Martinu was a prolific but not well-known 20th century modernist composer. He is compared with Bartók in his innovative incorporation of Central European ethnomusicology into his music. He continued to use folk melodies, usually from nursery rhymes, throughout his oeuvre. His mature work is in the neoclassical style, associated with Stravinsky’s compositions between the world wars (i.e., not Rite of Spring). It returns to aesthetic precepts of classicism, namely order, balance, clarity, economy, and emotional restraint. It is harmonically more complex than the late 18th century classical style; less emotionally intense, free-form, and programmatic than the romantic style; and lacking in the dissonance of the modern atonal style.
Born in Policka, now in central Czech Republic, Martinu was a child prodigy on the violin. He went to the Prague Conservatory but was dismissed for “incorrigible negligence.” Meanwhile he attended concerts of new music, primarily French impressionism, and, according to his roommate (who was a successful student), Martinu afterwards wrote out large parts of the score! He achieved notoriety for his cantata Czech Rhapsody, celebrating Czechoslovakia’s emergence from World War I as an independent nation. He moved to Paris in 1923, where his compositions drew on modernist trends such as jazz, cabaret music, and neoclassicism (Stravinsky being the model). Nevertheless, Bohemian and Moravian folk music that he heard on summer visits maintained their influence. He met Serge Koussevitsky, who sponsored concerts of new music in Paris and became music director of the Boston Symphony in 1924 while continuing his Parisian concerts until 1929. By 1930, Martinu ended his experimentation and settled on a neoclassical style.
In 1939, he wrote the Field Mass, a tribute to the Czech émigré resistance in Paris. It was broadcast in England and picked up in Czechoslovakia, which resulted in his blacklisting and sentencing in absentia by the Nazis. He and his wife fled Paris and ended up in New York City in 1941. Like many other émigrés from war-torn Europe, he was helped along by Americans and earlier émigrés who appreciated his stature as a composer. Serge Koussevitsky premiered one of his works the next season, commissioned him to write his first of six symphonies, and enabled him to teach composition at Tanglewood, the Boston Symphony’s summer home. Martinu was hired for a lectureship at Princeton University, as was Albert Einstein, and the two became friends. Martinu composed Five Madrigal Stanzas, dedicated to Einstein, who was able to play it. Martinu returned to Europe in the 1950s but chose not to live in communist Czechoslovakia.
The Trio for Flute, Cello, and Piano, a work of 20 minutes, was composed in 1944. It has remained a favorite in the trio repertory and has been recorded frequently. The opening Poco Allegro steps out like a child on a fine spring day. The flute establishes a motif of a simple unstressed downward scale. The music becomes more pensive in a middle section, with the cello in the lead for a while or doubled by the flute, with some upward flourishes, and with some building of intensity. It finally returns to the joyful lilt of the opening and builds to a strong finish.
The second movement is marked Adagio, and the solo piano plays an extended opening in a more somber mood. The flute takes over the melody and then the instruments play polyphonically. It builds in intensity at times, but it remains contained. A variation of the downward scale motif appears. As in the first movement, it returns to the opening theme but with many inventive changes.
The third movement has two tempi, Andante and Allegretto, with the second noted as scherzando, that is, in a playful manner. Its structure is more complex than previous movements. It opens with an extended solo flute that gives rise to playful dance music reminiscent the first movement. The descending scale makes its reappearance. The solo piano marks the return to the opening tempo, then taken over by the flute and cello. The solo piano eventually marks the return to the playful second theme. The rhythm has in turn regular 1-3 stresses, syncopated 2-4 stresses, and all four beats equally stressed. The final section builds in intensity to a happy resolution. All the aesthetic precepts of classicism are adhered to: order, balance, clarity, economy, and emotional restraint.
By David Patton Barone
Sonata for Flute, Viola, and Harp (L. 137), Claude Debussy
I. Pastorale
II. Interlude
III. Finale
Debussy fought against many musical traditions, such as form, tonal relationships, and placement of phrases. Over his lifetime his music varied from sentimental salon pieces to works that are almost neo-classical. The common factor is innovation. After many years of compositions that achieved success because of their originality, in 1910 Debussy began a period of inactivity as a composer. He continued to conduct, play piano on occasion, and edit some works of other composers (notably Chopin). The year 1914 was particularly difficult; he had been diagnosed with colorectal cancer and World War I erupted at that same time.
