Bohemia has produced a large number of quality musicians throughout the course of Western civilization. Composers’ family lines would often carry the same name, such as Benda or Stamitz, over the course of several generations. Although these musicians are not well known today, their contributions were obvious to their contemporaries throughout the splendid palaces of Europe. Even American musical culture benefited from the skills of Bohemian musicians. The Boston Symphony from its inception until the early 20th century depended upon the Central Europeans, especially the Bohemians. John Phillip Sousa, an American musician through and through, called upon virtuoso wind players from the Slavic regions to elevate his famous marching band to world prominence. The American-Bohemian connection reached its pinnacle with the New York arrival in 1892 of the most famous of Bohemian musicians, Antonin Dvorák.

A discussion of Dvorák's music is almost certain to include comparisons with other composers: Classical sensibilities of Beethoven and Schubert, Romantic instrumental mastery of Brahms, early fascination with Wagner and Liszt. True as these observations may be, they tend to veil the unique and truly original talent Dvorák possessed. Even in his own country, Czechoslovakia, his nationalistic traits were compared, often unfavorably, with those of Smetana.

A group of random statements might help clarify Dvorák the individual. His village upbringing imprinted a desire throughout his life to lead a simple life in the country. He was a family man who would work unaware that his children were playing pranks on him and that his wife was using his old sketch sheets to start the bread ovens. Like Beethoven, he preferred a solitary walk in the country as a technique for coming up with new musical ideas. He enjoyed the companionship found in the beer hall rather than that of the salon. Czech folk music occupied an important niche in his musical arsenal once he had outgrown his early fascination with Wagner. His American students found him to be initially abrupt and uncompromising in his teaching techniques, although he would occasionally soften his position. Proud of his nationality, he constantly fought publishers' attempts to make him appear more German by calling him Anton instead of Antonin. He was a Czech patriot who suffered from homesickness during his stay in the United States.

The bulk of Dvorák's compositional output clearly reveals several strengths. He was a master at orchestration, deserving to be placed on the same level as Berlioz, Rimsky-Korsakov and Ravel. He developed concepts of melody, harmony and rhythm that, while maintaining their Czech roots, spoke clearly in a more international language than many other "nationalistic" composers did. Light-hearted spontaneity always reigned, as opposed to the more somber, intellectual use of Austrian folk materials by Brahms.

His Symphony No. 8 is a good example of Dvorák at his most spontaneous. He developed the general structure of the entire symphony in about ten days. It took only seventeen days to sketch out all the music and one more month to finish all the details of orchestration. This short compositional time does not mean that the symphony is not full of interesting ideas. The last movement is a complex exploration of form involving several variations interspersed with other melodic twists and turns. Themes are often presented, then not developed as would be expected in a Germanic symphony. Dvorák made an interesting statement about this work: he wanted to create "a symphony different from my other symphonies with individual thought worked out in a new way." Although the new ideas are abundant, they are still contained within the Classical framework that was always a part of the composer's music.

The work was premiered in Prague on February 2, 1890 with the composer, a capable conductor, at the head of the orchestra. Hans Richter, the musical czar of Vienna until Mahler's arrival in 1897, conducted the symphony in London and later in Vienna. Afterwards, Richter wrote Dvorák: "You would most certainly have enjoyed the performance. We all have felt that we were to interpret a superb work and for this reason we all were in it with enthusiasm. Brahms dined with me at my place after the performance and we toasted the well-being of the unfortunately absent father of No. 4 [really No. 8 in order of composition]." Dvorák received an honorary doctorate from Cambridge University in June 1891. He offered Symphony No. 8 as the customary exercise for this event. He also provided a four-hand piano version of which he was quite proud. Because of this connection, the symphony was briefly known as the "English" symphony.

Violin Concerto in E Minor, Op. 64 (1844)
Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847)

Were it not for one of his closest friends, the eminent violinist Ferdinand David, Mendelssohn would probably not have written a concerto for violin. The two met in 1825 while David was touring as a fifteen-year old virtuoso. Mendelssohn, one year older, admired this violinist who was reported to play with a combination of German seriousness, French elegance and Italian virtuosity. These qualities, coupled with David’s idealism and love of teaching, almost mirrored the composer’s own musical personality. When Mendelssohn was appointed music director of the famous Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, he immediately hired David as the concertmaster. Under the leadership of these two, the orchestra was soon considered one of the best in Germany.

In 1838 Mendelssohn wrote David: “I should like to make a violin concerto for you next winter; one in e minor is in my head and its beginning gives me no rest.” Nothing was written during this year but David persisted in keeping Mendelssohn to the task, as seen in a letter David received in 1839: “It is nice of you to press me for a violin concerto! I have the liveliest desire to write one for you, and if I have a few propitious days, I’ll bring you something. But the task is not an easy one. You ask that it should be brilliant, and how can anyone like me do this? The whole of the first solo is to be for the E string.” When David saw the first portions of the concerto, he immediately placed it in the same category as the only truly great concerto at the time, Beethoven’s. Mendelssohn protested that he had no intention of competing with Beethoven, and proceeded to produce a concerto that would never be confused with the greatest violin concerto of the classical period.

Due to circumstances almost totally beyond Mendelssohn’s control, the completion of the concerto had to wait. He was summoned back to his home town of Berlin by Frederick Wilhelm IV, King of Prussia, and offered a lucrative position. Responding to the King’s plans and the urging of his own widowed mother in Berlin, Mendelssohn decided to take a one-year leave of absence from the Leipzig position. He was not completely happy about the choice because his liberal attitudes did not mesh with Berlin’s decidedly conservative atmosphere. Also, his religious music was important to him and the Berlin establishment tended to view any religious convictions with disdain. The position also left little time for composition. When he began his duties, Mendelssohn found the musicians to be not only hostile towards him, but also inferior to those in Leipzig. In spite of the conditions, he persisted in trying to make something of an almost hopeless situation.

Heinrich Jacob called Mendelssohn’s position a perfect subject for a Kafka novel: “A man is called to a position which is just right for him; he can execute all its duties perfectly. Files are established and the bureaucracy begins to operate. But he is given no real work, and he cannot locate his employer. Finally the job and he himself are shattered.” After numerous failed promises and fruitless negotiations to change working conditions, Mendelssohn returned to Leipzig in 1844. He wrote a friend: “The first step out of Berlin is the first step to happiness.” His return to the Gewandhaus Orchestra was especially poignant: “It was as though they had been waiting for me! I came to a rehearsal at the Gewandhaus. The winds had pursed their lips, the strings raised their bows and my friend David the baton. When he saw me, he lowered it, picked up his violin, and stepped into the first row of the strings.”

