Season Opening: THE FIREBIRD!

This Midnight Hour (2015)
by Anna Clyne (b. London, 1980)

Born in London, Anna Clyne has been a resident of the United States for more than two decades, currently making her home in upstate New York. She is one of the most frequently performed composers of her generation, acclaimed for her innovative use of melody and her virtuosic use of the orchestra. This Midnight Hour was co-commissioned by the Orchestre National d’Île-de-France and the Seattle Symphony and premiered in the town of Plaisir, France, on November 13, 2015, under the direction of Enrique Mazzola.

A great deal happens in the course of this 15-minute composition. There are some wild forces at work but one also experiences some tender romantic moments. These two emotional poles are captured in two poems Clyne quoted in her score as an epigraph. The first one is by the Nobel Prize-winning Spanish poet Juan Ramón Jiménez (1881-1958) that reads in its entirety, in Robert Bly’s translation:

Music–
a naked woman
running mad through the pure night

The other poem is Evening Harmony by Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867), which at one point evokes a “melancholy waltz and languid vertigo.”

Balancing between madness and languor, Clyne constructed what one critic fittingly described as “a noirish nocturne.” The piece opens rather darkly, with a vigorous rhythmic ostinato in the lower strings. The nervous energy keeps increasing–occasionally interrupted by sudden rests–until a new section begins (“beautiful but eerie,” the score says). After a “dark and ominous” and a “ferocious” episode, the tension is finally relieved by the appearance of the “melancholy waltz.” But there is something oddly disturbing about this nostalgic melody: Clyne has half of the viola section playing the tune a quarter-tone sharp, to create a “muddier” sound. Both the hectic and the languorous music then return, until the latter is abruptly cut off by an “aggressive” drum stroke.

Piano Concerto in G major (1931)
by Maurice Ravel (Ciboure, France, 1875 – Paris, 1937)

Some of the most original piano music in the first half of the 20th century was written by Maurice Ravel. In the early Jeux d’eau (1901) and the great cycles Miroirs (1904-05) and Gaspard de la nuit (1908), Ravel developed what he himself called “a special type of writing for the piano,” and he defended his priority against critics who tried to trace his style to that of his older contemporary, Debussy.

Himself a highly competent pianist, Ravel, who was born 150 years ago this year, was a frequent performer of his own music (his performances survive on record). Thus, it is not entirely surprising that he should want to write a concerto; what is surprising is that it took him so long to do so—especially since we know that he had toyed with the idea as early as 1906. But those plans did not come to fruition, and it wasn’t until 1928, after his American tour, that he began to think about a concerto again. In the wake of this tour—and the recent, wildly successful premiere of Boléro—Ravel wanted to make the most of his popularity, and decided to return to the concert stage as a pianist, as his friend Igor Stravinsky had done a few years earlier. His work on a piano concerto for his own use was interrupted by pianist Paul Wittgenstein’s commission to write a concerto for the left hand alone. Ravel worked on both concertos concurrently. Asked by music critic Michel D. Calvocoressi to compare the two pieces, Ravel made the following statement:

Planning the two piano concertos simultaneously was an interesting experience. The one in which I shall appear as the interpreter is a concerto in the truest sense of the word: I mean that it is written very much in the same spirit as those of Mozart and Saint-Saëns. The music of a concerto should, in my opinion, be light-hearted and brilliant, and not aim at profundity or at dramatic effects. It has been said of certain great classics that their concertos were written not “for” but “against” the piano. I heartily agree. I had intended to entitle this concerto “Divertissement.” Then it occurred to me that there was no need to do so, because the very title “Concerto” should be sufficiently clear.

One might be surprised by the implication that Mozart’s concertos lack “profundity” or “dramatic effects.” Ravel, however, understood those terms in a very specific way, and the real meaning of his remark was something he left unsaid. By the “great classics” whose concertos are “against the piano” he probably meant Brahms (and possibly Tchaikovsky), whose expansive Romanticism did not appeal to him. On the other hand, he had boundless admiration for Mozart, as had, among French composers before him, Camille Saint-Saëns; by mentioning these two names, Ravel indicated the artistic lineage he claimed as his own.

Ravel emphasized his debt to Mozart in the G-major Concerto, but the jazz influence is equally prominent in the piece, particularly in the first movement. Ravel had been interested in jazz since the early 1920s when it first became the rage in the Parisian clubs that he frequented. He had included a “Blues” movement in his Sonata for Violin and Piano, written between 1923 and 1927. His enthusiasm grew considerably, however, after his visit to the United States.

The first movement of the Concerto in G has many of the trappings of classical sonata form: a succession of contrasting themes, and a clearly recognizable moment at which the recapitulation begins. But the emphasis, as always with Ravel, is not so much on motivic development as on the juxtaposition of self-contained melodies. The first one of these melodies is introduced by the piccolo in a very fast tempo; the piano accompanies it with lively figurations. This theme has been said to suggest a Basque folk melody: it probably contains material from a concerto on Basque themes Ravel had planned more than twenty years earlier. (Ravel was born in the Basque region near the French-Spanish border.) The tempo then slows down, and the high-pitched E-flat clarinet plays the first of several jazz-related motifs. The movement, which remained true to Ravel’s original “Divertissement” idea, has a magnificent piano cadenza at the end, preceded by two other striking solo passages: one for the harp, and one in which one woodwind instrument after another plays virtuoso flourishes against the sustained melody of the first horn.

