FAVOURITE OVERTURES Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy (1809 - 1847) Die Hebriden (Fingal's Cave), Op. 26 Robert Schumann (1810 - 1856) Overture, Scherzo &...
FAVOURITE OVERTURES
Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy (1809 - 1847)
Die Hebriden (Fingal's Cave), Op. 26
Robert Schumann (1810 - 1856)
Overture, Scherzo & Finale, Op. 52
Manfred, Op. 115
Carl Maria von Weber (1786 - 1826)
Der Freischütz
Euryanthe
Oberon
Antonin Dvořak (1841 -
1904)
Carnival, Op. 92
Felix Mendelssohn was born in Hamburg in 1809, son of the banker Abraham
Mendelssohn and grandson of the great Jewish thinker Moses Mendelssohn, the
model for Lessing's Nathan the Wise, the epitome of tolerance in a generally
intolerant world. In 1812 the family moved to Berlin after the French occupation
of Hamburg and it was there that Mendelssohn received his education, in music as
a pupil of Carl Zelter, for whom the boy seemed a second Mozart. As a child he
was charming and precocious, profiting from the wide cultural interests of his
parents and relations, excelling as a pianist and busy with composition after
composition. In 1816 he was baptized a Christian, a step that his father took
six years later, accepting what Heine described as a ticket of admission into
European culture although it was one not always regarded as valid by prejudiced
contemporaries.
Abraham Mendelssohn sought the best advice when it came to his son's choice
of career. Cherubini, director of the Paris Conservatoire, was consulted, and,
while complimenting Abraham Mendelssohn on his wealth, agreed that his son
should become a professional musician, advice given during the course of a visit
to Paris in 1825 when Mendelssohn met many of the most distinguished composers
and performers of the day. In Berlin his career took shape, with prolific
composition and activity as a pianist and as a conductor. His education was to
include a period of travel throughout Europe, a Grand Tour that took him as far
north as Scotland and as far south as Naples, his journeys serving as sources of
inspiration.
In 1835 Mendelssohn was appointed conductor of the Leipzig Gewandhaus
Orchestra. There were, at the same time, other commitments to be fulfilled in a
short career of intense activity. In Leipzig he established a series of
historical concerts, continuing the revival of earlier music on which he had
embarked under Zelter with the Berlin performance of Bach's St. Matthew
Passion in 1829. At the same time he gave every encouragement to
contemporary composers, even to those for whom he felt little sympathy. At the
insistence of the Russian King Friedrich Wilhelm IV he accepted an official
position in Berlin, but this failed to give him the satisfaction he had found in
Leipzig, where he established the Conservatory in 1843 and where he spent his
final years until his death at the age of thirty-eight on 4th November 1847, six
months after the death of his beloved sister Fanny.
In childhood Mendelssohn had written thirteen string symphonies between the
ages of twelve and fourteen. In what must pass for maturity, starting at the age
of fifteen, he wrote five more symphonies for full orchestra. Symphony No.3
in A minor, opus 56, was the second in conception and the last in order of
completion. Its first inspiration came from a visit to Scotland in 1829. In
April Mendelssohn had arrived in London, after an unpleasant voyage from
Hamburg. Two months later in a letter to his teacher Zelter he mentioned his
plans for the summer, after the end of London season, a projected journey to
Scotland, a country that figured largely in romantic imagination thanks to the
work of Sir Walter Scott. Accompanied by his friend Karl Klingemann he travelled
north. In Edinburgh he recalled the story of Mary, Queen of Scots, and the
murder of her secretary David Rizzio in the palace of Holyrood, and in the
ruined chapel first entertained the idea of a Scottish Symphony. Further
north he could comment on the climate, remarking that the Highlands brew nothing
but whisky, fog and foul weather, while the voyage by steamer to see the island
of staffa and what he described as the odious Fingal's cave, made him sea-sick.
In spite of this he immediately sketched the opening theme of the Hebrides
Overture, which was later revised to be performed in 1832 in London, where
it won immediate popularity.
In the autumn of 1830 Mendelssohn was in Italy and it was there that he
completed, revised and later rechristened the Hebrides Overture. Two
symphonies occupied his thoughts, while a third was commissioned for the
Reformation centenary. The Reformation Symphony, No.5, was completed in
1832, and the Italian Symphony, No.4, in 1833. The Scottish Symphony was
longer in intermittent gestation and was only finished in 1842 and given its
first performance in Leipzig in the same year.
Robert Schumann must seem in many ways typical of the age in which he lived,
combining a number of the principal characteristics of Romanticism in his music
and in his life. Born in Zwickau in 1810, the son of a bookseller, publisher and
writer, he showed an early interest in literature and later made a name for
himself as a writer and editor of the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, a
journal launched in 1834. After a period at university to satisfy the ambitions
of his widowed mother, but still showing the wide interests of a dilettante,
Schumann was able to turn more fully to music under the tuition of Friedrich
Wieck, a famous teacher, whose energies had been largely directed towards the
training of his beloved daughter Clara, a pianist of prodigious early talent.
