A Contemplation on Music

This article has now been sent to me by three different people. It is a bit long, but does a wonderful job summing up why music is so important--especially at difficult times like these.

Scott

A Contemplation on Music
By Karl Paulnack, pianist and Director of the Music Division at Boston Conservatory


One of my parents' deepest fears, I suspect, is that society would not properly value me as a musician, that I wouldn't be appreciated. I had very good grades in high school, I was good in science and math, and they imagined that as a doctor or a research chemist or an engineer, I might be more appreciated than I would be as a musician. I still remember my mother's remark when I announced my decision to apply to music school-she said, "you're WASTING your SAT scores." On some level, I think, my parents were not sure themselves what the value of music was, what its purpose was. And they LOVED music, they listened to classical music all the time. They just weren't really clear about its function. So let me talk about that a little bit, because we live in a society that puts music in the "arts and entertainment" section of the newspaper, and serious music, the kind your kids are about to engage in, has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with entertainment, in fact it's the opposite of entertainment. Let me talk a little bit about music, and how it works.The first people to understand how music really works were the ancient Greeks. And this is going to fascinate you; the Greeks said that music and astronomy were two sides of the same coin. Astronomy was seen as the study of relationships between observable, permanent, external objects, and music was seen as the study of relationships between invisible, internal, hidden objects. Music has a way of finding the big, invisible moving pieces inside our hearts and souls and helping us figure out the position of things inside us. Let me give you some examples of how this works.One of the most profound musical compositions of all time is the Quartet for the End of Time written by French composer Olivier Messiaen in 1940. Messiaen was 31 years old when France entered the war against Nazi Germany. He was captured by the Germans in June of 1940, sent across Germany in a cattle car and imprisoned in a concentration camp.He was fortunate to find a sympathetic prison guard who gave him paper and a place to compose. There were three other musicians in the camp, a cellist, a violinist, and a clarinetist, and Messiaen wrote his quartet with these specific players in mind. It was performed in January 1941 for four thousand prisoners and guards in the prison camp. Today it is one of the most famous masterworks in the repertoire.Given what we have since learned about life in the concentration camps, why would anyone in his right mind waste time and energy writing or playing music? There was barely enough energy on a good day to find food and water, to avoid a beating, to stay warm, to escape torture-why would anyone bother with music? And yet-from the camps, we have poetry, we have music, we have visual art; it wasn't just this one fanatic Messiaen; many, many people created art. Why? Well, in a place where people are only focused on survival, on the bare necessities, the obvious conclusion is that art must be, somehow, essential for life. The camps were without money, without hope, without commerce, without recreation, without basic respect, but they were not without art. Art is part of survival; art is part of the human spirit, an unquenchable expression of who we are. Art is one of the ways in which we say, "I am alive, and my life has meaning."On September 12, 2001 I was a resident of Manhattan. That morning I reached a new understanding of my art and its relationship to the world. I sat down at the piano that morning at 10 AM to practice, as was my daily routine; I did it by force of habit, without thinking about it. I lifted the cover on the keyboard, and opened my music, and put my hands on the keys and took my hands off the keys. And I sat there and thought, does this even matter? Isn't this completely irrelevant? Playing the piano right now, given what happened in this city yesterday, seems silly, absurd, irreverent, pointless? Why am I here? What place has a musician in this moment in time? Who needs a piano player right now? I was completely lost.And then I, along with the rest of New York, went through the journey of getting through that week. I did not play the piano that day, and in fact I contemplated briefly whether I would ever want to play the piano again. And then I observed how we got through the day.At least in my neighborhood, we didn't shoot hoops or play Scrabble. We didn't play cards to pass the time, we didn't watch TV, we didn't shop, we most certainly did not go to the mall. The first organized activity that I saw in New York, that same day, was singing. People sang. People sang around fire houses, people sang "We Shall Overcome." Lots of people sang America the Beautiful. The first organized public event that I remember was the Brahms Requiem, later that week, at Lincoln Center, with the New York Philharmonic. The first organized public expression of grief, our first communal response to that historic event, was a concert. That was the beginning of a sense that life might go on. The US Military secured the airspace, but recovery was led by the arts, and by music in particular, that very night.From these two experiences, I have come to understand that music is not part of "arts and entertainment" as the newspaper section would have us believe. It's not a luxury, a lavish thing that we fund from leftovers of our budgets, not a plaything or an amusement or a pass time. Music is a basic need of human survival. Music is one of the ways we make sense of our lives, one of the ways in which we express feelings when we have no words, a way for us to understand things with our hearts when we can't with our minds.Some of you may know Samuel Barber's heart-wrenchingly beautiful piece Adagio for Strings. If you don't know it by that name, then some of you may know it as the background music which accompanied the Oliver Stone movie Platoon, a film about the Vietnam War. If you know that piece of music either way, you know it has the ability to crack your heart open like a walnut; it can make you cry over sadness you didn't know you had. Music can slip beneath our conscious reality to get at what's really going on inside us the way a good therapist does.I bet that you have never been to a wedding where there was absolutely no music. There might have