The second movement opens with a long, expressive piano solo. It is a single uninterrupted phrase that goes on for more than three minutes; after a while, the piano is joined by the flute, oboe, and clarinet. A middle section follows, where the piano plays in a faster motion against the slow-moving melodies in the orchestra. The initial long phrase then returns, played by the English horn, and accompanied by the crystalline thirty-second notes of the piano. Ravel said that he had modelled this movement on the “Larghetto” from Mozart’s Clarinet Quintet (K. 581); the connection is subtle, but can be clearly heard in the softly moving long phrases in 3/4 time and the rich ornamentation of the melodic lines.

The last movement is a lively romp in perpetual motion. Like the first movement, it is a cavalcade of themes including allusions to marches, dances, and folk songs, and containing some jazzy “smears” in the trombones and some demanding solos for the woodwinds. The high jinks continue until the timpani and the bass drum put an abrupt end to the music.

As he mentioned in the statement quoted above, Ravel was planning to play the piano part in his concerto himself. Sadly, he was prevented from doing so by the onset of an illness that proved fatal. He developed a progressively debilitating nervous disorder which made it impossible for him to play the piano, though in 1932, he could still conduct. He entrusted the solo part to Marguerite Long, a great pianist who had been a close friend and dedicated performer of his works for many years, and they took the concerto on tour in some twenty European cities. In January 1933, Ravel conducted the premiere of his Concerto for the Left Hand, and shortly afterwards finished the three songs Don Quichotte à Dulcinée for voice and orchestra. But soon he was no longer able to read music or sign his name, much less to compose (though his hearing, his musical judgement, and his intelligence in general remained unimpaired). One may understand his distress when, in the last year of his life, he burst into tears: “I still have so much music in my head. I have said nothing. I have so much more to say.”

Symphony No. 1 (1988)
by Adolphus Hailstork (b. Rochester, New York, 1941)

Best known, perhaps, for his choral music, Hailstork has completed more than 250 works in all genres, including five symphonies. Among his other notable compositions, we might mention the frequently-performed An American Port of Call, the monumental Whitman’s Journey for baritone solo, chorus and orchestra, as well as Rise for Freedom, an opera about the Underground Railroad. A committed traditionalist, Hailstork has often described his own style as “authenticism,” in the sense that he is guided only by his own instincts, his background (in which elements of African-American and European elements happily co-exist), and the personal ideas which he expresses in his music.

Hailstork’s Symphony No. 1 was written for the Shore Festival of Classics in Ocean Grove, New Jersey, where the premiere was given by the festival orchestra under the composer’s direction on August 1, 1988. The work has been repeatedly compared to Prokofiev’s First, the “Classical” Symphony, on the grounds that both are 20th-century symphonies scored for a small Classical orchestra, as found in the works of Haydn or Mozart. Yet, just as America in 1988 was a very different place from Russia in 1917, the two works differ not only in their style but also in their artistic intent. Whereas Prokofiev’s allusions to the music of the 18th century were often distorted in a rather humorous way, Hailstork is more straightforward: one never has the feeling that the composer is wearing a “mask” of any sort; indeed, he always wears his heart on his sleeve. The classical four-movement symphonic form is not placed within quotation marks, and while the conventions are observed faithfully, the composer knows how to make the classical forms sound fresh.

Commentators have detected many sources of influence in the work, from jazz to African or South American music. Just before writing the symphony, Hailstork spent time in Guyana on a Fulbright scholarship, and, according to some critics, traces of shanto (a genre of Guyanese music related to calypso) may be found in the piece. The jaunty rhythms of the first movement, the sweet melodies of the second, the lively third-movement scherzo and the vigorous dance tunes of the finale add up to a symphony that is upbeat and joyful, entirely in the spirit of the summer festival for which it was composed.

Suite from The Firebird (1919 version)
by Igor Stravinsky (Oranienbaum, nr. St. Petersburg, 1882 – New York, 1971)

Sergei Diaghilev’s Paris-based “Ballets Russes” was one of the greatest ballet companies in history. Diaghilev, the director, combined the soul of a brilliant artist with the mind and skills of a shrewd businessman. He was committed to exciting and innovative productions, and he sought out the best modern artists and composers available. Among musicians alone, he worked over the years with Debussy, Ravel, Falla, Prokofiev, and others. However, he never made a more sensational nor a more fruitful musical discovery than when he engaged the 27-year-old Igor Stravinsky to write the music for Michel Fokine’s new ballet, The Firebird. It was the start of a long collaboration that was to give the world Petrushka, The Rite of Spring, Les Noces, Mavra, and Apollon Musagète, and which ended only shortly before Diaghilev’s death in 1929.