Schumann's own ambitions as a pianist were to be frustrated by a weakness of
the fingers, the result, it is supposed, of mercury treatment for syphilis,
which he perhaps had contracted from a servant-girl in Wieck's employment.
Nevertheless he wrote a great deal of music for the piano during the 18305, much
of it in the form of shorter genre pieces, often enough with some extra-musical,
literary or autobiographical association. The end of the decade brought a
prolonged quarrel with Wieck, who did his utmost, through the courts, to prevent
his daughter from marrying Schumann, bringing in support evidence of the
latter's allegedly dissolute way of life. He might have considered, too, a
certain mental instability, perhaps in part inherited, which brought periods of
intense depression.
In 1840 Schumann and Clara married, with the permission of the court. The
year brought the composition of a large number of songs and was followed by a
period during which Clara encouraged her husband to tackle larger forms of
orchestral music, while both of them had to make adjustments in their own lives
to accommodate their differing professional requirements and the birth of
children. A relatively short period in Leipzig was followed, in 1844, by
residence in Dresden, where Wagner was now installed at the Court Theatre, his
conversation causing Schumann to retire early to bed with a headache. In 1850
the couple moved to Düsseldorf, where Schumann had been appointed director of
music, a position the demands of which he was unable to meet, a fact that
contributed to his suicidal depression and final break-down in 1854, leading to
his death in the asylum at Endenich two years later.
Schumann completed his first symphony early in 1841 and it was performed on
31st March that year by the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, conducted by
Mendelssohn. In April he set to work on an Overture, intended as part of
an orchestral suite, to which he added a Scherzo and a Finale, to
be performed in Leipzig on 6th December. The Finale was later revised by
the composer. The overture opens with a brief introduction, marked Andante
con moto, based on a brief motif of dramatic implication. An Allegro follows,
with an initial theme that might well have sounded familiar to Mendelssohn,
although Schumann never had quite the lightness of touch of that composer. The Scherzo
and its Trio are scored more heavily than might have been expected,
the woodwind assuming some prominence in the latter section, before the
insistent rhythm of the Scherzo reasserts itself. The Trio makes a
brief re-appearance before the final bars, in which the opening rhythm is
recalled. The Finale has an imposing fugal opening, in a movement that
seems to justify the composer's own reference to the work as a symphonette.
There is an imposing cheerfulness about the music and a coherence of structure
that enables it, as Schumann intended, to stand on its own, if this were to be
required.
Schumann set to work on Manfred, based on the dramatic poem by Lord
Byron, whose work Schumann's father had published in translation. A hero with
whom Schumann himself might have identified, as Hebbel had identified in some
measure with his villain Golo, Manfred seeks oblivion for some mysterious crime,
wandering as an outcast in the Alps, attempting death and summoning spirits to
his aid, finally to, deny the power of evil demons over him, before death takes
him. The Byronic hero and the Caspar Friedrich landscape exercised fascination
over a number of nineteenth century composers, of whom the most distinguished
was to be Tchaikovsky. Schumann devised a libretto based on the German
translation of Manfred by the Silesian pastor Karl von Suckow, a series
of fifteen scenes, preceded by an Overture, the last again more effective
and hence more often heard than the work that it introduces. The first complete
performance of Manfred was in Weimar in 1852 under the direction of
Liszt, who included, as an intermezzo, Wagner's Faust Overture, this in
the absence of the composer, who felt unable to undertake the journey from
Düsseldorf. The Overture, however, had been given earlier concert
performances, in Leipzig, by the Gewandhaus Orchestra conducted by Schumann and
in Weimar.
Carl Maria von Weber, a cousin of Mozart's wife Constanze, was intended by
his father to emulate his distinguished relative's early success. Franz Anton
Weber was a man of varied abilities and professions and at the time of his son's
birth had been employed as Kapellmeister to the Bishop of Lübeck at Eutin in
Holstein. A year later he set up the Weber Theatre Company and embarked on a
peripatetic existence, during the course of which Carl Maria pursued his fitful
musical studies. He was to exhibit extraordinary precocity and in 1804, at the
age of eighteen, became Kapellmeister in Breslau. Further appointments followed,
with work at the opera-houses of Prague and Dresden, and a career in which he
showed his virtuosity as a pianist, his innovative ability as a conductor and
his creative power, above all in the composition of Der Freischütz, the
first German romantic opera.
The story of Der Freischütz includes many of the essential elements
of German romanticism, the forest, the huntsmen, magic and diabolical
intervention. The opera was written between 1817 and 1821 and was first staged
in the latter year in Berlin, where it was an immediate success. The marksman of
the title, Max, is urged by Caspar to enlist the support of Samiel, the ghostly
Great Huntsman of the forest, in order to win the hand of Agathe, denied him if
he fails in a shooting contest. With the midnight help of Samiel in the Wolf's
Glen at the heart of the forest, Max helps to cast the magic bullets which in
the final act kill Caspar, his evil counsellor, and would have killed his
beloved Agathe, had it not been for divine intervention. She survives, however,
to become Max's bride.