been only a little music, there might have been some really bad music, but I bet you there was some music. And something very predictable happens at weddings-people get all pent up with all kinds of emotions, and then there's some musical moment where the action of the wedding stops and someone sings or plays the flute or something. And even if the music is lame, even if the quality isn't good, predictably 30 or 40 percent of the people who are going to cry at a wedding cry a couple of moments after the music starts. Why? The Greeks. Music allows us to move around those big invisible pieces of ourselves and rearrange our insides so that we can express what we feel even when we can't talk about it. Can you imagine watching Indiana Jones or Superman or Star Wars with the dialogue but no music? What is it about the music swelling up at just the right moment in ET so that all the softies in the audience start crying at exactly the same moment? I guarantee you if you showed the movie with the music stripped out, it wouldn't happen that way. The Greeks: Music is the understanding of the relationship between invisible internal objects.I'll give you one more example, the story of the most important concert of my life. I must tell you I have played a little less than a thousand concerts in my life so far. I have played in places that I thought were important. I like playing in Carnegie Hall; I enjoyed playing in Paris; it made me very happy to please the critics in St. Petersburg. I have played for people I thought were important; music critics of major newspapers, foreign heads off state. The most important concert of my entire life took place in a nursing home in Fargo, ND, about 4 years ago.I was playing with a very dear friend of mine who is a violinist. We began, as we often do, with Aaron Copland's Sonata, which was written during World War II and dedicated to a young friend of Copland’s, a young pilot who was shot down during the war. Now we often talk to our audiences about the pieces we are going to play rather than providing them with written program notes. But in this case, because we began the concert with this piece, we decided to talk about the piece later in the program and to just come out and play the music without explanation..Midway through the piece, an elderly man seated in a wheelchair near the front of the concert hall began to weep. This man, whom I later met, was clearly a soldier-even in his 70's, it was clear from his buzz-cut hair, square jaw and general demeanor that he had spent a good deal of his life in the military. I thought it a little bit odd that someone would be moved to tears by that particular movement of that particular piece, but it wasn't the first time I've heard crying in a concert and we went on with the concert and finished the piece.When we came out to play the next piece on the program, we decided to talk about both the first and second pieces, and we described the circumstances in which the Copland was written and mentioned its dedication to a downed pilot. The man in the front of the audience became so disturbed that he had to leave the auditorium. I honestly figured that we would not see him again, but he did come backstage afterwards, tears and all, to explain himself.What he told us was this: "During World War II, I was a pilot, and I was in an aerial combat situation where one of my team's planes was hit. I watched my friend bail out, and watched his parachute open, but the Japanese planes which had engaged us returned and machine gunned across the parachute chords so as to separate the parachute from the pilot, and I watched my friend drop away into the ocean, realizing that he was lost. I have not thought about this for many years, but during that first piece of music you played, this memory returned to me so vividly that it was as though I was reliving it. I didn't understand why this was happening, why now, but then when you came out to explain that this piece of music was written to commemorate a lost pilot, it was a little more than I could handle. How does the music do that? How did it find those feelings and those memories in me?" Remember the Greeks: music is the study of invisible relationships between internal objects. This concert in Fargo was the most important work I have ever done. For me to play for this old soldier and help him connect, somehow with Aaron Copland, and to connect their memories of their lost friends, to help him remember and mourn his friend, this is my work. This is why music matters.What follows is part of the talk I will give to this year's freshman class when I welcome them a few days from now. The responsibility I will charge your sons and daughters with is this:"If we were a medical school, and you were here as a med student practicing appendectomies, you'd take your work very seriously because you would imagine that some night at two AM someone is going to waltz into your emergency room and you're going to have to save their life. Well, my friends, someday at 8 PM someone is going to walk into your concert hall and bring you a mind that is confused, a heart that is overwhelmed, a soul that is weary. Whether they go out whole again will depend partly on how well you do your craft.You're not here to become an entertainer, and you don't have to sell yourself. The truth is you don't have anything to sell; being a musician isn't about dispensing a product, like selling used Chevies. I'm not an entertainer; I'm a lot closer to a paramedic, a firefighter, a rescue worker. You're here to become a sort of therapist for the human soul, a spiritual version of a chiropractor, physical therapist, someone who works with our insides to see if they get things to line up, to see if we can come into harmony with ourselves and be healthy and happy and well.Frankly, ladies and gentlemen, I expect you not only to master music; I expect you to save the planet. If there is a future wave of wellness on this planet, of harmony, of peace, of an end to war, of mutual understanding, of equality, of fairness, I don't expect it will come from a government, a military force or a corporation. I no longer even expect it to come from the religions of the world, which together seem to have brought us as much war as they have peace. If there is a future of peace for humankind, if there is to be an understanding of how these invisible, internal things should fit together, I expect it will come from the artists, because that's what we do. As in the concentration camp and the evening of 9/11, the artists are the ones who might be able to help us with our internal, invisible lives."

