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| Stravinsky's “The Firebird” and Still's “Afro-American Symphony” |  |  | | | | William Grant Still | | | 1895-1978 | | |
William Grant Still
Afro-American Symphony (Symphony No. 1)
Often called “Dean of Afro-American Composers,” William Grant Still grew up in a musically-oriented middle class family. While his mother wanted him to become a physician, there was never any doubt that his heart and soul were in music. His musical training covered the whole spectrum, from studying the blues with W.C. Handy to composition with George Chadwick at the New England Conservatory of Music and with Edgar Varèse. His music reflects these diverse influences. His early works shows the influence of Varèse, whose style he later disavowed in favor of simpler harmonic and melodic approaches. In the late 1920s his music became more lyrical and romantic as he began drawing his material from ethnic and popular sources. But while he at times made use of actual folk songs and blues, he invented most of his thematic material.
Still was a prolific composer, with ballets, songs, piano pieces, choral works, chamber music, five symphonies and eight operas. He made his living, however, as a successful arranger for popular musicians, among them Paul Whiteman, Artie Shaw and Sophie Tucker. He also worked as arranger and conductor for the major radio networks and later for television. He provided orchestration for several Broadway musicals and arranged music for films, including Lost Horizons, Pennies from Heaven and Stormy Weather.
The Afro-American Symphony was composed in 1930 and premiered in 1931. In notes for a 1965 recording, Still wrote that “It was not until the Depression struck that I went jobless long enough to let the symphony take shape.” It is the first symphony composed by an African American to be performed by a major symphony orchestra.
While the themes throughout the Symphony suggest traditional blues melodies and spirituals, they are all original. The blues theme that opens the Symphony, reappears in each movement.  Still’s stated purpose was “To demonstrate how the blues, so often considered a lowly expression, could be elevated to the highest musical level.” The harmonies employed throughout the symphony are by and large conventional, as is the overall symphonic structure. The four movements are aptly described by their subtitles: “Longing,” “ Sorrow,” “Humor” and “Aspirations.” Still appended each movement with a verse by the African American poet Paul Laurence Dunbar. The quasi-programmatic nature of the Symphony clearly was more important to the composer than structural or harmonic complexity.
After a brief introduction featuring the oboe – Still's preferred solo instrument throughout the Symphony – a muted trumpet introduces the blues theme followed by a second major theme resembling a spiritual for solo oboe. The movement is in sonata form, but in the recapitulation, the two themes are repeated in reverse order. The second movement is sorrowful and tragic, its theme again introduced by the oboe; it is answered by a second theme on the flute, a variation of the opening blues theme.
The third movement is lively and full of syncopated dance rhythms with a banjo for orchestral color; it bears a striking resemblance to Gershwin's "I've got Rhythm." While not technically a scherzo/trio with its strict pattern of repeats, it does employ a contrasting theme. The symphony culminates in a majestic and proud finale that unites all previous themes, as if the trials of the blacks can never be forgotten. It ends, however, in a spirited mood as it transforms the music of the scherzo from a dance into a driving forceful statement. |
| | |  | | | | Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart | | | 1756-1791 | | |
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Symphony No. 25 in g Minor, K. 183
When listening to any popular piece of music, it is difficult to keep from being lulled into inattention by its sheer familiarity. And while we can never hear a 200-year-old work from the point of view of its original audience, it is useful to pretend, at least, to be hearing it for the first time.
Despite the fact that modern listeners tend to regard the key of a work as irrelevant, musicians of the Baroque and Classical periods regarded certain keys as possessing specific emotive qualities. Minor keys in particular were fraught with emotional significance, and few symphonies in this period were written in minor keys. For Mozart, the key of g minor was the key of extreme pathos and despair. He used it sparingly for some of his most heart-wrenching music: the String Quintet K. 516; the Piano Quartet K. 478; Pamina’s aria “Ah, ich fühl’s” from The Magic Flute; the Symphony No. 40 K550 and, of course, the so-called “Little g minor” Symphony (No. 25) K. 183 written when he was only 17.
Considering the Symphony’s dark mood, it was probably not written on commission but to satisfy the composer’s inner needs. Mozart composed it in October 1773, just after his return to his hated Salzburg from a less-than-successful trip to Milan, where his opera Lucio Silla, with its Sturm und Drang atmosphere, displeased the audience. Given his general immaturity, one can envision the Symphony as a brilliant, but typically adolescent, outpouring.
