The reason that the Symphony No. 2 by Sibelius also came to mind when I was reading about the interesting rhythmic aspects of the opening of the Symphony No. 40 by Mozart is that I recollected that there is something odd about the meter there as well. Let's just have a listen first.
Let's pretend we are taking it down in dictation. How would you notate that opening? Some kind of compound duple time, right? Either 6/8 or 6/4. Here are a couple of possibilities:
These are taken from the essay "Meter in the opening of the Second Symphony" by Tapio Kallio published in Sibelius Studies, ed. by Timothy L. Jackson and Veijo Murtomaki, Cambridge University Press, 2001. Tapio Kallio suggests that what we actually hear is the second version. The first version is how Sibelius notates it in the published score. Mr. Kallio offers some interesting evidence for his interpretation taken from the original manuscript held in the Sibelius Museum in Turku. Above is the original version from the manuscript and below is the final version:
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Sorry about the teeny tiny image. If you click it should be big enough to read. Kallio's example goes on for three more pages, but I think this opening gives us enough to talk about. Essentially, Sibelius moved the opening to later in the measure. What I hear is that in Kallio's hypothetical rebarring, the listener hears the barlines as being where the top of the chord rises from F# to G. It is also natural to hear just one rest instead of several. Notice this, though: in Sibelius' rebarring it is the F# and A that fall on the strong beats and the crescendo is delayed accordingly. Kallio offers some interesting commentary suggesting that the opening could be heard as a 2/2 meter instead of a 6/4 meter. Here is his analysis:
That doesn't look or sound like 2/2 to me, but maybe I'm missing something as he is relating it to the following woodwind theme. But I could certainly hear the opening in 3/2 instead of 6/4, despite the indicated phrase groupings. Actually, I think a lot of performers, myself included, try out different metric groupings when we are learning a piece. It gives you different perspectives and can add to your interpretive understanding. It seems as if what Sibelius is up to with his revised metric notation is to make the character of the opening more ambiguous, more tentative, to create a narrative in which the ambiguity of the opening leads to a later unfolding. Kallio mentions that the horns seem to contradict the meter when they come in.
The paper by Kallio goes into a lot more detail, so please seek it out if you are interested. In the meantime, enjoy the whole symphony. The last movement is a particularly successful symphonic finale in my view!
This is Leonard Bernstein and the Vienna Philharmonic. Notice that he beats all the rests of the opening measure!
As a child of the 60s I grew up, musically, surrounded by rock n roll and ragas, the Rolling Stones rhythm section and Alla Rakha on tabla. So I had a special interest in rhythm, even more than melody and harmony. The instrument I wanted to start on was the drums, but I got switched onto bass guitar instead. All this is by way mentioning that in recent decades interest in the rhythmic structure of music has grown more and more. Some older theorists, like Heinrich Schenker, tended to diminish the role of the rhythmic structure of music into mere surface activity, having little real importance. It makes one long for a Schenkerian analysis of Drumming by Steve Reich!
I got to thinking along these lines from reading Matthew Riley's recent book The Viennese Minor-Key Symphony in the Age of Haydn and Mozart in which he looks into the rhythmic structures quite thoroughly. The book finishes up with a magnificent discussion of the Symphony No. 40 by Mozart in which he goes a long way to explaining both why this symphony is so compelling but at the same time, so confusing. Here is how he describes the opening of the first movement:
The idea that this opening is a sped-up gavotte that has been overlaid with the breathless repetitions of an aria agitata and then squeezed into the form of the main theme of a fast symphony movement (statement-response presentation) accounts for the sense of something strange in a recognizable guise.
I'm going to have to explain all of that, but you can see that the foundation of the analysis rests on rhythmic character.
All this, in turn, reminds me of another symphonic opening that also has considerable rhythmic sophistication, the beginning of the first movement of the Symphony No. 2 by Sibelius. I had a lot of enjoyment a while back looking into all the different ways Sibelius found to end his seven symphonies. In today's post, I won't have any real original research, I am going to just talk about two brilliant analyses of two great symphonic openings.
First, let's listen to the two movements. This is The Chamber Orchestra of Europe conducted by Nikolaus Harnoncourt playing the first movement of the Symphony No. 40 by Mozart:
Here is the first movement of the Symphony No. 2 by Sibelius conducted by Charles Mackerras:
What the two openings share is a deceptive or misleading presentation of meter and phrase.
The opening of the Mozart, now that I come to think of it, has always bothered me and it is mostly because of the accompaniment that starts just before the theme. You don't quite know what just happened.
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It opens with the strings alone, piano, which is itself mysterious. But while the accompaniment starts on the downbeat, the theme begins on the upbeat. While rare, it was not unprecedented for the first movement of a symphony without a slow introduction to begin quietly. Beginning with this sort of accompaniment figure is unusual for a symphony at this time, but again not totally unprecedented. Let's let Riley isolate what is really unusual:
There are three genuinely distinctive aspects of the opening of K. 550/i: topic, accompaniment figuration, and rhythmic and metrical organization. The first is the buffa idiom of the aria agitata. A short rhythmic motive is repeated continually, as though breathlessly, in a way that would support a fast, syllabic text setting. [p. 251]
What he is referring to here is the eighth-note motive in the violins and its resemblance to a typical brisk aria from an opera buffa. It has long been noticed that a good part of the classical style owes a lot to the vivacious sparkle of opera buffa. Follow the link for the Wikipedia article on opera buffa which will give you some context. The innovation of the composers in the classical style was to humanize their instrumental music by giving it the bounce and immediacy of the opera buffa style.
Riley points out that the theme has a lot more motivic repetition than is usual. The basic idea is four measures, what I quoted above from the score. (It begins on an upbeat and goes to the second beat of the fifth measure.) That little E flat to D motive is repeated three times in the presentation phrase (the first two measures). What is unusual here is that buffa allusions are more usual in the subordinate theme, not the main one which is more likely to be in seria style (see the Wikipedia article on opera seria).