Program Notes for April 4 and 5 concerts

Felix Mendelssohn

b. February 3, 1809, Hamburg, Germany

d. November 4, 1847, Leipzig, Germany

Felix Mendelssohn was among the most popular composers of his time, and his music remains some of the most often played from the nineteenth century. He was also one of the few musical prodigies whose youthful ability could rival Mozart’s. The grandson of philosopher Moses Mendelssohn, young Felix grew up in a home that welcomed as guests many of the most learned people of his day. He took piano, violin, and singing lessons as a youth. By the age of eight he was studying composition, and he was producing remarkably assured works by his teens, including the Octet at age 16 and the Overture to A Midsummer Night’s Dream at 17. Mendelssohn was a key figure in resurrecting the reputation of Johann Sebastian Bach, leading the St. Matthew Passion (the first performance the work had enjoyed since Bach’s death in 1750) in a now-famous 1829 concert. He subsequently held conducting posts in Düsseldorf and Berlin. But much of the later part of his life was spent in Leipzig, where he directed the Gewandhaus Orchestra and, in 1843, founded the Leipzig Conservatory. His extensive travels are reflected in compositions like the “Scottish” and “Italian” Symphonies and the “Hebrides” Overture.

“Ruy Blas” Overture, Op. 95
Composed: 1839
Duration: 8 minutes

In 1835, Mendelssohn was appointed as conductor of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra. Over the next several years, while also composing new music at a steady rate, he led concerts dedicated to his own music and that of his contemporaries – including the world premiere of Robert Schumann’s Symphony No. 1, also heard in this concert – as well as what he called “historical concerts” featuring music by neglected composers of the past. He worked tirelessly to improve Leipzig’s musical standing, in tandem with the city’s opera house, churches, schools, and other musical and arts institutions. One of the organizations with whom Mendelssohn worked was the Leipzig Theatrical Pension Fund. In 1839 the Fund decided to produce a benefit performance of Victor Hugo’s play Ruy Blas, written just months before, and Mendelssohn was asked to create an overture and song for the production. He read the play, decided privately that it was “quite ghastly,” and quickly produced a choral song but begged off of writing the overture, saying that he was too busy. Apparently, though, Mendelssohn re-thought the situation, and wrote the overture in a mere three days.

Hugo’s drama is set in the seventeenth century Spanish court of King Charles II. Ruy Blas, a servant and poet, has fallen in love with the Queen. His boss, Don Sallustio, disguises Blas as a nobleman in a plot to seek revenge on the royal family. Blas becomes popular at court, is appointed prime minister, and wins the Queen’s heart. But when Sallustio attempts to blackmail the Queen, Blas kills him and poisons himself, winning the Queen’s forgiveness as he dies. Esteemed by some and reviled by others, the play was burlesqued by W.S. Gilbert, turned into an opera by Filippo Marchetti, and has been filmed at least twice. First performed on March 11, 1839, Mendelssohn’s overture – which, given his attitude to the Hugo play, he preferred to call simply his “Theatrical Pension Fund Overture” – is an unusually powerful work for the composer, with more than a hint of violence. After an unsettled introduction, with portentous chords from the winds and brass, violins present the agitated main theme. This melody and other somewhat lighter ideas are worked out in highly dramatic fashion before the triumphant major key conclusion.