The Overture to Der Freischütz gives initial prominence to the four
French horns, instruments associated with the huntsman. The slow introduction is
followed by a rapid section of mounting excitement in C minor, leading to a
major conclusion, as the first act opens to find Max dejected at his lack of
success, as his companions shoot at the target.
Euryanthe, a grand heroic-Romantic opera, was completed in 1821, using a
libretto by Helmina von Chezy, the eccentric author of the unsuccessful
Rosamunde, now remembered only for Schubert's incidental music. The libretto of Euryanthe
was no more successful. Derived from a romance of the thirteenth century, it
uses the tale of the husband driven to test his wife's fidelity. Adolar,
Euryanthe's husband, wagers on his wife's constancy with the ill-disposed knight
Lysiart. Matters are complicated by the jealousy of Euryanthe's friend
Eglantine, secretly in love with Adolar, and by the restless ghost of Emma,
Adolar's Sister. Lysiart and Eglantine are eventually thwarted in their evil
designs, and Euryanthe is re-united with Adolar in final happiness at the end of
a tale as improbable as it is complex.
The Overture to Euryanthe opens strongly with the full orchestra,
leading, after a drum roll, to a theme that is to reappear as Adolar's second
act aria. There is a gentle passage for muted violins and violas, followed by a
recapitulation, after which the curtain rises on the great hall of King Ludwig's
palace, where knights and nobles are assembled.
Weber's last opera, Oberon, with a libretto by Planche after Wieland,
was written for London and staged at Covent Garden in 1826, at a time when the
composer was already seriously ill. He died in London the day before his planned
return home to Germany, two weeks after his last appearance as conductor in the
opera-house. Like Euryanthe, the opera has a medieval origin in a chanson
de geste, embroidered by Wieland, who knew his Shakespeare. The piece opens with
Oberon asleep, separated, as Puck informs us, from Titania, with whom he has
quarrelled, to be reconciled only if they can find a constant couple, a search
that ends in the proved fidelity of Huon of Bordeaux, who with the aid of a
magic horn survives to be united once more with his beloved Reiza.
The Overture to Oberon opens, as it must, with the sound of Huon's
magic horn, answered in the slow introduction by muted strings. The rapid
section of the overture opens with a lively theme for the violins, while the
horn is used again to introduce a secondary theme for the clarinet.
Antonin Dvořak must be considered the greatest of the Czech
nationalist composers of the nineteenth and early twentieth century, and he
certainly enjoys the widest internationa1 popularity. His achievement was to
bring together music that derived its inspiration from Bohemia's woods and
fields with the classical traditions continued by Brahms in Vienna.
Dvořak was born in 1841 in a village of Bohemia,
where his father combined the trades of inn-keeper and butcher, which it was
expected that his son would later follow. As a Child he played in his father's
village band, his early training as a violinist in the hands of the village
schoo1master. Schooling in Zlonice, where he was sent at the age of twelve,
lodging with an uncle, allowed instruction in the rudiments of music from
Antonin Liehmann. Two years later he was sent to Kamenice to learn German, but
the following year the needs of his family made it necessary for him to return
to Zlonice, where his parents had now settled, to help in the butcher's shop.
Liehmann continued his lessons and persuaded his father to allow him to study in
Prague. In 1857 he entered the Prague Organ School, where he was able to remain
for two years.
Dvořak at first earned his
living in Prague playing the viola in a band led by Karel Komsak, which was
later to form part of the Provisional Theatre orchestra, established in 1862. He
was to become principal viola-player and to continue as an orchestral player
for the next nine years, for some time under the direction of Smetana, who
exercised considerable inf1uence on Dvořak's parallel work as a composer.
In 1871 he found himself able to resign from the Provisional Theatre orchestra
and to marry. At this time he took a position as organist
at the church of St. Adalbert, taught a few pupils and otherwise devoted himself
to composition. It was through the encouragement of Brahms, four years later,
that his music was brought gradually to the attention of a much wider
public. In particular Brahms was able to persuade Simrock to publish Dvořak's
Moravian Duets. Their success was followed by the publisher's request for a
further set, the first series of Slavonic Dances, Opus
46, also composed for piano duet, but orchestrated at
the same time by the composer. The same year, 1878, saw the composition of the
three Slavonic Rhapsodies, Opus 45.
From this time onwards Dvořak's fame was to grow and he was to win
particular popularity in Germany and in England, visiting the
latter country on several occasions land fulfilling commissions for choral works
for Birmingham and Leeds. In 1891 he was appointed professor of composition at
Prague Conservatory and the following year accepted an invitation to go to New
York as director of the new National Conservatory. The period in America gave
rise to one of his best known works, the Symphony From the New World. By
1895 he was back again in Prague, teaching at the Conservatory, of which he
became director in 1901. He died two years later.
The Carnival overture has enjoyed much greater success. Originally
given the title <Life>, this work was intended as a trilogy of symphonic
poems. The cheerful Carnival finds only a passing place for the theme,
which assumes more importance in Othello, which has themes associated
with jealousy and love, developed in the Allegro con brio that follows
the introduction.