Typical of the first movements of minor-key symphonies is a "stormy" kind of texture that Mozart suggests with the busy accompaniment figure in the violas.
The whole presentation of the theme takes eight measures. I quoted the first four above. Here is the whole phrase:
Click both to enlarge
The time signature is alla breve, or with the half note as the beat, but Riley argues, citing the theorist William Caplin, that an eight-bar presentation in Classical period music is typically a standard four-bar presentation with the meter renotated. That makes this opening in 2/1, not 2/2 (for the whole argument, see Classical Form by William E. Caplin, Oxford University Press, 1998, p. 35). There is another twist: underlying this surface meter is the rhythm of a gavotte, a formal, aristocratic dance form. Here is how Riley analyses this:
Hypermeter is when you have the "real" meter at a higher level than the notated meter. There are fast movements, for example, in 3/4 time where the actual meter is one beat per bar. The actual felt meter might consist of three or four of these notated measures. This why, by the way, there are instances of compositions that end with a blank measure--it was needed to complete the hypermeter. Looking at the sketch above, we see the 2/1 meter in the bass notes, one per bar. Then, looking at the speculative gavotte rhythm at the top, this clarifies how we should hear that theme. The first little motive is really an "upbeat to an upbeat" as the gavotte itself starts with an upbeat. The first big downbeat here is really the beginning of measure three. The organization of the theme bears this out. Go back and listen to that movement a few times.
I think I will just post this part as it is and leave Sibelius to tomorrow.
Listening to the Saint-Saëns Symphony No. 3 finale this morning got me thinking about symphonic finales in general. The symphony, along with the concerto, is a perennial form, it seems. I think I have posted before on how the concerto just seems to reinvent itself with every generation so we get excellent concertos from Vivaldi to Mozart to Beethoven to Tchaikovsky to Berg to Shostakovich to Philip Glass. And somehow, the essential nature of the concerto, the contrast between the individual and the crowd, remains unaltered.
The symphony is a different beast however as it comes with a bit more baggage than the concerto. For one thing, the symphony, while having a pre-existence as an instrumental introduction in an opera, really came into being in the work of Joseph Haydn who put his stamp on it, making its construction a bit more specified than Vivaldi did with the concerto. The ritornello construction of the first movement of the Baroque concerto did not survive into the Classical Era, though the three movements (fast, slow, fast) did. The symphony as Haydn devised it had, in common with the string quartet, four movements: fast, slow, minuet, fast. The particular tempo words might change, the first movement might be an allegro or vivace, the slow movement might be andante or adagio, but the basic format was clear. The idea was that the first movement was characterized by a bit of drama and the working out of themes. It was the most challenging and intellectual movement (this was the 18th century when cleverness was in good odor). The second movement was the most emotional and expressive. The third movement had the character of a dance and the last movement was a joyous and rollicking finale. Sometimes the second and third movements were switched.
So this was the Haydn Classical symphony and a lot of it has lasted until the present day. Philip Glass in particular has been churning out symphonies that Haydn would likely recognize as such. Haydn's colleague Mozart, after writing quite a few brief three movement ones akin to the Italian opera sinfonia, adopted the Haydn model later on. Beethoven, though he lengthened the movements considerably, also followed the Haydn model--with one exception and therein lies the problem. For his last symphony Beethoven completely diverged from the model in the last movement and instead of giving us a rollicking finale he writes a half hour cantata with vocal soloists and chorus. This movement has had admirers and detractors ever since. Schubert's symphonies follow the Haydn model as well and even his last symphony, composed around the time of Beethoven's 9th, or perhaps a bit after, doesn't seem to show any influence from the Beethoven finale. Though long, Schubert's last movement is certainly exuberant. Beethoven seems to have been the first to wrestle with the finale, to the point of trying to re-conceive it entirely.
This seems to have led to a great number of later composers also wrestling with the finale. The basic contradiction seems to be between the urge to write something that is joyous and exuberant or to write something more "important" or "meaningful," showing perhaps the influence of romanticism.
In the case of Berlioz this seems to have taken over the whole work: his Symphonie fantastique is a program of fantastic and bizarre events. Bruckner in his symphonies adopts the length and drama of Beethoven but sticks to purely instrumental finales. Mahler's symphonies follow Beethoven's lead to the extent of not only using vocal forces throughout a symphony, as in the 8th, but continuing to transform the finale from something joyous to something dark and lamenting. His 9th symphony ends with a very long adagio. Instead of a celebration the movement is more of a farewell to existence.
Sibelius wrote some extremely successful symphonies in the early part of the 20th century and for the most part he followed the Haydn model with rather joyous or transcendent finales. He compressed the form into three movements in his 3rd and 5th Symphonies.
Symphonies by Prokofiev and Shostakovich sometimes recreate with considerable success the basic structure of a Haydn symphony; the "Classic" Symphony by Prokofiev and the Symphony No. 1 by Shostakovich are good examples. But Shostakovich in particular roamed rather far away in a couple of instances. His Symphony No. 13 in five movements, sets five poems by Yevgeny Yevtushenko for bass soloist, bass chorus and orchestra. His next symphony, No. 14, wanders even further: it comprises eleven movements for soprano and bass voices, string orchestra and percussion. It sets poems by Garcia Lorca, Apollinaire, Küchelbecker and Rilke. The Wikipedia article mentions:
The composer himself was initially unsure what to call the work, eventually designating it a symphony rather than a song cycle to emphasise the unity of the work musically and philosophically: most of the poems deal with the subject of mortality (he rejected the title oratorio because the work lacks a chorus; it is not a choral symphony for the same reason).