Henryk Wieniawski

b. July 10, 1835, Lublin, Poland
d. March 31, 1880, Moscow, Russia

One of the most famous violinists of the nineteenth century, Henryk Wieniawski was a prodigy who entered the Paris Conservatoire when he was nine and received its first prize for violin at age eleven. In his teens he embarked on his first tours of France and Russia. From 1860 to 1872 he lived in St. Petersburg as one of Russia’s pre-eminent musicians, teaching at the city’s new Conservatory, leading the orchestra and string quartet of the Russian Musical Society, and influencing – particularly with his stiff-wristed bowing technique – the playing of generations of Russian violinists. He subsequently resumed his international travels, including a two-year tour of the United States, while also holding a teaching post at the Brussels Conservatory. By the late 1870s Wieniawski’s health was such that he was often forced to stop playing in the middle of concerts, and he died from a heart attack in Moscow. Among his modest but significant catalog of compositions are two violin concertos that are among the most challenging in the repertoire, and a number of works (like the once-famous Polonaise in D major) that celebrate his Polish heritage.

Violin Concerto No. 2 in D minor, Op. 22
Composed: 1862
Duration: 22 minutes

Wieniawski established himself as a composer and violin virtuoso in his late teens, at least in part based on the popularity throughout Europe of the first of his two violin concertos, the Concerto in F-sharp minor, Op. 14. Three years after completing that work, in 1856, he started on a second violin concerto, but with his constant traveling and performing he didn’t manage to complete it until six years later. The Violin Concerto No. 2 in D minor was given its premiere on November 27, 1862, in St. Petersburg with Wieniawski as soloist and Anton Rubinstein conducting the Orchestra of the Russian Musical Society (of which Wieniawski served as leader). Over the next eight years the composer continued to revise the Concerto, only allowing its publication in 1870. It was dedicated to Wieniawski’s friend Pablo de Sarasate, who before long would be one of his main rivals as the pre-eminent violinist-composer of the day.

Wieniawski’s Concerto No. 2 manages gracefully to balance sound dramatic structure with lush, attractive melodies and the kind of virtuoso pyrotechnics that his audiences would have expected. Mention should also be made of the prominent role of the orchestra, which goes somewhat beyond a typical concerto accompaniment role, often taking the lead in the musical argument. The first movement, by far the most extensive of the work’s three, features two main themes: a restless opener, and a more lyrical second subject introduced by the horn. Both of these ideas, but particularly the second, are developed at length by the violin soloist, who employs the range of violin techniques, from double and triple stops to harmonics, glissandi, and a variety of bowing styles. Oddly, for a work so focused on the soloist, the movement has no solo cadenza. After the music builds to a powerful climax, a short orchestral coda leads without break into the second movement, a short and beautiful Romance based on a shapely melody in 12/8 time, with a short but fiery interlude, a brief reminiscence of the lyrical second theme from the first movement, and a solo cadenza.

The final movement, marked “à la Zingara,” is a gypsy-inspired whirlwind that was described by Wieniawski as “a small village scene: a summer evening and the villagers have gathered on the village square and want to dance; general merriment, joking and laughter.” Calling to mind other gypsy-influenced works of the time like Franz Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsodies, the perpetual motion of the main theme is offset by a more rustic dance in D major that appears twice, as well as brief reprises of themes from the first two movements.

Robert Schumann

b. June 8, 1810, Zwickau, Germany
d. July 29, 1856, Endenich, Germany

Robert Schumann was one of the quintessential artists of music’s Romantic era. Encouraged in a wide range of studies by his writer/publisher father, Schumann became a law student at the University of Leipzig. But music was his first love, and he studied piano with Friedrich Wieck – eventually, and famously, falling in love with and marrying Wieck’s daughter Clara, one of the finest pianists of her time. Schumann’s efforts to become a piano virtuoso were foiled when he developed partial paralysis of his right hand, so he focused on composing and writing. His music was often written in feverish bursts of activity – 1840, for instance, saw the creation of over 150 songs, and 1842 was a year of chamber music. While he composed in larger forms such as opera, symphony, and concerto, many feel that Schumann’s true genius truly came to the fore in his numerous songs and piano miniatures. As a critic he co-founded the influential Neue Zeitschrift für Musik and wrote articles praising composers like Chopin and Brahms. Having long suffered from mental problems, in February 1854 Schumann tried to drown himself in the Rhine, and he spent his final years in an asylum.

Symphony No. 1 in B-flat major, Op. 38 “Spring”
Composed: 1841
Duration: 32 minutes

Writing for orchestra didn’t come naturally for Schumann. His first attempt at a large-scale orchestral work, a Symphony in G minor from 1832-33, was never completed. Other than that one piece, Schumann spent the entire decade of the 1830s writing nothing but piano music and songs. Part of that decade was also spent wooing Clara, the daughter of his piano teacher Friedrich Wieck. They had met when Schumann was twenty-four years old and Clara a fifteen-year-old piano prodigy. Friedrich Wieck was impressed with Schumann’s musical abilities, but put off by his drinking and worried by the signs of depression and instability he was already exhibiting – which, with hindsight, could well have been precursors of the even more serious nervous disorders Schumann experienced later. For years Wieck stood in the way of the marriage, but they ultimately ignored him and were married one day before Clara’s twenty-first birthday in September 1840.