For over 200 years the “Little g minor” was rarely heard in concert halls in spite of its beauty and emotional wallop. It took the film Amadeus, where the stormy first movement served as background music for the opening credits and Mozart’s funeral procession, to bring it to public attention.
The Symphony’s new lease on life must also give great satisfaction to oboe players, who get a couple of the repertory’s great licks in the first and third movements – with repeats! The Andante is suitably lyrical and understated to provide relief from the first movement. But the Menuetto and Trio return to the somber mood of the opening, much as its later cousin does in Symphony No 40. & With a lovely duet, the Trio allows the second oboe to share the wealth with its partner. Mozart often unified his symphonies and concertos with little internal quotes. In the Finale the rondo alludes to the Menuetto theme, transforming it slightly and later in the movement a similar allusion to the opening of the Symphony, especially its syncopated rhythm. Mozart was to visit another trasnformation of the opening theme of this Symphony on another occasion nearly half a lifetime later in the overture and denouement of Don Giovanni.
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| | | Igor Stravinsky
The Firebird Suite
“He is a man on the eve of fame,” said Sergey Diaghilev, impresario of the famed Ballets Russes in Paris, during the rehearsals for Igor Stravinsky’s The Firebird.
In 1909 Stravinsky, viewed as a budding composer just coming out from under the tutelage of Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov, got what can be called his big break, thanks to the laziness of the composer Anatoly Lyadov. Early in the year Diaghilev had written Lyadov: “I am sending you a proposal. I need a ballet and a Russian one, since there is no such thing. There is Russian opera, Russian dance, Russian rhythm – but no Russian ballet. And that is precisely what I need to perform in May of the coming year in the Paris Grand Opera and in the huge Royal Drury Lane Theater in London…The libretto is ready…It was dreamed up by us all collectively. It is The Firebird – a ballet in one act and perhaps two scenes.” When Diaghilev heard that after three months Lyadov had only progressed so far as to buy the lined paper, he withdrew the commission and offered it to Aleksander Glazunov and Nikolay Tcherepnin, who both turned him down. In desperation he turned to the unknown Stravinsky.
Stravinsky finished the score in May 1910, in time for the premiere on June 25. It was an instant success and has remained Stravinsky's most frequently performed work. Its romantic tone, lush orchestral colors, imaginative use of instruments and exciting rhythms outdid even Stravinsky’s teacher, the Russian master of orchestration. It required an immense orchestra and the first suite Stravinsky extracted from the ballet in 1911 strained symphony orchestras’ resources. In order to make it more accessible, he assembled in 1919 a suite for the concert hall, modifying the orchestration to conform to the resources of a modest orchestra. He re-orchestrated the suite in 1945, adding some of the music omitted from the original ballet while retaining the reduced orchestration.
The ballet, taking its plot from bits of numerous Russian folk tales, tells the story of the heroic prince, the Tsarevich Ivan who, while wandering in an enchanted forest, encounters the magic firebird picking golden fruit from a silver tree. He traps the bird but, as a token of goodwill, frees it. As a reward, the bird gives Ivan a flaming magic feather. At dawn Ivan finds himself in a park near the castle of the evil magician Kashchey. Thirteen beautiful maidens, captives of Kashchey, come out of the castle to play in the garden but one of them in particular, the beautiful Tsarevna, captures Ivan’s heart. As the sun rises, the maidens have to return to their prison and the Tsarevna warns Ivan not to come near the castle lest he fall under the magician’s spell as well. In spite of the warning, Ivan follows and opens the gate of the castle. With a huge crash Kashchey and his retinue of monsters erupt from the castle in a wild dance, whose drive and clashing harmonies foreshadow The Rite of Spring. With the help of the magic feather Ivan calls the Firebird who overcomes Kashchey and tames the monsters by lulling them to sleep. In the end the captives are freed from the spell and Tsarevich Ivan and the Tsarevna are married in a grand ceremony culminating in an apotheosis of the Firebird.
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| | | | Copyright © Elizabeth and Joseph Kahn 2009 |
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March 2010
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