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Program Notes
Classical Series
The Four Seasons
Nicholas McGegan, conductor
Jennifer Koh, violin
Thursday, December 6, 2007 at 8 p.m.
Friday, December 7, 2007 at 10:45 a.m.
Friday, December 7, 2007 at 8 p.m.*
Saturday, December 8, 2007 at 8:30 p.m.
in Orchestra Hall at the Max M. Fisher Music Center
Conductor Comments
Maestro McGegan shares his insights about today’s program:
Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons:
“Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons is one of the best-loved pieces of classical music in the world. Because we can hear it on a daily basis on the radio – and even in elevators, planes and Starbucks – we tend perhaps to forget what an incredibly original and inventive work it is. Earlier composers may have imitated birdsong or bagpipes, but who tried a growling dog, mosquitoes, drunks or ice skating? His brilliant imagination really does conjure up storms, shivering, insufferable heat and hunting in Venetian lagoon.”
Rebel’s Les Élémens:
“The French were especially fond of imitating nature in their music. Rameau wrote orchestral preludes in his operas full of earthquakes, erupting volcanoes, seastorms and, of course, whole aviaries of birds. His contemporary, Jean-Féry Rebel, took this one stage further in his ballet The Elements. In the beginning, as in Genesis, there is chaos represented musically by one of the most astonishing pieces of music ever written. It is a piece that I love and have been lucky enough to play with dance.”
The Four Seasons for Violin and Orchestra, Op. 8, Nos. 1-4
ANTONIO VIVALDI
B. March 4, 1678, Venice
D. July 28, 1741, Vienna
The Four Seasons for Violin and Orchestra, Op. 8, Nos. 1-4
ANTONIO VIVALDI
B. March 4, 1678, Venice
D. July 28, 1741, Vienna
The four violin concertos known collectively as The Four Seasons were published by Le Cene in Amsterdam in 1725, along with eight other concertos, under the title Il cimento dell’armonia e dell’invenzione (The Contest of Harmony and Invention). According to the composer’s preface, the individual concertos, perhaps in different form, had become well known before publication.
Scored for solo violin, strings and continuo (approx. 39 minutes).
Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons may well qualify as the best-known instrumental work of the Baroque period. In addition to numerous recordings (more than sixty at latest count), these four concertos have served as the basis for ballets, for the score of a film by the same name and in bits and pieces for television commercials.
This popularity is not new found. In the 18th century too, the concertos were performed both “straight” and in arrangements that rival in ingenuity (or perversity) any to be heard today. In 1739, Nicolas Chedeville applied for a license to publish several Italian works for “the musette, the hurdy-gurdy, or the flute with the accompaniment of violins and a bass.” At the top of his list was the Spring concerto from Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons — already the most popular of the set. Miichel Corrette used the same concerto as a basis for a grand motet, and Jean Jacques Rousseau arranged it for solo flute.
What was it that so stirred the listeners of Vivaldi’s time? For the most part, the composer’s accuracy in portraying natural sounds; unlike today, when composers feel obliged to apologize for imitative music, the goal then was to create as realistic a copy as possible. Indeed, the few criticisms leveled against The Four Seasons in the 18th century were directed toward a supposed lack of realism.
Today, we appreciate the Seasons as heirs of the anti-pictorialism of the early 20th century (even the so-called “New Romanticism” has not embraced program music to any degree). Modern scholars are at pains to point out the appropriateness of Vivaldi’s title for the entire Opus 8 set in which armonia (in other words, traditional form) is reconciled with invenzione (in this case, pictorialism). Undeniably, Vivaldi does just that, retaining the traditional ritornello scheme, but making the solo episodes occasions both for virtuoso display and for scene painting. Others before him had indulged in passages of such imitation, but the Seasons is the most sustained programmatic work before Beethoven’s “Pastoral” Symphony.
One of the attractions of the printed set, as against the manuscript versions that circulated before, was apparently the inclusion of verses accompanying each concerto, to make the programmatic content more explicit. Some of these are also marked in the score, in addition to some indications of scene and performing practice best left to the players’ scrutiny.
The translated poems follow:
Spring
Joyful spring has arrived
The birds welcome it with their happy songs
And the brooks in the gentle breezes
Flow with a sweet murmur.
The sky is covered with a black mantle,
Thunder and lightning announce a storm.
When they are silent, the birds
Take up again their harmonious songs.
And in the flower-rich meadow,
To the gentle murmur of leaves and plants
The goatherd sleeps, his faithful dog at his side.
To the merry sounds of a rustic bagpipe
Nymphs and shepherds dance in their beloved spot
When Spring appears in its brilliance.
Summer
Under the merciless summer sun
Languishes man and flock, the pine tree burns,
The cuckoo begins to sing and at once
Join in the turtle dove and the goldfinch.
A gentle breeze blows, but Boreas
Joins battle suddenly with his neighbor,
And the shepherd weeps because overhead
Hangs the dreaded storm, and his destiny.
His tired limbs are robbed of their rest
By his fear of the lightning and the heavy thunder
And by the furious swarm of flies and hornets.