Much as she loved Schumann’s lyrical piano pieces and songs, Clara had long encouraged him to take on something ambitious like a symphony. She wrote in her diary, “his imagination cannot find sufficient scope on the piano…his compositions are all orchestral in feeling.” Their marriage seemed to inspire him, and the Symphony No. 1 was composed over a mere four days, January 23 and 26, 1841. The orchestration occupied him for the next month, and was completed on February 20. Not surprisingly, Clara’s opinion of the new work was of great importance to him. Luckily, she was very pleased, writing “…I should never finish talking about the buds, the scent of violets, the fresh green leaves, the birds in the air – all of which, one hears living and stirring through it in youthful strength.” In the next months Schumann pursued his orchestral inspiration, also writing the first version of what became his Symphony No. 4 and a “symphonette” later revised as the Overture, Scherzo and Finale.

There have long been complaints about Schumann’s skills as an orchestral arranger. When Felix Mendelssohn was preparing the first performance of the Symphony No. 1 with his Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra – which took place on March 31, 1841 – he was forced to change the key of part of the Symphony’s opening because some of the notes were unplayable, or barely playable, by the valveless trumpets and French horns then in use. Since then conductors have felt fairly free to make small and large adjustments to Schumann’s orchestration – Gustav Mahler entirely rescored all four of Schumann’s symphonies, and one musicologist even wrote an 874-page book on possible revisions of Schumann’s orchestrations!

Schumann originally gave each movement of the Symphony an evocative title. But while there are a few pictorial details in the work – wind instruments seeming to imitate bird songs, for instance – Schumann didn’t intend his work to be descriptive, but rather more generally impressionistic. As he wrote in a letter to fellow composer Ludwig Spohr, the Symphony had been written “with a vernal passion…that always sways men even into old age and surprises them anew each year. Description and painting where not part of my intention, but I do believe that the season in which this symphony was born influenced its structure and helped make it what it is.” Note that last point – although the work is titled “Spring,” it was actually written in January and February, in the dead of winter. Schumann’s music looks forward longingly to the onset of the new season.

Schumann laid out his strategy for the first movement – originally titled “Beginning of Spring” – in a letter to conductor Wilhelm Taubert, who was about to lead the Symphony in Berlin: “I should like the very first trumpet entrance to sound as if it came from on high, like a summons to awakening. Further on in the introduction, I should like the music to suggest the world’s turning green, perhaps with a butterfly hovering in the air, and then, in the Allegro, to show how everything to do with spring is coming to life.” That first trumpet entrance, a fanfare-like figure, is quickly taken up by the strings. An air of expectancy hovers over the subsequent minor key music. The tempo then accelerates, and the main body of the movement is launched with a relative of the fanfare theme. A second, quieter theme is also announced by the woodwinds over scurrying strings. The development is largely devoted to a variety of rearrangements of the variant of the opening fanfare. The tempo speeds up even more as the movement comes to a close, the momentum halted briefly by the emergence of a lovely, hymn-like idea.

It has been said that the slow second movement, originally called “Evening,” was intended to be a portrait of Clara. The main melody, announced by the violins, then taken up by the cellos over woodwind chords, is a haunting song. Moments of anxiety arise, but are dispelled by a further statement of the main theme by the winds. In the quiet coda, trombones are heard for the first time, hinting at a new idea that emerges more fully in the purposeful stride of the third movement, which follows without a break. This movement, initially called “Merry Playmates,” is in rondo, or ABACA, form: in B the winds and strings trade phrases before a vigorous tune is propelled forward by the strings, and C is an ever more unfettered dance.

An upward-striving gesture opens the fourth movement. Schumann had called this movement “Spring’s Farewell,” and in the letter to conductor Wilhelm Taubert mentioned above, warned him that that music was “not to be taken too frivolously.” Two themes are contrasted here. The first has a playful air. The second, in the minor, has a more rustic flavor, the darker coloration of which carries into the central development, of a more nostalgic character. The themes are heard again in their original form, with a short song from the oboe, a call from the horn, and a short cadenza for the flute. Further horn calls sound forth in the symphony’s exhilarating closing moments.

Pictures from March RCO concerts

We thought that you would enjoy seeing some of the photos that RCO photographer Stuart Murtland took at (and prior to) our March 14 and 15 concerts featuring the great Edgar Meyer. More information on Stuart and more examples of his work are available at his website.