In 1915 he determined that, in his last years, he would write six sonatas for various combinations of instruments. It is said that these works were intended to reflect on his dying patriotic desire for the preservation of French music, and his intent was to return (in his 20th century way) to the style of the French Baroque. He left Paris in the summer of 1915 for the little town of Pourville on the English Channel. He finished his Sonata for Cello and Piano by August of that year. Then he began composition of the work played here, intending it to be for flute, oboe and harp. He later decided that the viola’s timbre would work better with the flute. After he finished this work in early fall he returned to Paris for surgery. The Sonata for Violin and Piano was begun in October 1916 and completed in 1917 and was his last important work – he did not complete the other three planned sonatas. On piano Debussy premiered that work with violinist Gaston Poulet, repeating the performance that September at St.-Jean-de-Luz. It was his final public appearance. He died in March of 1918 while Paris was under bombardment by German planes. Buried temporarily at Pere Lachaise cemetery (during more bombing) his remains were later moved to a small cemetery in the suburb of Passy. There his only monument is a granite slab on the ground bearing the words “Claude Debussy, musician francais,” the way he signed the last of his compositions.
The Sonata for Flute, Viola and Harp, a work of 16 minutes, was first performed more than a year after its completion, on November 7, 1916, in a private affair in Boston. It was introduced in France a month later at the home of Debussy’s publisher, Jacques Durand. The violist in that performance was the composer Darius Milhaud, age 24 at the time. Milhaud subsequently wrote a touching description of meeting Debussy, then very ill, and watching him play through the work on the piano twice.
Each movement of this Sonata is based on a single motive, elaborated in a decorative manner. The opening movement begins with the harp, joined then by the flute, with the viola emerging soon thereafter. A later section is more animated. The second movement is perhaps the most reminiscent of the old form of the minuet, with a whole-tone theme and modal harmonies to remind the listener that this is, after all, 20th century music. The Finale recalls previous motives and has some Eastern-sounding harmonies occasionally used by Debussy in earlier works. (He was influenced by his exposure to Japanese and Bali gamelan music during the famous Paris Exhibitions.) The composer reflected on this sonata in a letter to a Swiss friend when he said: “The music is so terribly melancholy, that I can’t say whether one should laugh or cry. Perhaps both at the same time?”
By Roberta Mielke
Piano Trio in d minor, Felix Mendelssohn
I. Molto Allegro agitato
II. Andante con molto tranquillo
III. Scherzo. Leggiero e vivace
IV. Finale. Allegro assai appassionato
This Trio for violin, cello, and piano is one of Mendelssohn’s most popular chamber works, along with his String Octet, Op. 20, which FRCP performed two seasons ago. The period around the Trio’s composition in 1839 was an intensely busy time in Mendelssohn’s life. In 1835, he became music director and conductor of the Leipzig Gewandhaus orchestra and later, in 1843, founded the Leipzig Conservatory. Throughout the rest of the 19th century, it was the most highly regarded institution of its kind in the world. In 1837, Mendelssohn was married. He composed feverishly all his life and performed as a pianist often, beginning with his days as a child prodigy. During the summer of 1839, he conducted elsewhere in Germany, finished this piano trio that July, and soon thereafter presented his St. Paul oratorio in Brunswick, widely regarded at the time as his greatest work. In 1841, he was named director of the Music Section of the Academy of Arts in Berlin. Despite the Prussian emperor’s interest in cultural advancement, the position did not turn out as planned and Mendelssohn returned to Liepzig.
This level of activity was nothing new to Mendelssohn. Grandson of the philosopher Moses Mendelssohn, he was born in Hamburg and schooled as a child in Paris, Berlin, and elsewhere. He was introduced to the elderly Goethe, who had a powerful influence on Mendelssohn for the rest of Goethe’s life. He conducted and performed extensively in London and Scotland and lived at various times in Italy, Switzerland and Munich. He was also a serious mountaineer. Mendelssohn is credited with exposing the public to the works of J. S. Bach, somewhat ignored until that time. As a conductor he used a baton, not common at that time, but did not read a score since he had a photographic memory. He was fluent in several languages and was a serious painter. In an alpine village in Switzerland in 2009, the 200th anniversary of his birth, there was an exhibit of 13 of his watercolors that he painted while spending time there. All of this is remarkable for a man who died at the young age of 38. Returning from London in the spring of 1847 Mendelssohn became ill, possibly from a stroke. He and his wife spent the summer resting in Switzerland, then returned to Leipzig, where he died later that year.
The Trio No. 1 consists of four movements. The first movement, primarily in d minor, has the main theme played first by the cello. The violin then joins, with a murmur of chords from the piano. A second theme dominates the middle of this movement, with a lovely return to the first theme, utilizing a counter-melody from the violin (a device used later in this work). The second movement resembles a beautiful “Song Without Words,” and it is sometimes used as a wedding processional. (More often the processional is that other well-known Mendelssohn piece, the traditional wedding march.) The Scherzo movement is a form at which Mendelssohn excelled. The three instruments are equal partners here, all light and lively. The Finale evolves from a specific motive, and the piano part is especially challenging. The movement begins in d minor, but shifts to D major near the end. The entire work displays Mendelssohn’s craftsmanship as a creative genius.
By Roberta Mielke
Program notes may draw on open-access web resources.