The problem of the finale really goes back to Beethoven. He struggled with the finale problem in a lot of multi-movement works, not just the symphony. The problem often seems to have been how or whether to give extra weight to the last movement. For Haydn this wasn't a problem because he didn't see the last movement as needing weight. It was a delight and a dessert. But for Beethoven and later composers, they felt the need to end with something more weighty, more serious, more climactic. And so the problem arose. I sometimes wonder if one of the causes of this, shall we call it a neurosis?, was the absolutely superb finale to Mozart's 41st Symphony. In despair at not quite being able to top that masterpiece, every composer since has, out of sheer desperation, tried to find an alternate solution. Hmm, one ponders, ok, I can't do anything more transcendent or magically contrapuntal so why don't I throw in a Big Chorus? Or just drone on drearily until everyone goes home? Or write something three times as long for an orchestra four times bigger?
Damned Mozart!
Ok, now for the musical examples. First, the finale to Haydn's Symphony No. 88 in a particularly whimsical performance by Leonard Bernstein:
The finale to the Symphony No. 41 by Mozart conducted by Jeffrey Tate:
The finale to the "Great C Major" Symphony of Schubert conducted by John Eliot Gardiner:
Like Aristotle's lost book on comedy, the Eighth Symphony of Sibelius is one of the most disconcerting blanks in the history of aesthetics. By early 1927, having just completed Tapiola and with the Symphony No. 7 premiere just three years in the past, it seemed that Sibelius was in the prime of his compositional life. Alas, though he was to live another thirty years, apart from some very minor works and revisions, he was to allow no more important works to be premiered or published. I express it in that way as it seems clear that Sibelius had begun working on the symphony, the subject of a commission from Serge Koussevitzky and to be published by Hansen in Denmark, as early as 1928. In May 1931 he wrote from Berlin, where he traveled once a year, to his wife Aino regarding the symphony:
Am engrossed in my work--but anxiety about everything gets me down ... My plan is to stay on until the end of June ... The symphony is making great strides and I must get it finished while I am still in full spiritual vigour. It's strange, this work's conception.
Over the next few years Sibelius alternately promised and reneged on delivery of the work. In 1933 its imminent premiere was even advertised in the press as the crown of Koussevitzky's offering of all the symphonies in Boston. But it was not to be. Though it seems likely it was finished--Sibelius even refers to having finished it many times--he never allowed it to appear. In 1945 he consigned a great basket of manuscripts, which likely included the Symphony No. 8, to the fire and in later years refused to even speak about it.
His whole life Sibelius was plagued with self-doubt and anxiety regarding his work. The genesis of the Fourth, Fifth and Sixth symphonies was a difficult struggle for him and at first he labeled the Seventh a "symphonic fantasy." It was the very importance of the symphonic medium that daunted him and finally, appeared to have silenced him. His admirers and colleagues like Koussevitzky, the American critic Olin Downes (a huge supporter of Sibelius' work) and many others could never grasp what the problem was, why Sibelius could not release a piece he had worked on for so long and one which was so eagerly awaited by the musical world.
Sibelius was an intensely private man and became more so in later life. He did not share his inner turmoil with the outside world and only partially with his immediate family. I have speculated in the past that perhaps Sibelius' silence stemmed partly from the currents in the musical world seemingly flowing away from his kind of writing. Stravinsky and Schoenberg were more and more the stars of the musical firmament. But after reading more of Sibelius life and work in Guy Rickards' monograph I suspect that was not the cause. Perhaps it was simply an overwhelming depression combined with the consequences of massive alcohol consumption--Sibelius was certainly an alcoholic, though he did manage to control his drinking for part of his career at least--that finally caused his creative energies to flag.
But what a tragedy! What we would not give to hear Sibelius' final "strange conception" after the astonishing delights of his previous symphonies! But alas...
Here is his one-movement Symphony No. 7 in a performance by the Swedish Radio Symphony conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen:
I had a theory professor once, when he was teaching 20th century theory, would devote one class to compositions written in the year 1951--the only reason for this was that was the year of his birth. But looking at things from a seemingly arbitrary angle can be interesting and rewarding because it shakes you a bit loose from the standard or common perspectives and allows you to, perhaps, see things from a new angle.
So the idle thought crossed my mind the other day of comparing, putting together, four different symphonies that all happen to have the number five. Number five, number five, number five, number five...
The first one is the venerable and much admired and discussed Symphony No. 5 by Beethoven, the mother of all fifth symphonies. It is a tightly-written piece that has been a kind of icon for tightly-written (or "organic") pieces ever since. It absolutely fixates on the falling third interval and the three short and one long note rhythm that we hear at the open.
Incidentally, while these little rhythmic cells are often (by me and others) referred to by the names they have in metric prosody, this one never seems to be given its proper name, which is quartus paeon. Another odd thing is that, while Beethoven often sought to emulate Mozart, in this particular realm he is really following in Haydn's footsteps, who was the one who invented this extremely focussed kind of composition. A perfect example is his "Quinten" quartet, the entire first movement of which is based entirely on two falling fifths in half notes!
The Beethoven symphony was began in 1804 and first performed in 1808. It is inconceivable that either Haydn or Mozart would have taken four years to write a symphony!