Edgar Meyer performing at the Friday, March 13 rehearsal.



Theodore Kuchar and Edgar Meyer at that same rehearsal (with Chris Morrison lurking in the background, enjoying the music).



Scott Faulkner, Edgar Meyer, and Theodore Kuchar discussing musical matters.



Theodore Kuchar conducting at the March 14 performance.



Edgar Meyer and RCO musicians in performance.



Edgar Meyer performing his Double Bass Concerto No. 1 at the March 14 concert.



Edgar Meyer, Theodore Kuchar, and the RCO acknowledging the standing ovation that followed their performance.

The RCO performing Mozart's "Prague" Symphony.

To conclude, one of our favorite photos from these concerts: Edgar Meyer backstage, listening to the RCO playing Mozart.

Program notes for March 14 and 15 RCO concerts

Igor Stravinsky

b. June 17, 1882, Orianenbaum, Russia
d. April 6, 1971, New York, New York

Igor Stravinsky was one of the most important and influential composers of the twentieth century. A stylistic chameleon, Stravinsky made important innovations in areas of music from form and rhythm to tone color and harmony. Early studies with Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov had an important influence on Stravinsky’s first mature works. Those compositions got the attention of impresario Sergei Diaghilev, who commissioned Stravinsky to compose his still-popular trio of ballets, The Firebird (1910), Petrushka (1911), and The Rite of Spring (1911-1913) – the riot that broke out at the latter’s premiere remains one of the famous events in music history. Stravinsky subsequently embraced jazz idioms, found inspiration in Russian folklore, was one of the leaders in the return to past musical traditions known as neoclassicism, and even, late in his career, turned to twelve-tone composition. He toured frequently, and made many important recordings of his works. Among his collaborators were some of the most important artists of his time, including Pablo Picasso, Jean Cocteau, and W.H. Auden. A longtime exile from his native Russia, Stravinsky lived in Switzerland and France before emigrating to the United States in 1939; he lived in the Los Angeles area until his death at age 88.

Concerto in D major for String Orchestra
Composed: 1946
Duration: 12 minutes

Stravinsky’s Concerto in D major was commissioned for the twentieth anniversary of the Basel Chamber Orchestra by its founder Paul Sacher, a legendary conductor and patron of new music who also commissioned works from the likes of Richard Strauss, Bohuslav Martinu, and Béla Bartók. The first commission Stravinsky received from Europe after moving to the United States, the Concerto was begun in early 1946 and completed in August of that year. Sacher and his orchestra – to whom the Concerto is dedicated, hence its nickname "Basler" or "Basel" Concerto – gave the work its first performance on January 27, 1947 in Basel. Since then it has been choreographed on many occasions, perhaps most notably as The Cage (created by Jerome Robbins in 1951).

"Let me know how long you want the piece to be," Stravinsky replied to Sacher’s original request, saying that he could accept the commission "if it is from ten to twelve minutes, like Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos." The comparison is in some respects an apt one: the Concerto in D major is in the traditional three movements, the rhythms are lively, and throughout one can hear the contrast between solo instruments and the larger string body (the tutti) characteristic of concertos of Bach’s time. One of only two extended pieces for string orchestra by Stravinsky (the other being the 1927 ballet Apollon Musagète), the Concerto in D major was also one of the composer’s last tonal works before he turned to twelve-tone composition in the early 1950s.

An important characteristic of the Concerto is its constant movement between D major and D minor. This contrast is made clear even from the beginning of the opening Vivace, where within moments the violas and basses play an F natural (creating a D minor chord) as the violins play an F-sharp (making a D major chord). This rhythmically intricate movement is in something like sonata form, with the faster outer sections framing a central, slower Moderato that proceeds by fits and starts. By contrast, the second movement Arioso is all lyricism, as the violins spin out a long and graceful melody. The exciting closing Rondo is propelled by the energetic, scurrying figure that opens the movement.

Giovanni Bottesini

b. December 22, 1821, Crema, Italy
d. July 7, 1889, Parma, Italy

Giovanni Bottesini was one of the greatest double bass players in history. His first instruments were the timpani and violin, but he switched to the bass to earn a scholarship at the Milan Conservatory. Using a small, three-stringed Testore bass – which, according to legend, he rescued from the trash at a marionette theater – he played in orchestras in Venice and Havana, Cuba before turning to solo performance. Years of very successful tours throughout Europe, the United States, and Latin America, including performances before Queen Victoria, Czar Alexander of Russia, and Emperor Napoleon III of France, cemented his reputation as the "Paganini of the double bass." Bottesini also conducted regularly – he led the 1871 Cairo premiere of his friend Giuseppe Verdi’s opera Aida, and later served as Music Director at London’s Covent Garden and the Italian Opera in Paris. He composed throughout his life, and while he wrote about a dozen operas and considerable chamber music, it is largely his virtuoso double bass works that are remembered today.