Mendelssohn was finally able to complete his concerto. Although he himself was a violinist and had completed an unpublished violin concerto at age 15, he constantly relied on David for advice. David’s editing began after Mendelssohn sent him the completed score in September 1844. He was conscientious about his work on the cadenza and solo parts of the concerto, intending to make sure that the difficult solo part was properly edited before publication. He wanted to keep “from sending a violin piece without bowings and fingerings into the uncultivated violin world.” This collaboration resulted in seemingly effortless melodies which fully exploit the technical capabilities of the instrument, combined with virtuosic passages designed to be played by more than just the rare genius.

Several elements of the concerto were new. The beginning dispenses with the traditional orchestral exposition and lets the soloist participate immediately. The cadenza, which normally takes place almost at the end of the first movement and is often improvised, now occurs after the second main section and was carefully written out by Mendelssohn. All three movements are played without break and are connected by passages that allow a smooth transition from one to another. These elements do not replace the traditional classical structure of the concerto but do slightly disguise the form and, more importantly, surprise the listener. The main theme of the finale again demonstrates one of Mendelssohn’s unique signatures found in several earlier works such as his Midsummer Night’s Dream: the highly energetic music that can best be described as “elfin.”

Overture to William Tell (1829)
Gioacchino Rossini (1792 – 1868)

Beginning at age 18 Rossini wrote 38 operas in 19 years, quickly becoming the most popular opera composer of his time. In 1824 he received a lucrative contract from the French government to move to Paris and compose for both the Italian Theater and the French Opera. He wrote William Tell for the French Opera in 1829 and then retired from opera composition at age 37, apparently due to a nervous condition which affected his stamina and concentration. His subsequent return to Italy did not improve his health and his politics ran counter to the Bolognese government. Rossini returned to Paris in 1855 as a happily remarried and healthy man and quickly became a popular part of the social scene. He composed songs, piano pieces and sacred works but devoted the last portion of his life to a career as a gourmand: “As far as I’m concerned, I know no more wonderful occupation than food.”

The French libretto for William Tell was based on a play by Friedrich Schiller, the author of Ode to Joy used in Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9. The subject of the story was especially popular and relevant in France in the 1820s due to its rousing tale of revolution. The Swiss hero, William Tell, refuses to bow to a hat set on a pole by the occupying Austrian governor, Gessler. Gessler arrests Tell but will free him on the condition he uses his crossbow to shoot an apple off of his son’s head. Tell is successful but is then jailed again when he tells the governor he would have killed him if his shot had hurt his son. Tell is freed by the arriving Swiss rebel army and kills Gessler in battle with an arrow to the heart, inspiring the Swiss to victory over the Austrians.

Due to its extreme length, originally six hours, William Tell was not only a difficult work to perform but was usually (and still is) heavily cut. The performance of the opera was also sometimes hampered by the conflict of its story line with the current political climate. It received only a couple of performances in a divided Italy which was in constant political turmoil. The political censors resisted the onstage depiction of a revolutionary figure confronting authority. Several years later, as a united Italy began to battle for its independence from the French, patriotic operas such as Verdi’s were embraced throughout Italy and William Tell was given the occasional performance. In contrast Vienna, in spite of the anti-Austrian story, saw over 400 performances of the opera during the 1800s.

The overture to William Tell is constructed of four clearly-defined, highly-descriptive sections: a Swiss mountain sunrise, an Alpine storm, a Swiss cattleman’s call to his herd and an energetic revolutionary march that depicts the approaching Swiss army. Hector Berlioz gave it one of his typical back-handed compliments when he called it “a work of immense talent which resembles genius so closely as to be mistaken for it.”

Thanks to numerous cartoons and other media usages of this music, the opera scenes depicted by this music take a back seat in our imagination to those images generated by 20th-century popular culture. The sunrise section is unusual because of the utilization of an eight-part cello and bass choir. The storm scene is considered to be the quintessential musical representation of a thunderstorm. The call to the herds, a Swiss Ranz des vaches, features one of the most recognized melodies ever written for the English horn. The final Lone Ranger section was first written by Rossini seven years earlier as a quick-step march for a military band in Venice with a rhythm that was used in a popular dance called a galop. It was then used in the revolutionary finale of the second act of the opera but was later removed from the act by Rossini. Today it is heard not only as the climax to the overture but also as an accompaniment to anything depicting an exciting gallop. Hi, ho, Rossini!

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Concert 2 – THREE'S COMPANY
Saturday, November 12, 8 pm Santa Cruz Civic Auditorium
Sunday, November 13, 2 pm Mello Center, Watsonville

Piano Concerto in C Minor, K. 491 (1786)
Wolfgang Amadè Mozart (1756 -1791)

Even though Vienna during the 1780s was the largest city in Germany and Austria at 230,000 people, it didn’t come close to the size of London, Paris or Naples. The nobility made up about three percent of the population and the upper middle class was slightly larger at four percent. Over ninety percent of the typical concert and opera audiences often came from these two groups who had a long tradition of concert attendance, were quite sophisticated in their musical tastes and were willing to pay extravagantly for quality music. Together with the Catholic Church, these groups strongly supported the activities of musicians in Vienna, making this city a magnet for many successful composers and performers. When Mozart moved in 1781 from a secure job in Salzburg to be a free-lance composer/performer in Vienna, he did so knowing that the possibilities of creative and financial success were extremely high in this exciting atmosphere.

February to April of 1786 was one of the most creative and productive time periods ever in the life of the greatest composer of them all, Wolfgang Amadè Mozart (he referred to himself as Amadeus only in jest as in Wolfgangus Amadeus Mozartus). He completed the Piano Concerto in A Major K. 488 on March 2 and the Piano Concerto in C Minor K. 491 on March 24 while working toward the May 1 premier of his greatest opera, The Marriage of Figaro. Only in the last decade of his life do we see three-month periods of similar accomplishment. However, the creation of the tragic minor-key concerto and Figaro in 1786 make this period especially remarkable.

We have no written comments about the first performance, but the audience that first heard the C-minor concerto was probably startled by the experience in spite of their sophistication. We have no written comments about this performance but, knowing what contemporary listeners expected, can assume that they were not ready for what they heard. Mozart was especially gifted at knowing what his audiences could understand and appreciate in music and was quite capable of giving them pieces that would fulfill, charm, entertain and, sometimes to a lesser degree, challenge them. His previous two piano concertos were those types of pieces: no big surprises formally, engaging melodies and a relationship between the orchestra and the piano that left no doubt who the soloist was. Then his 24th piano concerto appeared on the scene with its stark, tragic statements that do not ultimately transform into a more positive atmosphere as in his only other minor-key piano concerto, the Piano Concerto in D minor, K. 466 written during the previous year. This is the one piano concerto by Mozart that has no sense of what the audience might prefer to hear. The orchestration includes oboes and clarinets in the wind group which was the only time he used both other than Symphony No. 40 which was originally written for oboes with the clarinets added at a later date. This large orchestra has an often dominating, symphonic role in this concerto and the second movement especially features many wind solos.