Let's listen to the Beethoven as the first of our fifths. This is the enthusiastic Gustavo Dudamel conducting the equally enthusiastic Orquesta Sinfónica Simón Bolívar of Venezuela in a recent performance in Paris:
The next fifth is by Franz Schubert and it was written in September and October of 1816. In some ways it is in an older tradition than Beethoven's and is a bit reminiscent of Mozart. Schubert did not really carve out his unique symphonic voice until his last two symphonies. This one is full of charm and grace, quite different from the Beethoven. Let's have a listen. This is Franz Brüggen conducting the Orchestra of the 18th Century:
We are going to jump way into the 20th century for our next two fifths. The first one is by the Finnish composer Jean Sibelius who wrote his Symphony No. 5 in 1916 and revised it in 1919. In this period of his life Sibelius was feeling not only the storms of the First World War like any European, but also the stresses coming from the feeling that his kind of composition was being made obsolescent by the early winds of modernism. His Fourth Symphony, premiered in 1911 was the first to receive mixed reviews, perhaps because there had been so many new kinds of writing from composers like Debussy, Schoenberg and Stravinsky. My feeling about this symphony is that it is a kind of structural marvel, like an intricate kaleidoscope of beauty. Sibelius wrote this about it in his diary: "It is as if God Almighty had thrown down pieces of a mosaic for heaven’s floor and asked me to find out what was the original pattern." This is Esa-Pekka Salonen conducting the Bayerischer Rundfunk:
For our final fifth, I choose the Symphony No. 5 of Dmitri Shostakovich. This is certainly one of the most exigent symphonies ever written. Faced with the disapproval of Stalin, who, in the company of his cronies had recently heard a performance of the composer's opera Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District, and was very offended by it, Shostakovich withdrew his Fourth Symphony, already in rehearsal, and set out to salvage his career (and possibly his life) from disaster. He somehow had to write something that would both reach out to the long-suffering Russian people and satisfy the demands of "socialist realism" required by the apparatchiks. Bear in mind that the symphony was written in 1937, right in the middle of one of Stalin's most devastating purges. Millions of people, including army officers, artists, government and party officials and just anyone who might be suspected of pretty much anything were sent into Siberian exile or simply shot. This might have been Shostakovich's fate, like so many other artists, if he had not been able to write a successful symphony. But he did and the Symphony No. 5 had a spectacular premiere with a half-hour standing ovation. Listening to it, you almost feel that you lived through these times along with him. This is Valery Gergiev conducting the BBC Symphony:
Who is it? You can guess right now, or you can wait a bit.
My fifth favorite symphony composer is certainly not Haydn. More and more, for me he is number one. Not only could he write a great symphony, he could do it over and over and over again, each time different. In fact, he did it one hundred and six times. Really, really well. Here is a sample, the "Drumroll" Symphony from the twelve he wrote to perform in London:
And he is not Mozart, either. Mozart couldn't manage as many great symphonies as Haydn, partly because he just didn't have the time. And some of those really early ones are not so great. But still, he did manage to write fifty symphonies and some of them are terrific, like the "Linz" that he wrote in four days. Mozart is number two.
Not Sibelius either. I got hooked on Sibelius early on with the Symphony No. 2 and though he wrote several other great ones, I still think that the first movement of the second is just wondrous and the last movement equally so. Sibelius is number three. Lenny and the Vienna Phillies:
Now it gets difficult so I've been listening to the last two side by side and I'm surprised to discover that my fifth favorite composer is also not Schubert, who comes in as number four. He only wrote eight symphonies (the Great C Major is not number nine because he never wrote a number seven), but the last two are just sublime and the earlier ones are pretty good too. Here is the "Unfinished" which only has two movements.
Which means, of course that my fifth favorite symphony composer is, wait for it, Beethoven! (Well, ok, I almost said Shostakovich,,,) Yes, I'm surprised as well. A few years ago I would have said that either Beethoven or Shostakovich were my favorite symphony composers, but I've changed my mind.
Mind you, when it comes to piano sonatas and string quartets, LvB is still number one.
I think...
What do you think?
UPDATE: I posted this too soon, forgetting to put up a Beethoven symphony and say why he is number five. Here is his Symphony No. 3 with Lenny and Vienna Phillies again:
The problem with Beethoven and this symphony in particular is that this is the moment when a lot of the things I dislike about the 19th century in music began: foremost are the bombast and the melodrama. I think that this is the piece in which they appear, pretty much for the first time, in symphonic music.
Continuing with a brief look at the music of Peter Maxwell Davies, today I want to have a glance at one of his symphonies. The one that is the most listened to on YouTube is the Symphony No. 5, dating from 1994.
The Wikipedia article mentions that he studied at the University of Manchester and the Royal Manchester College of Music (now the Royal Northern College), but it does not say who with, just that his fellow students included Harrison Birtwhistle. Later he studied at Princeton University with Milton Babbitt and Roger Sessions. His training and early aesthetic allegiances were very solidly within the high Modernist tradition therefore. But, as with so many other English composers, he was not entirely consumed by it and also absorbed considerable influences from Medieval and Renaissance traditions, especially English ones.
So it is not entirely surprising to see him following his early avant-gardism with works that, at least in their titles, refer to established genres like the symphony and string quartet. Interestingly, Davies picks up on perhaps the last of the great symphonists (outside of Russia, that is), Jean Sibelius. There is a YouTube clip of Davies introducing and conducting the Finnish master's Symphony No. 6.
The symphony is in one uninterrupted movement about 25 minutes long, though this is divided into a number of sections. Without the score I can't do any analysis (which would take a great deal of time, in any case), but we can let our ears be a guide. Though the music is not exactly tonal, it is not exactly atonal either. There are tonal centers which include C# and G (a tritone apart). Though I have not read any theoretical discussions of Davies's style, it seems to me that he might approach tonality in a way vaguely similar to the way Bartók did: transforming some traditional structures through replacing perfect fourth and fifth relations with tritone ones. Rhythmically, of course, they are very different.
The Symphony No. 5 of Davies is quite listenable, though very moody and dark. Here is the composer's own program note on the music:
The Symphony is based on material from my youth orchestra piece Chat Moss (1993), but behind both pieces is a hidden source: two plainchants from the Liber Usualis - the 'Haec dies' Easter music and 'Domine audivi' from Habakkuk 3:3. The music of Sibelius, in particular its possibilities of self-generating form, was also central to my thinking, having recently studied and conducted Sibelius's Symphonies 6 and 7 with several orchestras.