Double Bass Concerto No. 2 in B minor
Composed: 1845
Duration: 17 minutes

There are many accounts of the effect Bottesini’s bass playing had on his audiences. "Under his bow," wrote Giovanni Depanis, "the double bass groaned, sighed, cooed, sang, quivered, roared – an orchestra in itself with irresistible force and the sweetest expression." In The Land of Melodrama, author and composer Bruno Barilli evokes the scene at a Bottesini concert: "Applause and calls for encores exploded down the disorderly rows at every bar. The magnificent ladies, finely clad, in the theatre boxes of the aristocracy were caught up in the applause without warning, trying to retain their modesty, laughing behind their fans. Supported by his great wooden sound-box, Bottesini leant over his instrument like a conquering hero."

One of the main influences on Bottesini’s composing style is the lyricism of Italian opera – supplemented, of course, in his works for double bass by the arsenal of virtuoso techniques he employed. He exploits the entire range of the instrument, employing harmonics (high-pitched notes produced by touching, rather than pressing down, the string at certain points), as well as occasional double stops, and plenty of fast-paced passagework.

Some additional pyrotechnics were added to the Concerto No. 2 in B minor by Edgar Meyer in his edition of the work – which he calls, in the liner notes for his Sony Classical recording, "my favorite piece in the bass concerto repertoire." Among the most obvious changes are the replacements of Bottesini’s cadenzas in the first and third movements by Meyer’s own, which are showstoppers in their own right.

The nimble first movement features some fast playing from the soloist – particularly in Meyer’s cadenza – but by and large the lyrical impulse wins out over the virtuosic. The second movement, with its almost operatic solo line and spare accompaniment, is followed by a propulsive Allegro finale that, rhythmically, is reminiscent of dance forms like the polonaise of Poland and the Cuban bolero, both of which Bottesini was familiar with through his travels.

Edgar Meyer

b. November 24, 1960, Oak Ridge, Tennessee.

(Photo by Jimmy Ienner Jr.)

Follow this link to Edgar Meyer's website to read his biography and find out more about his recordings and concerts.

Double Bass Concerto No. 1 in D major
Composed: 1993
Duration: 17 minutes

Edgar Meyer’s Double Bass Concerto No. 1 is the first of two solo concertos he has written so far for his instrument; he has also written concertos in which the bass is joined as soloist by cello, violin, and banjo and tabla. Written at the behest of Peter Lloyd, the Minnesota Orchestra’s principal bass player, the Concerto No. 1 was premiered on March 31, 1993, with Meyer, conductor Edo de Waart, and the Minnesota Orchestra.

Edgar Meyer’s biography testifies to his versatility, outlining in brief the variety of styles and genres in which he has performed. While a number of those styles – bluegrass and jazz among others – are hinted at in the Double Bass Concerto No. 1, the setting is otherwise quite a traditional classical one. The solo bass is backed here by a typical chamber orchestra: strings along with pairs of flutes, oboes, clarinets, bassoons, and horns.

The first movement opens with the insouciant entry of the bass. Emerging seemingly from the depths, with strings punctuating the ongoing bass line, the accompaniment gradually gains power as descending woodwind figures flutter above. The bluesy solo part turns even more elaborate as the orchestral texture, initially just flecks of color, begins to fill. The music builds to a climax, then returns to the opening mood.

Pizzicato strings – inspired, says Meyer, by their similar use in Franz Josef Haydn’s Violin Concerto No. 1 – accompany the long notes of the bass as the second movement begins. The music remains quiet, even tentative, as the bass line unfurls. The clarinet adds its voice. Suddenly the music bursts forth, faster and bolder – but just as quickly returns to where it was, the bass line now a bit more elaborate. As before, the winds, this time led by the oboe, lend their color.