The composition of this concerto was not the result of an unwavering creative outburst by Mozart. The original score shows many corrections of ideas including some that took as many as four attempts before a final decision was made. It is as if Mozart needed to explore a private emotional landscape that he usually kept hidden not only from others, but also from himself. Mozart scholar Alfred Einstein referred to this concerto as “an explosion of the dark, tragic, passionate emotions.” The sense of despair expressed through this music, however, is tempered by the elegance that can be found in almost all of Mozart’s music. The first movement is dominated by the main theme which uses all twelve tones of the chromatic scale before the eleventh measure is finished. The expected second theme which is usually gentler than the first never makes a convincing appearance. There is no doubt that Mozart is wrestling with his darker personality in a contest with no clear outcome. The slow second movement is in rondo form which is usually used for the quick last movement of instrumental works. Its simpler major-key melody provides lyric relief from the first movement even though it is unable to completely escape the environment generated by the preceding movement. The last movement is a theme with eight variations. Mozart rarely wrote variations in a minor key. Even though a couple of the variations are in major, they do not shed much light on the darkness as the last movement brings the concerto to an end that is far removed from the joy and zest for life heard in Mozart’s other compositions written during this exciting time in his life.

Violin Concerto in D Major, Op. 61 (1806)
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)

Like many violin concertos, Beethoven’s was inspired by a specific performer. He first met Franz Clement in 1794 after hearing a recital by the fourteen-year-old prodigy. Beethoven wrote in Clement’s autograph book: “Continue along the road on which you have already made such a fine and magnificent journey. Nature and art have combined to make a great artist of you. Follow them both and, never fear, you will reach greatness, the highest goal that an artist can desire in the world. All my good wishes for your happiness, dear child, and come back soon so that I can hear your clear, magnificent playing once again.”

Clement soon settled in Vienna, where he became concertmaster and conductor at the Theater an der Wien. His violin playing displayed a flawless technique coupled with a graceful and tender approach to music, qualities that are apparent in Beethoven’s concerto. He was one of the few people Beethoven would ask for criticism and was personally involved in some of the composer’s larger projects. His orchestra played the premiere of the third symphony with Beethoven conducting. He was also present at the premiere of Fidelio in 1805. After the opera’s dismal failure, a group met at Prince Lichnowsky’s palace to discuss revisions. Clement played the entire opera from memory as the group discussed possible changes. Clement’s prodigious memory had also been displayed earlier when he wrote out a piano version of Haydn’s The Creation after hearing only two rehearsals and one performance.

When Clement approached Beethoven about a violin concerto in 1806, Beethoven was happy to compose a piece for one of his supporters. He first wrote the solo part without any assistance from Clement, then consulted with the violinist and produced a version that was much more playable. The final version that was approved by Beethoven and published was a combination of these two earlier versions with some new passages. The premiere in December 1806 was a disaster. Beethoven did not give Clement the completed version (whatever that was) until two days before the performance. Clement, due to his memory and his earlier work with Beethoven, probably was fairly well prepared in spite of the short time period. The orchestra, however, did not have time for a single run-through of the concerto and the audience was not prepared to hear a poor presentation of a work that they hardly understood. One critic complained of the “lack of continuity” and “needless repetition of certain commonplace passages....If Beethoven pursues his present path, he and the public alike will come to a bad end.” Clement’s own antics probably contributed to the poor reception of the concerto. Between the first and second movements he stopped to play one of his own fantasies on one string while holding the violin upside down!

Beethoven heard his concerto played only one more time, and Clement eventually faded from public view to die virtually unknown in Vienna. The concerto was considered unplayable in Vienna and received only a few performances for many years. The Belgian violinist Henri Vieuxtemps performed it in Vienna in 1834 with little success. In 1844 Joseph Joachim, age 13, was allowed to play the concerto in London under the direction of Mendelssohn in spite of a rule in England against the public appearance of child prodigies with the major orchestras. The performance was a complete success. Joachim considered the concerto “the greatest of the German concertos. The one that makes the fewest concessions.” He continued to champion the concerto during his lifetime and is responsible for its position as perhaps the greatest violin concerto ever written.

Piano Concerto No. 1 in B-Flat Minor, Op. 23 (1874)
Pyotr Il’yich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893)

During the later 1800s Russian composers divided themselves into two opposing groups: the nationalists, including Rimsky-Korsakov and Borodin, and the internationalists as led by Anton Rubenstein and his student Tchaikovsky. The nationalists, also known as "The Five," were supportive of a newfound sense of Russian pride that was gaining momentum throughout the country by looking to the peasantry and other folk sources for inspiration. The internationalists were well versed in various aspects of Western culture, including the highly refined French sensibilities cultivated by the Tsar's court. The rigorous musical training and sense of taste of Tchaikovsky separated him from nationalists such as Mussorgsky who, Tchaikovsky declared, “belongs to a rather low type, which loves what is coarse, unpolished, and ugly. He is in love with his own lack of culture and seems to be proud of his ignorance.”

It is now apparent that both groups managed to create music that was Russian in character. Tchaikovsky sometimes used Russian folk tunes in his music but more effectively connected with his country by digging deep into his own personality. The folk melodies he found attractive and useful are uniquely Russian, but it is direct emotional communication at which Tchaikovsky excelled and truly displayed his Russian heritage. It was this unusual ability to project emotion that made listeners react strongly, one way or the other, to his music.

The first reaction to his Piano Concerto No. 1 would have destroyed a less resilient composer. The concerto was quickly written during November and December of 1874 and dedicated to Nicholas Rubinstein, good friend and head of the Moscow Conservatory where Tchaikovsky taught. Before a Christmas Eve party, Rubinstein suggested they sit down and go over the concerto. Tchaikovsky described the scene: “I played the first movement. Not a word, not an observation. If you only knew how uncomfortably foolish one feels when one places before a friend a dish one has prepared with one's own hands, and he eats thereof and - - is silent. At least say something; if you like, find fault in a friendly way, but, for heaven's sake, speak - - say something, no matter what! I played the concerto to the end. Again silence.“

‘Well?’ said I, as I arose. Then sprang forth a vigorous stream of words from Rubinstein. At first he spoke quietly, but by degrees his passion rose, and finally he resembled Zeus hurling thunderbolts. My concerto was worthless and absolutely unplayable, the passages manufactured and so clumsy as to be beyond correction, the composition itself was bad, trivial and commonplace, I had stolen this point from somebody and that one from somebody else, only two or three pages had any value, all the rest should be either destroyed or entirely remodeled. In short, an unbiased spectator of the scene could only have thought I was a stupid, untalented and conceited spoiler of music paper....I left the room without a word and went upstairs.”

