Famous Overtures
Etymologically unambiguous, the word Overture originally
signifies an opening, an introductory piece of music preceding an opera,
ballet, play or concert suite. It assumed other meanings, notably in the
nineteenth century with the development of the concert overture, an independent
orchestral piece that was complete in itself, leading to nothing in particular.
In earlier times, notably in the later seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries,
two forms of introductory overture were developed, the French, with a solemn dotted
rhythm opening and following fugal section, and the Italian three-movement 'symphony
before the opera', the origin of the later classical symphony. The famous overtures
included in the present collection include only two concert overtures, Mendelssohn's
The Hebrides and the Academic Festival Overture of Brahms. The other
overtures here are preludes either to operas or, in the case of Beethoven's Egmont
overture, to a play.
Mozart's opera The Marriage of Figaro was written
for Vienna in 1786, a significant commission for a non-Italian composer. The
libretto by Lorenzo da Ponte was based on the second of the Figaro trilogy by
the French playwright Beaumarchais, a work that had proved controversial in Paris
and in other hands might have seemed to have its dangers in Vienna, as the
French revolution drew nearer. The plot deals with the outwitting of Count Almaviva
by his servant Figaro, ending happily in the reconciliation of Count and Countess
and of Figaro and his Susanna. The Overture provides a sparkling introduction, leading
to an opening scene in which Figaro measures out the room, conveniently near
the Count's own quarters, which he is to share with his bride Susanna.
Goethe completed his play Egmont in 1787, after
writing and revisions that had occupied him intermittently for some twelve
years. Count Egmont is involved in the religious and political conflicts of the
Netherlands in the sixteenth century, his opposition to the Duke of Alba
ending with his death. The original production by Schiller at the Court Theatre
in Weimar, for which various changes and cuts had been made in the text, was
unsuccessful. The play was to be revived in Vienna in 1810 with Goethe's full
text and with music by Beethoven, starting with the Overture, a work in which
some have heard the severity of the Spanish viceroy contrasted with the
pleading of the Netherlanders. Hoffmann had preferred to find here a first subject
representing the hero Egmont and a second representing his beloved Klarchen,
who took poison having failed to rouse popular rebellion to release her lover.
Scotland exercised a continuing fascination over romantic
Europe, geographically remote and exotic, with a history and legends given
wide currency through its ballads and through the writing of Sir Walter Scott.
Felix Mendelssohn visited Scotland in 1829 with his friend Carl Klingemann,
impressed by Holyrood Palace in Edinburgh and admiring the wild scenery of the Highlands.
They travelled by paddle-steamer on the newly opened Caledonian Canal and then
sailed for 1ona on the Ben Lomond, going on shore on Staffa, with its
remarkable basalt rock formations. Mendelssohn was no sailor and it was at Tobermory,
before his excursion into the rough Atlantic and the consequent gastric disturbance,
that he jotted down the familiar theme of his Overture, The Hebrides.
No doubt calmer memories of his voyage enabled him to recollect his experiences
on Staffa in some degree of tranquillity, to produce the new Overture, finally,
after various revisions, completed in 1832. The music has grandeur and moments
of calm, but is said to have been inspired rather by Mull, the origin of the
earlier title The Lonely Island, than by Staffa, and Fingal's cave, a
title preferred by the first publisher.
The careful Handel had rejected the offer of an honorary
degree at Oxford, although he had profited very considerably from a visit to
the University. Haydn, sixty years later, accepted his degree, although
reluctant at the expense incurred. Cambridge University, indignantly rejected
by Handel, had hoped to award doctorates to Brahms and to Verdi in 1893, but
had to fall back on Saint-Saens, Grieg, Tchaikovsky, Boito and Bruch, an irony
that would have pleased Brahms himself. Cambridge had attempted in 1876 to entice
Brahms over the Channel, but he resolutely refused the journey, although
pleased at the honour intended. In 1879, however, the University of Breslau had
conferred a doctorate on him, an honour he gratefully acknowledged on a
postcard. It was tactfully pointed out that a more tangible and musical
expression of thanks was expected, and this took the form of the Academic
Festival Overture, written during a summer holiday at Bad 1schl and first performed
in Breslau in 1881. The Overture makes use of student songs, culminating in Gaudeamus
igitur (Let us then rejoice).
Partisan support, and the tactlessnes of one against the
self-centred egotism of the other, caused a rift between Brahms and his older
contemporary Richard Wagner .While Brahms was seen by his friends to continue
the tradition of Beethoven in Vienna, Wagner, self-appointed successor to
Beethoven, sought to find the new music of the future in his massive
music-dramas. Tannhauser was first performed in Dresden in 1845 and
deals with the medieval Minnesinger of the title, the worldly temptation to
which he is subject and his final redemption. The Prelude, which makes use of a
number of motifs of importance in what follows, starts with the music of
salvation, associated with pilgrims returning from Rome, and the repentance
motif. This is followed by music associated with the Venusberg, the realm of
Venus in the Horsel Mountain, where pagan desire rules. The love grotto of Venus
music is heard before the pilgrims' chorus motifs return, leading, at least in
the later version for Paris, into a Bacchanale of worldly delights.
Franz von Suppe, born in the Dalmatian town of Spalato
(the modem Split), moved with his mother to Vienna, her native city, in 1835,
after the death of his father, and there, after attempts at various other
studies, embarked on a musical career. From 1840 he was associated with the
Theater in der Josefstadt and worked for some years in Pressburg (the modem Bratislava),
before establishing himself at the Vienna Theater an der Wien and then, in
succession, at the Kaitheater and at the Carltheater. It was at this last that
his comic operetta Light Cavalry was first staged in 1866, introduced by
a fanfare, leading to music of the expected sparkle and brilliance.
The world of operetta in Paris was long dominated by
Jacques Offenbach, son of a Cologne cantor and an early virtuoso cellist. His
comic Orpheus in the Underworld of 1848 satirises both the society of
his own time and the ancient legend of Orpheus, who, by the power of his music,
was allowed to bring his beloved Eurydice back from the Underworld to the land
of the living, had he not looked round to see if she followed. The operetta includes
musical parody, notably of Cluck's opera on the same subject, and finds in Orpheus
and Eurydice a couple glad to be rid of each other, were it not for the
intervention of a personified Public Opinion. The Overture includes some of the
best known melodies from the operetta, with its famous can-can for the Blessed
Spirits below.
Paris, from the 1820s, had found in Rossini a composer to
its taste. He had established himself at an early age in Italy, but moved to Paris,
where, had it not been for the political changes of 1830, he might have
undertaken yet more. The Thieving Magpie, first staged in Milan in 1817,
reveals the nature of the plot in the title. A servant-girl is accused of theft
and imprisoned, but later exonerated when the true culprit is discovered. The
Overture opens with a drum-roll and a military march and makes use of the
pathos of the heroine's music from the prison scene in one of the composer's
most impelling dramatic introductions.
From the 1840s, when he had won success in Milan with Nabucco,
it was Ciuseppe Verdi who held the operatic stage in Italy. The Force of
Destiny, based on a Spanish drama, was first staged in 1862 in St
Petersburg. It is based on a rambling story of love and vengeance, with the
hero Don Alvaro, having killed the father of his beloved Leonora, the subject
of the revenge of her brother Don Carlo, matters complicated by the failure of
one man to recognise the other and by the assumption of a monastic habit by Don
Alvaro and of a hermit's robes by Leonora. The Overture is exciting in what it
threatens, making use of themes to be heard later in the opera. It starts with
the short Fate motif, followed by a theme that remains dominant, with a
following medley of thematic material.