The symphony would seem a good choice for today then, Easter Sunday. So, let's have a listen. This is the Philharmonia Orchestra directed by the composer:
I've just been listening to the later Mozart symphonies and it has to be admitted that, compared to Haydn, when it came to the symphony Mozart was a bit of an underachiever. He only wrote forty-some while Haydn wrote one hundred and six and where Mozart wrote one symphony nicknamed "Paris", Haydn wrote six. Mozart wrote a symphony for Linz and another for Prague, but when Haydn went to London, he wrote twelve. Also Haydn was remarkably consistent: even from the earliest symphonies he adopted the four-movement form and continued it throughout his output. Quite a few of Mozart's symphonies are in the earlier three-movement Italian sinfonia form that was a slighter variety, suitable as an instrumental interlude in an opera or oratorio. Some of them feel a bit as if he had knocked them off in a day.
But all that being said, Mozart, in a number of late symphonies, achieved heights that Haydn could not quite match and even Beethoven could rarely equal. Among these is the Symphony No. 38, nicknamed the "Prague" symphony as it was first performed there in early 1787. First let's listen to it and then we will dig into it a bit. This is the Vienna Concentus Musicus, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, conductor:
I particularly like Harnoncourt's Mozart (and Schubert and Beethoven) because it is both rhythmically incisive and strongly expressive. He takes about ten minutes longer with this symphony than do most others, thirty-seven minutes as opposed to between twenty-five and twenty-nine minutes, and one of the reasons is that he repeats, not only the exposition of the opening allegro, but also the development and recapitulation, which is not marked to be repeated in the score. But it works, so why not--we can certainly stand to hear it again.
Like many of the later Mozart symphonies, though not the last two, this one begins with a dramatic adagio introduction:
This, while rhythmically energetic, just outlines the tonic. Immediately after, Mozart starts tonicizing some other keys, like B minor:
This is V6 to i in B minor. Then the same in E minor (flutes, oboes and bassoon):
Then V4/2 to I in G major:
Other keys he visits are D minor and B flat major before settling on A major, the dominant of D, which sets us up for the allegro in the tonic. This immediately suggests the subdominant, G:
Every major theme in this allegro makes use of syncopation; here it is quarter, half, quarter and then there is this variation with, again, the offbeats stressed:
A strong, repeated note theme makes an appearance:
And then this contrasting theme, which seems to grow out of the repeated-note one:
There are some slinky chromatic figures and the return of some earlier themes, but that along with some passage and cadential work, takes us to the end of the exposition.
Since this post is already pretty big, with a lot of scary musical examples, I think I will just stop here and let you discover how Mozart develops these themes in the rest of the movement. After he does that, the opening theme returns in the tonic key, which takes us into the recapitulation.
What is marvelous about this, and much Classical period music, is the fluidity, grace and adroit use of different keys to create a spontaneous sounding, but highly organized piece of music.
Let's listen again. This is René Jacobs and the Freiburger Barockorchester with quite a brisk version:
Footnote: Sometimes before doing one of my drive-by analyses of a Classical era piece I have a look at what Charles Rosen has written on it, but other times I prefer to just start from scratch. In this case I had quite forgotten that Rosen did a brilliant analysis of this movement in his Sonata Forms (pp 202 - 220) where he quotes nearly all of the first movement as a musical example. I recommend highly reading it for a detailed look at just how truly magnificent this movement is. Rosen calls it "Mozart's most massive achievement in the symphonic genre--a work which unites grandeur and lyricism as no other..."
There are a few works by Messiaen that could be regarded as symphonies, such as L'Ascension, "Quatre Méditations symphoniques pour orchestre" or, if you accept the very unusual orchestration, perhaps even Couleurs de la cité céleste or Et exspecto resurrectionem mortuorum. But the only work that he called a "symphony" right there in the title is the Turangalîla-symphonie composed between 1946 and 48 on a commission from Serge Koussevitzky for the Boston Symphony Orchestra.
The Turangalîla is a symphony like no other, a syncretic work that has so many facets and aspects that it can take a long time to really become comfortable with it. That is to say, it rewards repeated listening! At times it sounds like George Gershwin on a bad acid trip, at other times it sounds like a profound meditation on the depths of human experience: love, hate, life and death. And everything in between. It is a big and very bold piece, about an hour and twenty minutes long for large orchestra of over one hundred players of whom ten or so are percussionists. There are two important soloists, one on piano and one on ondes Martenot, one of the earliest electronic instruments. There are ten movements:
Introduction
Chant d'amour 1 (Song of love)
Turangalîla 1
Chant d'amour 2
Joie du sang des étoiles (Joy of the blood of the stars)
Jardin du sommeil d'amour (Garden of love's sleep)
Turangalîla 2
Développement de l'amour (Development of love)
Turangalîla 3
Final
There is a very fine recording of the new, revised version that Messiaen prepared not long before his death. The conductor is Myung-Whun Chung with the Orchestre de l'Opera Bastille and the two soloists most closely associated with the work, Messiaen's wife, Yvonne Loriod, piano and her sister, Jeanne Loriod, ondes Martenot. The recording was made in 1991, the year before Messiaen's death and under his supervision and comes with extensive notes by the composer:
It is particularly useful that Messiaen provides examples of the four main themes of the work:
It is well worth reading Messiaen's notes though they may not reveal as much as you may hope! For example, apart from mention of many of the techniques we have discussed, such as "non-retrogradable" rhythms, he also mentions something he calls "rhythmic characters" in which there are three elements: one is active, taking the leading role, another is passive, reacting to the first, and the third is apart and remains the same. This technique, which he uses in a number of other pieces as well, is never explained more clearly except to say that one character may augment, the other may diminish and the third stays the same. One can imagine how this might work, but further explication would require close study of the score, which, for now at least, I do not have.