Tchaikovsky, greatly hurt, told Rubinstein “I will not change a single note and will publish it exactly as it is now!” He then erased the dedication to Rubinstein and dedicated it to Hans von Bülow who, Tchaikovsky understood, was an admirer of his music. Bülow played through the concerto with great pleasure: “The ideas are so original, so noble, so powerful, the details are so interesting, and though there are many of them, they do not impair the clarity and the unity of the work. The form is so mature, ripe, distinguished in style, intention and labor being everywhere concealed. I would weary you if I were to enumerate all the characteristics of your work, characteristics which compel me to congratulate equally the composer and those who are destined to enjoy it.” Tchaikovsky eventually revised the concerto before its 1889 edition. It is interesting that Rubenstein eventually reversed his position and became one of the concerto’s leading exponents.

Bülow soon left for his tour of North America with the concerto in hand. The premiere took place in Boston, October 25, 1875 to a wildly enthusiastic audience and was a regular feature in Bülow's marathon concert tour, which included seven concerts in thirteen days in Boston and fourteen concerts in nineteen days in New York. Tchaikovsky wrote of this huge success: “Each time Bülow was obliged to repeat the whole finale of my concerto! Nothing like that happens in our country.” One critic labeled the concerto “extremely difficult, strange, wild, ultra-modern...wild Cossack fire and impetus without stint - - extremely brilliant and exciting,” and then asked “but could we ever learn to love such music?”

The first movement demonstrates both Tchaikovsky's ability to compose original melodies that directly appeal to the emotions and his willingness to use Russian folk materials in a way that is not necessarily nationalistic. The crashing chords from the piano and soaring melody in the orchestra identifies this concerto as a child of the romantic era. The first melody was later used in the early 1940s for the popular song “Tonight We Love” with the meter changed from three beats per measure to four. The jerky, almost drunken melody of the following Allegro was heard by Tchaikovsky at a fair in Kamenko: “It is curious that in Little Russia every blind beggar sings exactly the same tune with the same refrain. I have used part of this refrain in my composition.”

Another borrowed tune is the interlude in the middle of the second movement which is the song, “Il faut s'amuser, danser et rire,” often sung by the soprano whom Tchaikovsky courted several years earlier, Desiree Artot. David Brown, a biographer of Tchaikovsky, has suggested that the opening horn notes in the first movement form a cryptographic figure representing Tchaikovsky’s name and that Desiree Artot's name is revealed in the beginning of the second theme. It is possible, as it is in all of his music, that the concerto is a statement of specific feelings: this time about his recovery from a rocky and failed relationship.

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Concert 3 – CERTIFIED ORGANIC
Saturday, January 28, 8 pm Santa Cruz Civic Auditorium
Sunday, January 29, 2 pm Mello Center, Watsonville

Symphony No. 3 in C Minor, Op. 78, “Organ” (1886)
Camille Saint-Saëns (1835-1921)

The extraordinary career of Saint-Saëns spanned over 80 years as an active composer and concert pianist. He was a tireless letter writer (sometimes two dozen letters a day); student of archaeology, astronomy, botany, play-writing, and philosophy; and included among his friends Rossini, Liszt and Berlioz. His greatest contribution to music, however, came with his formation of the Société Nationale de Musique in 1871, only days before the Prussians marched down the Champs-Élysées in triumph. It must have seemed ironic that the moment of France’s greatest humiliation also saw the adoption of the motto “Ars Gallica” for a group of musicians dedicated to creating and promoting new French music.

Saint-Saëns complained in 1871, in words equally apropos in today’s music world, that “not so very long ago a French composer who was daring enough to venture onto the terrain of instrumental music had no other means of getting his work performed than to give a concert himself and invite his friends and the critics. As for the general public, it was hopeless even to think about them. The name of a composer who is French and still alive had only to appear on a poster to frighten everybody away. The chamber music societies, flourishing and numerous at the time, restricted their programs to the resplendent names of Beethoven, Mozart, Haydn, Mendelssohn - - and sometimes Schumann as proof of their audacity.”

Fifteen years later Saint-Saëns produced two of his last works as a member of the Société Nationale, Carnival of the Animals and Symphony No. 3. The Société was of divided opinion about the music of Richard Wagner, with Saint-Saëns leading the small group trying to keep the German influence out of French music. Symphony No. 3 was performed soon after he retired from his beloved organization. The symphony was his last large orchestral work. He then dedicated himself to writing mainly opera, ballet, and incidental music for the theater. Many of his fellow composers considered the symphony conservative because it contained no hints of Wagner’s new music. Gounod was reported to have said, with sarcasm, “There’s the Beethoven of France” as Saint-Saëns appeared to conduct his new symphony. The symphony was written for the London Philharmonic and received its first performance in London in May 1886. The public responded well to the music, although the structure led one critic to write: “Those advanced in the new school as far as M. Saint-Saëns professes to be should invent new titles for their works. As we have said, there is a great deal to admire in this glowing orchestral rhapsody, but we distinctly decline to term it a symphony.”

The composer, realizing the confusion that could occur, wrote extensive program notes for the London premiere: “This symphony is divided into parts, after the manner of Saint-Saëns’ Fourth Concerto for Piano and Orchestra and Sonata for Piano and Violin. Nevertheless, it includes practically the traditional four movements: the first, checked in development, serves as the introduction to the adagio, and the scherzo is connected, after the same manner, with the finale. The composer has thus sought to shun in a certain measure the interminable repetitions which are more and more disappearing from instrumental music. The composer thinks that the time has come for the symphony to benefit by the progress of modern instrumentation.”

The symphony is dedicated to Liszt, who died soon after the premiere. Many facets of the instrumentation, including the use of organ, were influenced by Liszt. The organ helps point out the large structure of the symphony by first entering at the beginning of the slow movement, sitting out during the scherzo, and announcing the beginning of the finale with a strong chord. It is interesting that he also included piano 4-hands in the orchestration after he had just completed the Carnival of the Animals, which features two pianos. Another Lisztian technique utilized in the symphony is thematic transformation, by which certain themes appear throughout all of the movements but are slightly changed to fit each new environment.

Although well-received, the symphony had little impact on the course of French music, now caught up in the Wagner rage. Saint-Saëns recognized his effort as the closing of a chapter: “I have given all that I had to give. What I have done I shall never do again.”

Concerto for Organ, String Orchestra and Timpani (1938)
Francis Poulenc (1899 – 1963)

The place for musicians to be on Tuesday nights in Paris during the first forty years of the 1900s was the house of Winnaretta Singer. She was the heiress to the Singer sewing-machine fortune and eventually was married as Princesse Edmond de Polignac. Her salon took place in a 1500 square foot room that was equipped with an organ built by the prestigious organ builder Cavaillé-Coll. There was seating for an audience of up to 250. She commissioned numerous works and received dedications from composers that included Faure, Ravel, Stravinsky, Falla, Milhaud, Tailleferre, Weil, Britten and Poulenc. Poulenc made his first appearance in her salon in 1919 as an accompanist for his song set Cocardes.