Since the end of the 19th century, there had been a great affinity between Russia and France. The political alliance between the two countries had brought Russia closer to France (France had always been close to Russia where French had long been the language of the educated classes). At the same time, the geographical distance and the difference in culture endowed things Russian with an exotic flavor in the eyes of the French. Both Debussy and Ravel admired and were influenced by the music of the 19th-century Russian masters Mussorgsky and Rimsky-Korsakov.

To create a story of an appropriately exotic flavor, Fokine and his collaborators used several Russian fairy-tales in the scenario of The Firebird. The stories of the beneficent Firebird and the evil ogre Kashchei the Immortal are combined in an ingenious plot, which Eric Walter White summarized in his standard book on Stravinsky as follows:

A young Prince, Ivan Tsarevich, wanders into Kashchei’s magic garden at night in pursuit of the Firebird, whom he finds fluttering round a tree bearing golden apples. He captures it and extracts a feather as forfeit before agreeing to let it go. He then meets a group of thirteen maidens and falls in love with one of them, only to find that she and the other twelve maidens are princesses under the spell of Kashchei. When dawn comes and the princesses have to return to Kashchei to Kashchei’s palace, he breaks open the gates to follow them inside; but he is captured by Kashchei’s guardian monsters and is about to suffer the usual penalty of petrifaction, when he remembers the magic feather. He waves it; and at his summons the Firebird reappears and reveals to him the secret of Kashchei’s immortality [his soul, in the form of an egg, is preserved in a casket]. Opening the casket, Ivan smashes the vital egg, and the ogre immediately expires. His enchantments dissolve, all the captives are freed, and Ivan and his Tsarevna are betrothed with due solemnity.

According to the original plans, the music for The Firebird was to have been written by Nikolai Tcherepnin (1873-1945), and, after Tcherepnin’s withdrawal, by Anatoli Liadov (1855-1914) and then by Alexander Glazunov (1865-1936). For whatever reason, none of these more experienced composers worked out, so score would not be ready on time. So Diaghilev approached the young Stravinsky, who had already worked for the Ballets Russes as an orchestrator. The young composer, honored by the commission, put aside the opera The Nightingale, whose first act he had just completed, and began work on the ballet.

To describe the magical world of fairy-birds and evil sorcerers, Stravinsky had a whole tradition to build on, a tradition he had inherited from his teacher, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. In the last years before his death in 1908, Rimsky-Korsakov had written three operas on fantastic subjects, one of which was titled Kashchei the Immortal (the other two were The Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh and The Golden Cockerel). In his fantastic operas as elsewhere, Rimsky-Korsakov made ample use of a special scale known to Russian musicians as the “Rimsky scale,” which was subsequently adopted by the master’s most famous pupil. The “Rimsky scale,” nowadays called “octatonic,” consists of a regular alternation of half-steps and whole steps: C — C-sharp — D-sharp — E — F-sharp — G — A — B flat. This particular grouping of tones, lying outside the major-minor system, is associated with the evil Kashchei. The music of the magical Firebird is also chromatic in nature, related in part to the Kashchei music. The motifs of the Tsarevich, on the other hand, are purely diatonic (using a traditional seven-note scale) and are derived from a central type of Russian folksong known as the “long-drawn-out” song (protyazhnaya pesnya). Both the story and the musical style of the ballet seemed highly original in the West, although in fact, both grew out of an indigenous Russian tradition.

Yet for all the Rimsky influence, Stravinsky’s first ballet shows a remarkable individuality. The handling of rhythm in particular (with already quite a few typical Stravinskyan ostinatos, or “stubbornly” repeated figures) is rather innovative, and the orchestration reveals the hand of a true master. Stravinsky knew how to draw the most spectacular effects from his enormous orchestra. One may cite special items that have made history, like the harmonic arpeggios for strings in the introduction or the solos for the small D-clarinet at several points. But even more important are the multifarious new combinations of instrumental colors appearing on virtually every page of the score.

The suite opens with a mysterious Introduction that leads into the glittering Dance of the Firebird, followed by the slow and solemn Khorovod (round dance) of the captive princesses, based on a melancholy Russian folksong first played by the oboe. “Kashchei’s Infernal Dance” is next, started by a fast timpani roll and dominated by a syncopated motif that arises from the lower registers (bassoons, horn, tuba) and is gradually taken over by the entire orchestra. This is the longest movement in the suite, including a lyrical countersubject symbolizing the plight of Kashchei’s prisoners. The “infernal dance” then returns, concluding with a wild climax. As a total contrast, the Firebird’s “Berceuse” (“Lullaby”) is a delicate song for solo bassoon. It leads directly into the Finale (the wedding of Ivan Tsarevich and the Princess), where the first horn introduces what is probably the most famous Russian folksong in the ballet. As this beautiful melody grows in volume and orchestration, it undergoes a significant metric change: the symmetrical triple meter (3/2) is transformed into an asymmetrical 7/4, bringing the music to its final culmination point.

The Firebird, a resounding success at the Paris premiere, remained Stravinsky’s most popular work for half a century. Stravinsky himself conducted hundreds of performances of The Firebird, mainly in the form of the suites, of which the 1919 version became the best known. And though his style and artistic outlook had changed considerably (and repeatedly) during the intervening decades, even the 80-year-old Stravinsky had every reason to like the work that had catapulted him to fame at 28.