The Turangalîla Symphony is one of Messiaen's most popular works, partly due to the fact that it is one of the few orchestral pieces by him that can fit into a normal orchestral program. It has, over the sixty-seven years since its composition, become one of the classics of 20th century music, a piece that can be listened to and enjoyed for the sheer pleasure of it, and one that is, at the same time, an influence and inspiration to other composers. Esa-Pekka Salonen, as guest artist with the New York Philhamonic this season, has chosen presenting this work as his major project other than conducting his own music.
I said that the orchestra is large: it includes triple winds and a large string body with 16 first and second violins and the other sections to match. The extensive percussion includes glockenspiel, celesta, vibraphone, triangle, temple blocks, Turkish cymbal, normal cymbals, Chinese cymbal, tam-tam, Basque drum, maracas, side drum, Provençal tabor, bass drum and tubular bells. And out front, of course, the solo piano and ondes Martenot. If you hear something that sounds like the sound-track to an old Star Trek episode, that's probably the ondes Martenot.
The title of the work is the combination of two Sanskrit words. Turanga means, loosely, movement and rhythm, while Lîla signifies divine action on the cosmos, creation and destruction and love.
There are very simple and lyrical sections, such as we find in the Garden of love's sleep, and enormously complex sections with many layers of interlocking rhythms; there are chorale-like chants and wild orgiastic dances. It is safe to say, I think, that this work can stand alongside The Rite of Spring by Stravinsky as one of the great works of the century, bold, challenging and ultimately rewarding.
Luckily we have a good version of the complete work on YouTube of the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, conducted by Myung-Whun Chung (even if the camera work may make you a bit dizzy):
To balance out my unkind remarks about Bruckner (and Mahler), let me direct your attention to one of those many interesting composers whose work was completely overshadowed by the relentless march of Modernism. I am talking about Vagn Holmboe. Who? Yes, exactly. Holmboe was a Danish composer who wrote, among other things, thirteen symphonies. A while ago I ran across an appreciation of him by Richard Taruskin that was written, I think, on the occasion of Holmboe's death in 1996. [UPDATE: Actually it was written in 1994, just a couple of years before.] He was born in Jutland in 1909. He is Denmark's second symphonist after Carl Nielsen.
In any case, I finally got around to listening to some Holmboe and, not surprisingly, given the praise from Taruskin, I was quite impressed. Here is his Symphony No. 8, "Sinfonia boreale" conducted by Owain Arwel Hughes with the Århus Symphony Orchestra:
That is pretty good, isn't it? Rather more interesting than Bruckner, wouldn't you say? Perhaps, and I say this very tentatively, even more interesting than Mahler? But the music of people like Holmboe was anathema to the modernists. For one thing it is tonal and makes expressive gestures instead of perplexing the audience with musical structures that have no real expressive content. So it had to be banned, or at least sneered at with every opportunity. They, the modernist intelligentsia, did the same with Shostakovich, but his music seems to have won itself an ever-growing audience despite their best efforts. Maybe it is time to give Holmboe a chance. Here is his Symphony No. 5 with the same performers:
The symphonic ideal is to create structures of sound that are full realizations of life, narrative, drama, emotion, the world--at least that is how it is thought of by some. At the very least there are some interesting conjunctions between a few symphonies and philosophy. I think this comes from the nature of the symphony as the highest and most abstract and idealized instrumental form.
An early example is the Haydn symphony nicknamed "The Philosopher" for no good reason other than the somber dialogue between two cors anglais and two horns in the first movement:
Perhaps Das Lied von der Erde by Mahler might just quality as it contains world-weary Chinese poetry, already a rather philosophical literary form, such as (translated into German) this:
Schon winkt der Wein im gold'nen Pokale, Doch trinkt noch nicht, erst sing’ ich euch ein Lied! Das Lied vom Kummer soll auflachend in die Seele euch klingen. Wenn der Kummer naht, liegen wüst die Gärten der Seele, Welkt hin und stirbt die Freude, der Gesang. Dunkel ist das Leben, ist der Tod.
The wine beckons in golden gobletsbut drink not yet; first I’ll sing you a song.The song of sorrow shall ring laughingly in your soul.When the sorrow comes, blasted lie the gardens of the soul,wither and perish joy and singing.
Dark is life, dark is death.
Mahler is one of those who thought a symphony could encompass a whole world. Bernstein at least thought that Das Lied von der Erde was actually a symphony:
And of course, the strongest example is possibly the Symphony No. 4 by Carl Nielsen which seems to be, by his own account, a realization of the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer. Nielsen said of the symphony that "the title Inextinguishable suggests something that only music itself can express fully: the elementary will of life." Quoting from Wikipedia:
Schopenhauer believed that humans were motivated by only their own basic desires, or Wille zum Leben ("Will to Live"), which directed all of mankind.
And here is the symphony:
Perhaps just a tad more dynamic than Schopenhauer had in mind, but still...
But apart from these few examples, few symphonies have much of a philosophical aspect, focusing instead on orchestral splendor, or spiritual transcendence. The latter is well exemplified by the Symphony No. 5 of Henryk Górecki:
Or by the Symphony No. 7 of Einojuhani Rautavaara:
Symphonies are usually thought to be public celebrations or statements of something universal so relatively few of them are intense personal statements. The exception is the work of Allan Pettersson, whose symphonies have achieved a certain amount of renown despite being intensely personal:
So the philosophical symphony is something relatively unexplored, which is why I am working on one at the moment. Rather atypically for me, I actually have an overall plan for the work and even a sense of how some of the structure should go. The first movement, titled "Chuang Tzu and the Butterfly" is based on a section from The Chuang Tzu, a collection of writings attributed to the 4th century BC Chinese philosopher. In it he recounts this tale:
Once I, Chuang Chou, dreamed that I was a butterfly and was happy as a butterfly. I was conscious that I was quite pleased with myself, but I did not know that I was Chou. Suddenly I awoke, and there I was, visibly Chou. I do not know whether it was Chou dreaming that he was a butterfly or the butterfly dreaming that it was Chou... [Excerpted from Wing-Tsit Chan, A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy, p. 190]
This beautiful and perplexing story, rejecting the distinction between subject and object and reality and unreality, seemed to me to be translatable into music. There will be a section representing the butterfly and a section representing Chuang Tzu (or Chou) and a section of the former dreaming it is the latter and the latter dreaming it is the former. Among the things that music can do, is suggest dreamlike states. The section of the Rautavaara symphony I put up above is labeled: Come un sogno, "Like a dream". And as for the one dreaming it is the other, well, that would seem to be the occasion for some subtle invertible counterpoint à la the mirror fugues that Bach created in the Art of Fugue. One fugue is the upside-down mirror image of the other.