Before 1936, Poulenc’s music was firmly in the style of the group of French composers known as Les Six. Each of these six young composers wrote music that avoided Germanic heaviness, emotionally-wrought Romanticism and veiled Impressionism. They often focused on writing light and often satirical compositions and explored the style of jazz, cabaret songs and movie music. The resulting music was distinctive for its clarity, physicality and lack of emotion. Poulenc’s approach resulted in a more neo-classical style that was characterized by technical prowess and a tremendous sense of wit. His first compositions were songs, ballets and chamber music. Because of his contacts with Polignac he began to write concertos which culminated in a commission from the princess in 1932 for the Concerto for Two Pianos.

Poulenc was approached by the princess to write the Organ Concerto in 1934 but put off starting the work. In 1936, everything changed around him. France was in political and financial turmoil due to both the depression and the rise of Hitler in Germany. The biggest personal blow to Poulenc was the death of his good friend and fellow composer Pierre-Octave Ferroux in an especially violent automobile accident in Hungary. Poulenc later recalled in an interview: “The tragic extinction of this musician so full of vitality had stupefied me. Thinking about the frailty of the human condition, I was once again attracted to the spiritual life.” He immediately travelled to the shrine of the Black Virgin at Rocamadour which is the second most important pilgrimage site in France next to Lourdes. After the return to his Catholic faith, Poulenc basically left behind his old musical persona and began work on a series of sacred choral works that demonstrated a more spiritual, sincere and mystical approach to life.

When he began work on the Organ Concerto in late 1936, this new style asserted itself and led to the creation of a work that, although secular, demonstrates a connection to the sacred organ works of the Baroque period. Poulenc, however, does not ignore the 20th century but uses the filter of the neo-Baroque style demonstrated by the works of Stravinsky such as the austere Oedipus Rex (1927). The old, witty Poulenc makes a few appearances along with sections of not-quite Bach. This one-movement work follows the baroque model of a fantasia with each of the seven sections revealing new moods and ideas in an organic, almost unstructured way.

The project appeared to have stalled but, after a few pointed inquiries from the princess, Poulenc completed the bulk of the concerto in 1938. By the time he finished, Kristallnacht had taken place, Hitler had unified Germany and Austria through the Anschluss, German military forces were mobilized and Nazi Germany had annexed the Czech Sudetenland. The premiere of the Organ Concerto took place during these turbulent times in the private confines of Polignac’s salon with the famous organist Maurice Duruflé as soloist . The following public performance again featured Duruflé and was greeted with mixed reviews. One reviewer praised it for its “exalted and virile inspiration” and mentioned the musical elements that bring the organ music of Bach to mind.

Daybreak from The Florida Suite (1887, rev. 1888)
Frederick Delius (1862 – 1934)

Delius was raised in a musical household but was directed by his father toward the family business as a wool merchant. He constantly neglected his duties for three years in favor of musical and theatrical activities until his father gave up on him as an heir to the family business. He sent his wayward son to northern Florida to manage an orange plantation purchased to keep his son employed. Fritz (the name Delius used until he was 40) lived in Florida for about 18 months during which he managed to continue his musical studies with Thomas Ward. Delius considered this to be the only useful musical instruction he ever had.

The hotels in Jacksonville featured African-American waiters who sang daily concerts for the customers and exposed Delius to spirituals. He also recalled hearing the deckhands singing on the ships as they passed by his house at the plantation called Solano Grove. Delius described this time in his foreword to the German translation of James Weldon Johnson’s The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man (1928):

“It was as quite a young man that I left a manufacturing town in the north of England to spend a year and a half on an orange plantation in Florida, where I lived in the greatest solitude, surrounded almost only by Negroes. I would sit out on my verandah in the darkness of evening, and would hear from afar the singing of the Negroes. It seemed to harmonize wonderfully with the glorious natural surroundings. Before me stretched the immense breadth of the St. Johns River and around me the primæval forest with its indescribably strange stirrings of buzzing insects, of frogs and nocturnal birds.”

“Although I had grown up with classical music, a whole new world now opened up to me. I felt this Negro music to be something utterly new. It was natural and at the same time deeply felt. For me the Negroes were far more musical than any other people I had until then encountered. Their music emerged as unaffected and instinctive, the expression of the soul of a people that had undergone much suffering. It was almost always sorrowful, almost always religious, and yet always imbued with personal experience and human warmth.”

Delius was just as inattentive an orange-grower as he was a wool merchant. He entrusted the plantation entirely to the foreman, Albert Anderson, and to the plantation workers. Anderson’s sister-in-law, Julia Sanks, remembered: “Maybe he don’t care what he eat if he can be at his piano or his fiddle. Long as he makes his music, he just doesn’t mind what else…..He weren’t much for hard work, Mr. Delius, and that is a fact. Just that music. I ain’t heard nothing
like it since.”

Replaced by his older brother, Fritz fled Florida to escape his father’s anger and settled in Danville, Virginia as a teacher of piano, violin, theory and composition. His father, who had discovered his son’s location through the use of a detective, was pleased that Fritz had established a good reputation as a musician and seemed to accept his son’s new career. By 1886 Fritz’s father finally agreed to support his son’s musical activities and paid for him to begin formal musical studies in Leipzig, Germany. After several years of moving and composing he eventually married and moved to a village outside of Paris where he spent the rest of his life with the exception of a couple of years in England during World War I. His compositions were first supported by the German community but the support of the wealthy British conductor Thomas Beecham eventually brought Delius’ music to England. Beecham continued to be a champion of Delius’ music long after the composer’s death.

Delius considered the plantation songs he heard in Florida as the first significant contributions to his own unique musical style. Many of his early works demonstrate this love of spirituals which contribute to the unique flavor of the music. He composed The Florida Suite while he was studying in Leipzig. The first orchestral run-through was for an audience of three: Edvard Grieg, Christian Sinding and Delius. Because of this piece, Grieg immediately became an enthusiastic supporter of Delius and exerted a strong influence on his compositional style. Grieg also convinced Delius’ father to continue funding his musical studies and not send him back to America.

Daybreak uses an African-American dance called La Calinda which was later used in his opera Koanga (1897). Delius’ version of this popular dance is less frenzied in both pieces than the original popular dance which was ruled obscene by the state of Louisiana. This sunrise piece not only utilizes one of the songs that Delius heard from his veranda and in town but also lovingly depicts nature and the calm life along the slow and wide St. John River lined with oaks, pines, palms and Spanish moss.

