Violin Fantasies Frank Huang
Schubert Ernst Schoenberg Waxman
Franz Schubert wrote his Fantasy in C major, D.934,
relatively late in his short career. The son of a Vienna schoolmaster, he had
served as a chorister in the Imperial Chapel, left after his voice had broken
to qualify himself as a schoolteacher, and thereafter spent much of his time in
the company of like-minded friends. Prolific, particularly in his composition
of songs, he had begun to achieve some public success by the time of his death,
with the first official concert devoted to his music given in 1828 and growing
interest from music publishers. The Fantasy was written towards the end of 1827
for Josef Slavik, one of the first great Czech violin virtuosi, who died in
Budapest in 1833 at the age of 27. Slavik gave the first performance of the
work in January 1828 with Carl Maria von Bocklet, when the demands it made on
the audience persuaded some, including critics, to leave before the end, in
spite of a virtuoso element in the writing that was calculated to appeal to
contemporary taste. The work is in four sections, marked respectively Andante
molto, Allegretto, Andantino and Allegro, before moving to a reminiscent
Allegretto and a final Presto, with a key pattern that moves from C major to A
minor and A major, and then, in the third section, to A flat major, a key
recalled after a return to C major, to which the final Presto returns. The violin first enters above the
tremoli of the piano, both suggesting, as so often, a song of serenity and
passing sadness. A violin melody of another kind opens the A minor Allegretto
section, violin and piano taking turns with the melody. Moving into A major,
the music becomes rapider, hinting often at Austrian popular musical
traditions, before the A minor theme returns. There are shifts of key as a
preparation for the Andantino, with three variations on the song Sei mir
gegrüsst, the heart of the work. The fourth version of the theme ends with a
cadenza-like passage for the violin, followed by a brief return of the opening,
before the cheerful Allegro, its violin tremoli leading to a moment of
tranquillity in the mood of the song and variations. The respite is
short-lived, capped soon by a final virtuoso Presto.
The violinist and composer Heinrich Wilhelm Ernst was born
in Brno in 1814 and after early study in his native city entered the Vienna
Conservatory in 1825 as a pupil of Bohm and of Seyfried. He heard Paganini in
Vienna three years later and soon abandoned his studies, after disciplinary
action against him for unauthorised absence. Setting out on a concert tour, he
made his way to Paris, where he was able to hear more of Paganini, whose
unpublished compositions he played by ear, in 1837 anticipating Paganini's
arrival in Marseille by giving his own concert there. He continued to appear
throughout Europe until about 1857, when he turned his attention rather to
chamber music, collaborating from 1859 with Joachim, Wieniawski and Piatti in
the Beethoven Quartet Society. In 1864 he retired to Nice, to find some relief
from gout, and died there the following year. His Fantaisie brillante sur la
marche et la romance d'Otello de Rossini was published in 1839. Rossini's opera
Otello had first been staged in 1816 and was later revised. It is very loosely
based on Shakespeare's play. Ernst's Fantaisie starts with an Introduction in
which the march and romance are both heard. A cadenza leads to the return of
the march, announced by the violin in multiple stopping. The first variation
calls for all the technical command of a Paganini. The second variation gives
the violinist wide leaps to high harmonics, before a change of key into the
romance, itself to be varied before a cadenza leads to the third variation, in
which the solo violin ornaments the march with its own intricate elaborations.
There is a return to the more lyrical material of the Introduction before an
elegantly virtuosic final section.
With Schoenberg's Phantasy for violin with piano
accompaniment, an accurate description of the work, there is a move into very
different musical territory. Born
in Vienna, Arnold Schoenberg spent much of his earlier career in Berlin, until
the rise of Hitler made it necessary to take refuge elsewhere. He made his
final home in America, where he died in 1951. His influence on the music of the
twentieth century was very great, in particular through his development and
promulgation of theories of composition in which the unity of a work is
provided by the use of a predetermined series of the twelve semitones of the
octave, their order also inverted or used in reverse form, with octave displacement,
the use of notes of the same name in a higher or lower register. This serial
music, coupled with atonality, the avoidance of a key or key centre, if such a
thing were possible, found much favour, and was extended by some into other
aspects of music. The Phantasy, Op.47, written in 1949, was the last of
Schoenberg's instrumental works. It is based on a series of the twelve
semitones, the first six notes inverted to give the second half of the series.
These are stated by the violin at the beginning, while the piano, which has a
generally subsidiary rôle, offers notes of the inversion of the series either
as chordal clusters or in rapid proximity. Although it is often difficult to
follow the form of works of this kind aurally, it may be possible to distinguish
the three short episodes that make up the opening section, marked Grave. The
second episode starts with a glissando and the third with a heavy piano chord
and a wide violin leap to a high harmonic. A passage of nine bars follows,
marked Più mosso, furioso. A Lento is succeeded by a Grazioso section which
leads to a Scherzando and a Meno mosso that is followed by a return to the
opening Grave and a further reference to the Più mosso.
Like Schoenberg, Franz Waxman was also a refugee from
Hitler's Germany. Born in 1906 in Upper Silesia, Franz Wachsmann was the son of
an industrialist and had to contend with paternal opposition to his choice of
such an insecure profession as that of musician. After a brief period working
in a bank, he saved enough money to study in Dresden and Berlin, finding work
as a cafe pianist and, notably, a collaboration with a jazz group known as the
Weintraub Syncopators, for which he also made arrangements. He found additional
employment arranging music for films and a meeting with Friedrich Hollander,
later known in America as Frederick Hollander, led to his orchestration of the
latter's score for the Josef von Sternberg film
Der blaue Engel. As a refugee from Germany, where he had had
personal experience of the brutality of the supporters of the new regime, he
moved to France and then to America, settling in Los Angeles. Here he found a
place in the film industry, leading to a position with Warner Brothers, one of
a group of gifted composers in Hollywood that included Korngold. It was for the
1946 Jean Negrolescu film Humoresque in which the rich socialite Joan Crawford
pursues the indigent but talented violinist played by John Garfield that
Waxman, as he now was, wrote the score, nominated for an Academy Award. The
film brings the inevitable composition of the same name by Dvor˘ak, but
the score also includes the Carmen Fantasy, using themes from Bizet's opera.
The work opens with the toreador's march, as heard in the opera Overture. There
follows an embroidered version of the famous Habanera and melody after melody,
including Carmen's Seguidilla and a characteristic Spanish dance, all woven
together into a coherent whole, a virtuoso work that undoubtedly aptly served
its original dramatic purpose.
Keith Anderson