My second movement I envision as a theme and variations on the Five Arguments for the Existence of God by Thomas Aquinas. That ought to be rather challenging. Some are easy, such as the argument from motion, but others? Just how would you represent the idea of contingency in music?
The third and last movement will be a kind of rhapsody on Plato, specifically the idea of the Form of the Beautiful and I have a few ideas about that, inspired by Plato's Allegory of the Cave. One other thing music is good at is the slow revealing of a structure, which I plan to take advantage of.
Speaking of Plato, there is rather an inspiring example of translating him into music from Leonard Bernstein, though it is not a symphony. Bernstein titles it: "Serenade after Plato's Symposium" and it is scored for solo violin, strings, harp and percussion. There are five movements:
There is a symphonic mainstream, but there are also subsidiary currents that depart from it. One of the most interesting--and peculiar--is the "symphony-cantata", that is, a piece that combines the symphony genre with the cantata genre. The symphony is usually defined as a serious piece for orchestra in several movements and the cantata as a piece for voices and orchestra, also in several movements, usually with chorus. Both genres have a long history, as you can read in the Wikipedia articles I linked. But they have only been combined on a few occasions. What distinguishes a "symphony-cantata" from simply being a cantata is the orchestra being given more of an independent role.
The most famous example of a symphony-cantata is never, to my knowledge, actually called that, but it obviously fits the definition: this is the Symphony No. 9 by Beethoven, often nicknamed the "Choral" Symphony. It is the only one of his nine symphonies to make use of vocal soloists and a choir. You might think of it as a normal symphony with a cantata as the last movement. Indeed, it is a characteristic of all the examples I am going to look at, that there are purely instrumental movements as well as movements with soloists and choir (or just choir). One other example is the Symphony No. 13 of Shostakovich for orchestra, bass soloist and bass choir on poems by Yevgeny Yevtushenko. The Symphony No. 14 of Shostakovich is for two vocal soloists and orchestra, no choir, so it does not quite fit the definition. On the other hand, some of Mahler's symphonies certainly do, but they are a whole subject in themselves so I won't look at them here.
Beethoven burst the bounds of the symphonic genre in a very significant way with the Symphony No. 9. A very long work, at well over an hour, even longer than his Symphony No. 3, it is scored for a large orchestra, a quartet of vocal soloists and four-part choir. The text is a poem by Friedrich Schiller that celebrates the unity and brotherhood of mankind--sentiments we might link to the ideals of the French Revolution. Beethoven's setting in the fourth movement of the 9th Symphony illuminates an important transition in music history: the change from the aristocratic patronage of the arts to broadening out to appeal to the middle-class, newly liberated, to some extent, and newly prosperous as well (due to the industrial revolution). Let's have a listen to the Symphony No. 9 by Beethoven which I have blogged about in detail here, here, here and here. This is Daniel Barenboim conducting in his complete survey of the symphonies during the 2012 Proms:
As I mentioned in my post on the last movement, linked above, this movement is a bit of a dog's breakfast, meaning rather a mess, with awkward vocal parts that are just barely singable. Verdi in particular noted that, while praising the first three movements. Despite this, there is that great tune that Beethoven struggled a long time to create. The piece has far more admirers than critics, of course. But what is interesting is to set it alongside some subsequent "symphony-cantatas" which is the subject of this post.
The second example is a rarely-performed piece by Felix Mendelssohn. In 1840 there were festivities in celebration of the 400th anniversary of the invention of printing and Mendelssohn wrote a piece that he termed a symphony-cantata which was performed in Leipzig twice, once at the command of the King of Saxony and again at the Birmingham Festival in England. It was a very popular piece in the 19th century, but has been almost forgotten today. The Symphony No. 2 in B-flat major, Op. 52, is commonly known as Lobgesang (Hymn of Praise) and uses texts from the Bible which you can find at the Wikipedia link. What is particularly interesting is the historical context. Mendelssohn was born into a prominent Jewish family; he was the grandson of the famous philosopher Moses Mendelssohn. But he, like other musicians of the time, was baptised a Christian and rose to the very heights of power in the musical world of Germany. He was also famous internationally, being particularly successful in tours of England. For much of the 19th century it seemed as if the revolutionary ideals of the late 18th century were being realized. Prejudice was diminishing, peace, at least in Europe, was widespread, and the middle-class was becoming more and more prosperous. Science and industry were moving forward with great success. By the end of the century the time was being referred to as the "Banquet Years" (see the book by Roger Shattuck). The symphony by Mendelssohn is a fine work, well worth listening to, and one that wholeheartedly celebrates the good fortune felt in 19th century Europe. Here is a fine performance from the 2009 Proms:
One suspects that the fact that the symphony is not popular now is that so much of the 20th century seemed to utterly repudiate the comfortable optimism of the 19th century, of which this is such a fine example. The 20th century saw the near-extermination of Jews in Europe. Those composers who did not flee from Germany in the 1930s often ended up in concentration or death camps. Music recalling this dark time is deeply bitter and pessimistic. The Symphony No. 13 of Shostakovich is an excellent example of this type of symphony-cantata, with its denunciation of anti-Semitism. Here is a performance conducted by Valery Gergiev:
But in between the slightly bland, from our point of view, optimism of the Mendelssohn and the sardonic bitterness of the Shostakovich comes a very odd example of the symphony-cantata from, of all people, Charles Ives. Written between 1910 and 1924, bracketing the First World War, his Symphony No. 4 consists of four movements, two of which have choral parts and the other two being purely instrumental. It is a very complex work, but one rife with oddities and aesthetic inconsistencies. Ives' earlier symphonies tend to be derivative of works by Schubert and Dvořák and with the Symphony No. 4, one senses that he is experimenting with the form. He finally seems to have worked out a successful approach to the multi-movement orchestral form in his two Orchestral Sets composed around the same time. The spirit of the symphony, one gathers from Ives' comments, is existential and questioning. Here is a performance conducted by David Robertson:
Apart from the choir, there is also a prominent part for piano. The first movement is a meditative hymn setting an Epiphany text by John Bowring. The second movement is one of Ive's complex tapestries weaving together all sorts of disparate elements and tunes. The third movement, most incongruously, is an updated setting of a student exercise in fugue! The last movement combines the choir of the first movement with the complexity of the second. For me, this is an aesthetic hodge-podge that is simply unsuccessful. But it is much admired in some quarters. I suppose you could consider this a very early attempt at the multiplicity of post-modernism. Or an experiment that just doesn't work! What do you think?