Folksy double stops mark the main theme, what Meyer has called "a fiddle tune with blues overtones," of the third movement – music inspired by the playing of Sam Bush, a violin and mandolin player and frequent Meyer collaborator. The bass part gradually becomes a moto perpetuo, calming only briefly for a more spacious interlude accompanied by spare string chords. But then the orchestra takes over the theme as the bass churns away underneath, leading to the swirling virtuoso line of the soloist in the Concerto’s exciting conclusion.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

b. January 27, 1756, Salzburg, Austria
d. December 5, 1791, Vienna, Austria

No reminder is really needed of the unique stature of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in the history of Western music. His vast catalog of compositions – over 600 of them, including some 15 operas, 17 masses, 50 symphonies, 20 piano concertos, 23 string quartets, and so on (the list can go on for quite some time) – epitomizes the German-Austrian Classical style. His music is recognized and loved all over the world for its melodic, harmonic, and textural richness and beauty. The son of a well-known violinist and pedagogue, Mozart was one of the greatest prodigies ever, playing his first public concert at age five and composing his first music at seven. Before reaching the age of ten he had already played recitals in front of the likes of Marie Antoinette and King George III of England. He traveled throughout Europe through his teens. After failing to find a secure post elsewhere, and having grown dissatisfied with his career in Salzburg, Mozart moved to Vienna, where he spent the last decade of his life. While he enjoyed some successes with his new operas and piano concertos, life there grew more and more precarious, leading to his early death at age thirty-five.

Symphony No. 38 in D major, K. 504 "Prague"
Composed: 1786
Duration: 30 minutes

As mentioned above, Mozart did enjoy some considerable triumphs during his Vienna years. But as time went on, he increasingly had to compete with other musicians and institutions for concert and commission opportunities. The premiere at Vienna’s Burgtheater of the opera Le nozze di Figaro (The Marriage of Figaro) on May 1, 1786 didn’t help matters – critics and fellow musicians were enthusiastic, but audiences didn’t embrace the new work, and only seven further performances ensued. However, a few months later, Figaro was performed at the National Theater (now the Theater of the Estates or Tyl Theater) in Prague and received an overwhelming response, so much so that Mozart, spurred on by his friends and by an invitation from music patron Count Johann Joseph Thun, decided to visit Prague for himself. He and his wife Constanze arrived on January 11, 1787.

What they found was something like Mozart- and Figaro-mania: Mozart wrote to his friend Gottfried von Jacquin that "people here talk about nothing but Figaro. Nothing is played, sung, or whistled but Figaro. Nothing, nothing but Figaro. Certainly a great honor for me!" Within a few days of his arrival Mozart presented a concert featuring his Piano Concerto No. 25. Then, at a Grand Musical Academy performance on January 19, he conducted the premiere of his Symphony No. 38, now nicknamed the "Prague." The symphony – his first since No. 36, the "Linz," of three years before – had been completed back in December in Vienna, and Mozart brought the score with him to Prague. Contrary to some accounts, the work was not written specifically for that city, as it had been completed before Mozart was invited to visit. In any event, those Prague concerts, which also included Mozart-led performances of Figaro, were thoroughgoing successes and led to an important commission for an opera – Don Giovanni, which was premiered in Prague in October 1787.

The Symphony No. 38 is unusual in that it only features three movements – it is possibly the only major symphony of the time that dispenses with the minuet that had become a standard part of the form. Perhaps Mozart felt that the three movements of the "Prague" Symphony were substantial and dramatic enough on their own.

In common with only two other Mozart symphonies (the aforementioned "Linz" and No. 39), the first movement opens with a slow introduction. It explores a range of moods and textures, including some poignant dissonances and a dramatic turn into the minor key with trumpets and timpani blazing. The Allegro main body of the movement begins almost unobtrusively, with a quiet rising sequence and syncopations over a single repeated note in the violins, leading into another trumpet and drum outburst, this time a festive one. This and the lyrical second theme are only two of the six motives that Mozart introduces. Although it sounds effortless, the counterpoint of the development section – called by Alfred Einstein "one of the greatest, most serious, most aggressive in all Mozart’s works" – was complex enough that Mozart actually had to sketch it out in advance, one of the rare times in his life that he did so.

The graceful theme that opens the central Andante has some darker undercurrents: a purposeful bass line, passing dissonances, and a brief turn into the minor. In fact, as songful as the movement is, it also plumbs some surprising depths. The colors of the orchestra here, and throughout the work, are radiant – Prague was known for the quality of its wind players, and its audiences would have been pleased with how Mozart shows off the colors of the winds in this symphony.

The third movement is propulsive and impetuous, opening with a little hint of the duet "Aprite presto" from Figaro that must have caught the ears of the Prague audiences. The movement is one of contrasts – winds and strings, loud and soft, grace and drama. One writer remarks on how this music “must have been highly demanding of the players of the time, for Mozart assigns the orchestra parts requiring great agility, a refinement of phrasing, an attack and ensemble work that would push them to the limit.”