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Concert 4 – THREE B's
Saturday, March 24, 8 pm Santa Cruz Civic Auditorium
Sunday, March 25, 2 pm Mello Center, Watsonville

Symphony No. 4 In E Minor, Opus 98 (1884-85)
Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)

Brahms wrote his last symphony during two summers in the tiny Alpine town of Mürzzuschlag, a locale so high that the fruit grown there hardly had a chance to ripen each summer before winter set in again. Always in the habit of writing disparaging remarks about his own music to friends, Brahms sent the first movement to Elisabeth von Herzogenberg with the note: “Might I venture to send you a piece of mine and would you have time to take a look at it and write me a word?...The cherries never get ripe for eating in these parts, so don’t be afraid if you don’t like the taste of the thing, I’m not all eager to write a bad No. 4.” He sent the first movement and a part of the second movement to her and her reaction both delighted and dismayed him.

Feeling that this symphony was a radical departure from his usual work, Brahms sought more approval from his friends during its creation than was normal. A later four-hand piano performance of the manuscript score before six of his most trusted musician friends roused little enthusiasm. The composer was deeply concerned that the less-understanding public would not appreciate the symphony at all but was resolute to “eat up the broth I have cooked for myself.” A rehearsal was arranged with Hans von Bülow’s orchestra in Meiningen, at which Richard Strauss, the second conductor of the Meiningen Orchestra, was also present. Von Bülow was enthralled and wrote Brahms: “Number Four is stupendous, quite original, individual and rocklike. Incomparable strength from start to finish.”

Apparently the orchestra was so well prepared that the first performance on October 25, 1885 under the composer’s direction was superb. Accounts of the audience’s reaction vary, although critics seemed to agree that the last movement was rather formless. This now seems a strange view in that the last movement was written in the familiar Baroque form of the chaconne: a set of variations written over a repeated bass line. The repeated line in this symphony does not always appear in the bass instruments but is always present. The anti-Brahms critics were delighted to point out that the symphony demonstrated few ideas. Even some of his friends such as the influential critic Edward Hanslick were ambivalent about the work, finding it to be too intellectual. Although she had reservations about the first movement, Elisabeth von Herzogenberg had a more supportive reaction to the second movement: “It is all melody from first to last, increasing in beauty as one presses forward; it is a walk through exquisite scenery at sunset, when the colors deepen and the crimson glows to purple.” Brahms conducted the symphony several times on a tour through Germany and the Netherlands where it was received with the warmest enthusiasm.

The relationship between Brahms and Robert and Clara Schumann was a close and satisfying one since the day they met. The Schumanns were very supportive of the young and obviously talented Brahms. Robert was fond of placing ciphers in his music referring to Clara. The most typical of these was a theme which used the notes C, B, A, G-sharp, A or transpositions of this theme. After Robert’s death in 1856, Brahms was as close to Clara as he had ever been to any woman, although it appears their relationship was purely platonic. Symphony No. 4 contains statements of the “Clara theme,” first heard in measures 13-15.

Of all cities, Brahms’ adopted home of Vienna seems to have been the last to warm to his final symphony. At the last orchestral concert he heard, on March 7, 1897, it caused a storm of enthusiasm. Demonstrations were held after each movement and at the end there was an extraordinary scene. Brahms stood to receive the thunderous applause, tears streaming down his cheeks. His usually hearty health had just suffered a terrible blow the year before, due to the death of his beloved Clara. His biographer, Florence May, relates: “He stood there, shrunken in form, with lined countenance, strained expression, white hair hanging lank, and through the audience there was a feeling of a stifled sob, for each knew that he was saying farewell. Another outburst of applause and yet another; one more acknowledgment from the master; and Brahms and his Vienna had parted forever.”

Piano Concerto No. 4 In G Major, Op. 58 (1806)
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)

Beethoven was known during his early years for his piano performance as much as for his compositions. Four of his five piano concertos, including the fourth, were written to showcase his pianistic skills and provide a major vehicle for his public appearances in concerts with orchestra. This concerto was not published until two years after the first performance, time for Beethoven to exploit the full financial potential of his composition until it was released to a public unrestricted by copyright laws. Another activity that brought in regular income was teaching. As a teacher, Beethoven attracted both the common people and royalty.

Archduke Rudolf was a musically gifted piano and theory student of Beethoven's who studied the master's works thoroughly. Beethoven dedicated several of his compositions to Rudolf, including the Piano Concerto No. 4. The cadenzas for this concerto were written for the Archduke in 1809-10. They not only utilize themes from the concerto, but also reflect the formal structures of the movements in which they occur. He wrote two different cadenzas for the first movement, giving the Archduke his choice. The second, titled "Cadenza, ma senza cadere" (“cadenza, without falling down”) is more uniquely brilliant and played more often. Beethoven said that the last movement cadenza must be short and followed his own recommendation with the one he had composed for the Archduke.

Beethoven's method of composition is intimately known, due to the numerous sketchbooks he left behind. The early drafts of several of his works start with ideas that would not be considered extraordinary. The miracle occurs through constant reworking, sometimes over the course of years, until ideas develop into seemingly spontaneous music. Another facet revealed in the sketchbooks is Beethoven's habit of working on several pieces at the same time. These works sometimes share concepts that are not obvious unless examined in the context of the sketchbook. In the same sketchbook with Piano Concerto No. 4 are sketches for his Concerto for Violin, Symphony No. 4, Symphony No. 5, "Waldstein" and "Appassionata" Piano Sonatas, the entire opera Fidelio (including the first three Leonore Overtures), the 32 Piano Variations in C Minor, and the three "Rasoumovsky" String Quartets.

Prince Lobkowitz, one of Beethoven’s most supportive patrons, sponsored the first performance of the fourth concerto. Two private concerts were given in his Viennese palace, one of which featured this work. The first public performance took place on December 22, 1808: the famous “Akademie” which featured enough material for two concerts. Along with the concerto, the concert included Symphony No. 5, Symphony No. 6, sections of the Mass in C Major, the aria “Ah perfido,” and the Choral Fantasia. Beethoven himself was the piano soloist for both the concerto and the Choral Fantasia. The concert hall was freezing cold, making this four-hour performance of difficult modern music a testament to the endurance of audiences of that period. Inadequate rehearsal time resulted in at least one orchestral breakdown during the concert. The concerto, however, appears to have made a great impression -- due, in large part, to Beethoven's own performance skills. Reichardt, present at this performance, reported: “He played...with astounding cleverness and in the fastest possible tempi. The ‘Adagio’, a masterly movement of beautifully developed song, he sang on this instrument with a profound melancholy that thrilled me.”

Beethoven's first three piano concertos were modeled after such Mozartian concepts as the dualistic role of soloist and orchestra maintaining a dialogue throughout. Concerto No. 4 breaks from this concept in many ways, especially in the importance of the piano as a member of the orchestra, contributing colors unavailable to the orchestral instruments. Fascinating details abound throughout the concerto, such as the use of the rhythmic idea that unifies his entire Symphony No. 5. Such a connection is not incidental, as his sketchbooks show this idea, described by Beethoven as “Thus fate knocks upon the door,” being developed at the same time for both the symphony and the concerto.

The second movement is a dialogue between strings and piano, with the strings playing almost entirely in unison. On paper, this movement of a mere 72 measures looks more like an interlude than like a fully developed musical entity. However, it is probably the most effective example of an instrument “speaking” that has ever been written. Liszt stated that this movement, perhaps the most dramatically conceived instrumental music written by Beethoven, represents Orpheus taming the wild beasts with his music.

The last movement finally reveals the force and energy so typical of Beethoven but missing in the first two movements. It begins with a technique favored by Haydn, starting in the “wrong” key of C major. This is not too startling to the ear since it follows immediately the second movement's key of E minor, providing a sense of modulation rather than errant harmonic practice. The trumpets and timpani, silent to this point, join in for the finale. The positive energy of the third movement, contrasted with the shadowy emotions of the second movement, reflect Beethoven's own mercurial temperament. The story is told that one day when he finished improvising for friends and turned to find them emotionally shattered, he roared with laughter and mocked: “We artists don't want tears, we want applause.”

Overture to Estrella di Soria (1841)
Franz Berwald (1796 -1868)

Franz Berwald was born into a musical family where he received the musical training typical for a violinist. He was talented enough to be accepted as a member of the Swedish royal court orchestra at age 16. When his father died, Berwald became the sole provider for his family and stayed in the orchestra for 16 years even though he wished to pursue a career as a composer. He studied composition with the orchestra’s conductor and was finally awarded a scholarship at age 33 to study composition in Berlin in 1829. He worked on several operas during his studies but received no performances or recognition for his efforts. He met Felix Mendelssohn who described the Swede as “arrogant, cold and philistine.”

His lack of musical success in Berlin led the ever-resourceful Berwald to give up composing and open an orthopedic clinic in 1835 that was highly successful. He invented several devices to correct congenital spinal defects in children that were used by other orthopedic doctors until several decades after his death. He returned to composition when he moved to Vienna in 1841 and completed his opera Estrella di Soria which was premiered to an appreciative audience. He moved back to Stockholm in 1842 where he composed most of his music that is still heard today including four symphonies and some choral and chamber music. His compositions, however, were not appreciated by his countrymen as they were in Vienna and he received few performances. He was ignored when teaching positions opened up and eventually became the manager of a glass-blowing factory in northern Sweden in 1850 and part-owner in 1859. He also helped start a sawmill in 1853. He continued with his musical pursuits despite the requirements of his day jobs and wrote to a friend: “Do not think I have abandoned music, but it cooks a meager soup.” He was finally appointed to a composition position at the Swedish Royal Academy but died a year later.

Berwald’s music was looked upon as being a bit bizarre for its time. His harmonic schemes and the changes he made to standard forms puzzled listeners and were partly responsible for a lack of support from the musical community made up of composers such as Robert Schumann and Mendelssohn. The noted critic Eduard Hanslick, writing of Berwald in 1869, considered him “a man stimulating, witty, prone to bizarrerie, that as a composer lacked creative power and fantasy.” The premiere of his opera Estrella de Soria by the Stockholm Royal Opera in 1862 was the highlight of his career. It was not performed again until 1946 to commemorate the 150th anniversary of his birth. His chamber music began to appear in print after the opera performance but, despite the efforts on his behalf by other Swedish composers, Berwald’s music was hardly performed until the 20th century. His symphonies, no longer considered bizarre, are now occasionally performed and recorded. The Danish composer Carl Nielsen wrote of Berwald in 1911: “Neither the media, money nor power can damage or benefit good Art. It will always find some simple, decent artists who forge ahead and produce and stand up for their works. In Sweden, you have the finest example of this: Berwald.”

Estrella di Soria is set in 15th-century Castile. The Countess de Soria plans to marry a general who has just fallen in love with a captured Moorish princess. After a complicated plot that involves betrayal, banishment, disguise, last-minute rescue and failed attempts to kill several of the opera’s principals, the general escapes with the Moorish princess. A despairing Estrella is left with no choice but to commit suicide. The overture sets up this tragedy by presenting several themes of contrasting emotions, including the lyric second theme which uses Estrella’s first-act aria melody. The overture closes with a fairly calm ending that was intended to blend into the beginning of the first act. Several different concert endings have been written to allow this most-popular of Berwald’s orchestral works to be performed as an independent work.

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Concert 5 – POETIC SONGS
Saturday, May 12, 8 pm Santa Cruz Civic Auditorium
Sunday, May 13, 2 pm Mello Center, Watsonville

Overture to Masquerade (1906)
Carl Nielsen (1865 – 1931)

Ludvig Holberg (1684-1754) was a Norwegian philosopher, playwright and historian who spent most of his adult life in Denmark and is considered to be the most important figure in the development of modern Norwegian and Danish literature. His Danish comedies were especially loved so when it was announced that an opera project was being undertaken by Nielsen using one of Holberg’s comedies, there was a strong negative reaction from the Danish literary community. The composer, fearing a disastrous reception at the first performance, started to write a prologue to the opera that would help pacify the audience. There was not enough time to finish the prologue and it turned out to be unnecessary. The audience and critics loved the opera and it quickly became known as the Danish national opera, surpassing even the original play in popularity.

Holberg’s choice of the masquerade as a subject was extremely relevant in Denmark in the 1720s. The hosting of public masquerades in the newly built playhouse in Grønnegade in central Copenhagen had sparked spirited public debate .The concepts of the Enlightenment and the individual’s rights to pursue not only life and liberty but also happiness were in direct conflict with the serious attitudes of the Scandinavian establishment. This light, comedic romp through serious topics was one strategy used in many plays of this time that inspired operas such as Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro and Cosi fan tutti. When Nielsen chose this play for his opera, he also chose to surround the actual meat of the message with an energetic, light-hearted, classical approach to the music. You can almost imagine him asking the question “what would Mozart do if he were me?” The result can immediately be heard in the overture which depicts the festivity and energy of a masquerade. To take the Mozart comparison one step further, Nielsen’s overture is a kindred spirit to the overture to The Marriage of Figaro. Although Nielsen is best known through performances of his symphonies, the overture and the Dance of the Cockerels from the third act of Masquerade are also frequently performed.

The opera revolves around a young couple who meet at a masquerade. They immediately fall in love but have been previously promised in marriage by their parents. Various complications, mainly due to the parents, come into this new love relationship until the next masquerade reveals that the lovers are actually the original betrothed. The boy’s father opposes the whole concept of the masquerade: the celebration of life, the rejection of a rigid society and the liberty to pursue a different dream. During the course of the opera both the son and the father make progress toward happiness and freedom. By the end of the opera, the cold and gloomy atmosphere of the north is dispersed by the joy and optimism of the masquerade and all that it represents.

Psalm 42, As Pants the Hart (1838)
Felix Mendelssohn (1809 – 1847)

Mendelssohn was one of the most respected musicians of his time when he became the municipal music director of Leipzig and conductor of the Gewandhaus Orchestra in 1835. Although he was hired by the Gewandhaus Orchestra as the conductor, the board actually listed his skill as a composer first among the many the talents he brought to the position. During his tenure in Leipzig, his many accomplishments included the establishment of the first German music conservatory. He also brought a love for the music of Bach and re-established the baroque composer’s name in this city in which Bach spent the most significant time of his career. Mendelssohn also often utilized Bach’s ideas in his own sacred music. The seven-part structure of choruses and solos in Psalm 42 looks extremely familiar to anyone who knows Bach’s cantatas.

One of the highlights of Mendelssohn’s time in Leipzig was his marriage to Cécile Jeanrenaud in the spring of 1837. They travelled to Freiburg for their honeymoon and Mendelssohn spent some of his time working on a four-movement version of Psalm 42. Cécile wrote in her honeymoon diary several times of Felix’s excitement over the work. When he wrote his sister Fanny about the psalm in June, she pressed him for more details: “Dear Felix, give me a sense of your psalm ‘As Pants the Hart.’ Does he pant in 4 voices, or 8, a cappella or with accompaniment?” Mendelssohn considered the psalm to be his best sacred work and continued to work on it for the performance of the 4-movement “honeymoon” version in Leipzig on New Year’s Day 1838. He had already begun work on the other three movements and a replacement for the last movement that would complete the psalm as we know it today. The resulting 7-movement work was first performed at a charity concert in February of 1838. The final version that he prepared for publication a few months later is almost exactly the same as the “charity concert” version. Mendelssohn was extremely excited about the publication of the psalm when he wrote to fellow composer Ferdinand Hiller: “If you are not pleased with the psalm in its new dress with the old lining, I shall shoot myself.”

Psalm 42 was successful with both audiences and critics. Robert Schumann attended the charity concert and wrote: “Mendelssohn has attained his highest elevation as church composer; yes, the highest elevation that modern church-music has reached at all. The grace, the art of workmanship which such a style demands, is fully displayed here; tenderness and purity in the treatment of details, power and inwardness of the masses, but, above all, what we cannot term other than the intellectuality of the whole, delights us, and proves what art is to him, as well as what it is to us through him.”

Mendelssohn’s music, especially his sacred music, began to lose favor in the late 1880s, even in England which supported his music long after German interest waned. Of all non-English composers other than Handel, Mendelssohn was the one who had made the biggest effort to become a valued part of the English musical scene. He made numerous trips to England and met and became the favorite composer of Queen Victoria. In the late Victorian era, “progressive” opinion turned against Mendelssohn. George Bernard Shaw denounced Mendelssohn in 1888 for his “kid glove gentility, his conventional sentimentality and his despicable oratorio mongering.” Rising English nationalism condemned Mendelssohn as a harmful influence on English music. These attitudes persisted in England until the second half of the 20th century. Even more damaging to his musical heritage in the 20th century was the campaign by the Nazis to eradicate all traces of this Jewish composer. After World War II, the gradual reintroduction of Mendelssohn’s music slowly reinstated him in the public’s eye as the significant composer he has always been in music history. A survey of the number of performances and radio broadcasts of his music in Germany revealed that this process actually did not appear to be completed until well into the 1990s. A statue of Mendelssohn in Leipzig that was removed in 1936 was finally reinstalled in 2008. It is ironic that the public’s interest in his music needed to be re-established just as the music of J.S. Bach needed Mendelssohn’s help.

Dona nobis pacem (1936)
Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872 – 1958)

Vaughan Williams was intimately familiar with the horrors of war. He enlisted as a private in the Royal Army Medical Corps the last day of 1914 at age 42. He was assigned to the Field Ambulance where he received training in first aid and handling stretchers. He left England for the battlefield in June, 1916. His assignment placed him in the front lines north-west of Arras. He was present for the Third Battle of Ypres at Flanders which took place after a serious miscalculation of the German army’s strength by the British. The battle took months and led to the death of 1,265,000 British, French, and German soldiers. Vaughan Williams found himself surrounded by terrible conditions where the flatten landscape was littered with dead bodies and millions of rats. The job to evacuate the wounded was so dangerous and physically and mentally exhausting that the stretcher bearers worked in two-hour shifts. He spent five months under those conditions before being transferred to a safer zone. He later spent time in France as an artillery officer. This experience was probably in the front of his thoughts when he later stated: “I've come to the conclusion that the works of Man terrify me more than the Works of God.”

Vaughan Williams began work on Dona nobis pacem in 1935 when the nightmare of another world war began to become reality. Italy had just invaded Ethiopia and Hitler had just instituted the draft in Germany which violated the Versailles Treaty. Prime Minister Neville Chamberlin followed a policy of appeasement which was supported by many in England who had strong memories of the previous war’s horrors. Vaughan Williams’ composition was a call for peace and an appeal to step back from the brink of another disaster. While he was writing Dona nobis pacem, the Spanish Civil War started and Hitler moved troops into the Rheinland, again in violation of the Treaty of Versailles. Vaughan Williams took a work he had written just before World War I, Dirge for Two Veterans, and used it as the starting point for his new work. His wife wrote in 1935: “The picture of Europe was a dark one. The dictators were declaring their aims and intentions. The Nazis were dividing the world between Aryans and Jews, in hysterical discrimination against some of their greatest citizens.”

The text used by Vaughan Williams comes from several sources: the Latin mass, poems by the American Walt Whitman, a speech by the English and Quaker parliamentarian John Bright and selections from the Old Testament books of Jeremiah and Daniel. The text “dona nobis pacem (grant us peace)” appears at strategic points throughout the cantata. The first section “Agnus Dei” invokes the Lord’s mercy and peace on us. It is followed by three poems by Walt Whitman. The book of poetry Drum Taps was inspired by Whitman’s American Civil War experiences as a nurse that were similar in many ways to Vaughan Williams’ war experiences. “Beat! Beat! Drums!” depicts the inescapable violence of war and its ability to replace everyday life. “Reconciliation” depicts the promise, sealed by a kiss, made to a dead enemy that the horrific deeds of war will be washed away by time. “Dirge for Two Veterans” depicts a moonlit funeral march for a mother’s son and her husband who were killed together. “Angel of Death” comes from John Bright’s lament to the House of Commons in 1855 against the tragic military incompetence demonstrated in the Crimean War in which over 600,000 died. The last section turns to Jeremiah and Daniel for a call to community action in the pursuit of peace. The final return of “dona nobis pacem” at the end expresses a desire for peace rather than the assertion that it will come without fail.

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