This is a lot harder than my other two symphony lists, 20th century and 18th century. For one thing, the 19th century was really the apotheosis of the symphony, when it became everything. As Mahler said, "A symphony must be like the world. It must contain everything." There were an awful lot of symphonies written in the 19th century when it was, alongside opera, the most popular and prestigious musical form. 19th century symphonies are also formidably long, often an hour or more in length, so they take a lot more time to absorb. As I have with other periods, I will list them in chronological order:
1. Symphony No. 5 in C minor, op. 57 by Ludwig van Beethoven. Yes, this was completed and first performed in 1808 so it is indeed a 19th century composition. Probably the best example of an organically-integrated composition and hugely influential. Chamber Orchestra of Europe, conducted by Nikolaus Harnoncourt:
2. Symphony No. 8 in B minor, D. 759, the "Unfinished", by Franz Schubert. This symphony prefigures so much of the eerie, uncanny effects explored in the 19th century that it is surprising that it was written in 1822. Also Harnoncourt:
3. Symphony No. 9 in D minor, op. 125 by Beethoven. The link goes to the first of several posts I did on this symphony previously. This symphony shaped the whole 19th century approach to the genre. It was the reason that Mahler, among others, included vocal soloists and choirs in some of his symphonies and the first movement in particular was so great an influence on Bruckner that all of his nine symphonies are inspired by it. Completed in 1824. Daniel Barenboim, conductor Royal Albert Hall, 27 July 2012:
4. Symphony No. 9 in C major, D. 944, the "Great C major" by Schubert was completed in 1826. This is the last great classical symphony and an astonishingly brilliant work, driven throughout by dancelike rhythms.Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, conductor:
5. Symphonie fantastique, op. 14 by Hector Berlioz, composed in 1830, really kicks off the Romantic symphony in one amazing burst of creativity. No previous symphony had made such thorough-going use of a cyclical theme, nor so forthrightly presented itself as a kind of fictionalized autobiography. Stéphane Denève conducting the Chicago Symphony:
6. Symphony No. 2 in C major, op. 61 by Robert Schumann was inspired by the Schubert Great C major. Composed in 1846. The Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra (Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks), dir Leonard Bernstein:
7. Symphony No. 1 in C minor, op. 68 by Johannes Brahms. Though sketches for this work date from 1854, it was not actually completed until 1876! As the century wore on, the influence of Beethoven in particular weighed more and more heavily on composers like Brahms, who sought to revive the pure instrumental tradition of the classical symphony. For much of the mid-century the "symphonic poem" of Franz Liszt and others was the preferred form. I'm not talking about them here as they really are a different genre. But just as it might have been thought that the instrumental symphony had faded into obsolescence, Brahms reinvigorated it with this work. Wiener Philharmoniker, Leonard Bernstein:
8. Symphony No. 7 in E major by Anton Bruckner was finished in 1885. Inspired by Beethoven, but also under the heavy influence of Wagner, this is one of the most popular of Bruckner's nine symphonies. Lucerne Festival Orchestra conducted by Claudio Abbado:
9. Symphony No. 6 in B minor "Pathétique" by Pyotr Tchaikovsky was premiered in October 1893. His last symphony ends with a "dying away" (morendo) which was both an aesthetic innovation and a provocation to some to read this work as a farewell to life--Tchaikovsky died only nine days after conducting the premiere.Moscow Radio Symphony Orchestra, Conductor - Vladimir Fedoseyev:
10. Symphony No. 9 in E minor, the "New World"by Antonín Dvořák was also composed in 1893, but premiered in December of that year, just after the Tchaikovsky. This is an enormously popular work, both at the premiere and to this day. Wiener Philharmoniker conducted by Herbert von Karajan:
Now I know what you are going to say: "what about Mahler?" Yes, indeed, and I would have picked the Symphonies nos. 5 and 9, but the thing is that they were both composed in the first decade of the 20th century. I know that some historians would like to "adjust" the period a bit so that it extends from 1815, the Battle of Waterloo, to 1914, the beginning of World War I, but frankly, what has that to do with the symphony? Don't answer that! But in order to placate Mahler lovers, let's end with a bonus symphony:
11. Symphony No. 3 by Gustav Mahler, completed in 1896. This is the longest symphony in the standard repertoire, clocking in at over an hour and a half. There are six movements. Mariss Jansons Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks:
As an extra bonus, let me put up one movement from the Symphony No. 5 by Mahler. The Adagietto, one of the loveliest pieces ever written. Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, Leonard Bernstein:
