In Memoriam
Music when soft
voices die
Vibrates in the
memory
The present collection of solemn music
offers works that give expression to deeper emotions, associated, in some
cases, with death, and in others simply with moments of calm and serenity .The first
of these is a March taken from Henry Purcell's Music on the Death of
Queen Mary. This heartfelt music was intended to mark the death of the
English Queen whose marriage had brought her husband William of Orange to share
the throne of England, after the expulsion in 1689 of her father
King James II. Her patronage was of value to musicians, but, ironically,
Purcell's music for the death of the Queen in 1694 came shortly before his own
death in 1695.
In London
Handel was much influenced by Purcell, at least when it came to English church
music. Bom in Halle in 1685, he had found employment at the opera in Hamburg
before moving to Italy, where he continued in the Italian melodic style of
writing before finding employment at court in Hanover and, almost at once,
lucrative work in London as a composer of Italian opera. Of this the opera Serse
is an example. Handel's Largo allows the king of the title, Xerxes, to contemplate
the beauty of nature. Handel later turned his attention to English oratorio, of
which he may be considered the creator. The Dead March from the biblical
oratorio Saul marks the death of the King, the fall of the mighty in
battle, slain with his son Jonathan, to be mourned by David, his successor.
Music of great serenity comes from Johann Sebastian
Bach, notably in the famous Air from the Orchestral Suite in D major,
popularly known as the Air on the G string from an
arrangement by the violinist August Wilhelm. The calm and peace of Bach's organ
music is heard in the Adagio from his Toccata, Adagio and Fugue in C
major and the tranquil happiness of the blessed in a transcription of a
cantata movement, known in English as Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring.
Bach's near contemporaries include three
distinguished composers from Venice, musicians whose work influenced Bach and
which he even transcribed. His arrangements for harpsichord include aversion of
Alessandro Marcello's splendid Oboe Concerto, the slow movement of which
is heard here in its original version. Antonio Vivaldi, a great violinist and
most prolific composer, is here represented by a pensive slow movement from a
concerto for flautino, the smallest member of the recorder family, while Albinoni,
with rather less justification, appears nominally at least in a moving Adagio
that owes its origin rather to the twentieth century Albinoni scholar Renzo
Giazotto.
The Baroque leads imperceptibly into the
classical, by way of Christoph Willibald von Gluck, innovator in opera and an
important figure in the theatres of Vienna and Paris. Gluck's opera on the subject of the legendary
musician Orpheus, who tried to bring back his beloved Eurydice from the dead,
includes the Dance of the Blessed Spirits, music for those who have
died, yet suffer no more.
The nineteenth century brings changes in
manners and outlook. At its start Ludwig van Beethoven dominates the music of Vienna, gigantic in his musical aspirations, and never more
so in a symphony conceived in celebration of the republican Napoleon, its
dedication discarded when Napoleon declared himself Emperor. The slow movement
of the Eroica Symphony, in memory of a great man, although Napoleon was
at the height of his career when it was written, is a funeral march. This
movement may be heard as the apotheosis of the funeral march, music of infinite
grandeur in its solemn purpose.
The Polish romantic composer and pianist Fryderyk
Chopin followed Beethoven, at least, in the inclusion of a funeral march
movement in his Piano Sonata No.2, here transcribed for orchestra. It
remains among the most familiar of such works.
Later romantic music of sadness is heard in
the Swedish composer Hugo A1fven. His Elegy is taken from incidental
music for Nordstrom's play on the life of the great Swedish king Gustavus Adolphus
ll. The Scandinavian elegaic mood recurs poignantly enough in Grieg's Last
Spring, music of great emotional intensity.
A French contemporary, Leon Boellmann, in
the course of his short life, won a reputation as a composer and organist. His
most famous organ composition, the Suite Gothique, written in 1895, two
years before his death at the age of thirty-five, contains the moving and
heartfelt Priere (Prayer).