Alas, his fears are well founded:
There is thunder and lightning in the sky and the hail
Cuts down the lofty ears of corn.
Autumn
The peasant celebrates with song and dance
The pleasure of the rich harvest,
And full of the liquor of Bacchus
They finish their merrymaking with a sleep.
All are made to leave off singing and dancing
By the air which now mild gives pleasure
And by the season which invites many
To enjoy a sweet sleep.
At dawn the hunters
With horns and guns and dogs leave their homes:
The beast flees; they follow its traces.
Already terrified and tired by the great noise Of the guns and the dogs, and wounded it tries Feebly to escape, but exhausted dies.
Winter
Frozen and shivering in the icy snow,
In the strong blasts of a terrible wind
To run stamping one’s feet at every step
With one’s teeth chattering through the cold.
To spend the quiet and happy days by the fire
While outside the rain soaks everyone.
To walk on the ice with slow steps
And go carefully for fear of falling.
To go in haste, slide and fall down:
To go again on the ice and run,
Until the ice cracks and opens.
To hear leaving their iron-gated house Sirocco,
Boreas and all the winds in battle:
This is winter, but it brings joy.
The Four Seasons was last performed January 29-31, 2004
DSO SHOP @ THE MAX RECOMMENDS:
Vivaldi, The Four Seasons,
Sarah Chang, violin, with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, EMI 94431.
Les Élémens
JEAN-FÉRY REBEL
B. April 18, 1666, Paris
D. January 2, 1747
Premiered September 27, 1737 at the Académie Royale de Musique in Paris.
Scored for two flutes, two oboes, one bassoon, two horns, two trumpets, timpani, harpsichord and strings (approx. 25 minutes).
Jean-Féry Rebel was the second and most famous of three generations to serve in the French court from 1661 to 1775. His father, Jean Rebel, entered the royal chapel in 1661 singing under the direction of Jean-Baptiste Lully. When Lully noticed the music talents of 8-year-old Jean-Féry, he tutored him in violin and composition.
From 1699 to 1733, Rebel held several positions in the court of Louis XIV and at the Opéra. He joined the Opéra in 1699 as violinist and then assumed additional jobs as harpsichordist (1702-15), batteur de mesure (lit. “time-beater,” the emerging role of conductor) (1715-c.1727) and maître de musique, or Music Master (c. 1727-33). Along with his Opéra duties, he also held positions at court. He was first member and then leader of the King’s 24 Violins (1705-17) as well as a Chamber Music Composer (1718-27).
His chamber works, trio sonatas for violin and continuo, were among the first sonatas composed in France.
Although his only opera, Ulysse, was not the success he had hoped for. His dance music, however, was extremely successful. Rebel was the first to choreograph dance outside of dramatic works, composing works in a new genre, the “choreographic symphony.” Caprice (1711), the first of such works was choreographed for the famous Mademoiselle Prévost. Others, notably Les Caracteres de la Danse (1715) and Les Élémens (1737), were choreographed for the most famous women dancers of the period.
Les Élémens, Rebel’s last composition, was his most ambitious and striking work. Dedicated to the Prince of Carignan, one of his powerful patrons, this work is a 10-movement choreographed tone poem depicting the formation of earth’s elements (earth, water, fire and air) from cosmic chaos. Although they were originally composed and performed separately, the movement Le Cahos (“Chaos”) later became the introduction to the dance suite Les Élémens and are now published and performed together.
Because of its originality and harmonic daring, Chaos is considered a musical masterpiece of the time and is compared to Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring (1913). Yet, though the first Paris run of Stravinsky’s work incited riots, one Paris arts journal claimed Les Élémens was received “in the judgment of the greatest Connoisseurs, (as) one of the most beautiful symphonic works in this genre … ”
Chaos begins with an unheard-of dissonance, sustaining all seven notes of the D minor scale in one harsh chord. After a short silence, one hears the formation of elements pulsating into existence. Each is introduced as melodic themes that are developed together in later movements. “Air” appears in a high-register wind tone suspended above the chaos. Slow, flowing scales depict the appearance of “Water.” “Fire and Earth” enter together at opposite ends of the register: “Fire,” the shimmering violins dancing with “Air,” float above the rumblings of “Earth’s” bass section. As the four elements develop, interweaving throughout their seven appearances, the rhythmic “Chaos” diminishes.
Most of the succeeding movements are based on dance forms. Loure is for “Earth and Water;” Chaconne for “Fire;” and Ramage for “Air.” As “life” appears in this work, Rebel inserts birdsongs into Ramage (Birdsongs) and Rossignol (Nightingale). The Tambourins, also labled “Water,” contain shifting phrase lengths. The final three movements, Sicilienne, a languid canon, Rondeau (Air pour l’Amour, or “Song for Cupid”), and Caprice, are assigned no element associations.
This is the Detroit Symphony Orchestra premiere of Rebel’s Les Éleméns.
DSO SHOP @ THE MAX RECOMMENDS:
Rebel, Les Éleméns, Christopher Hogwood conducting the Academy of Ancient Music, L’Oiseau Lyre B0010027.
Program notes by harpist Kelly Yoakam, master’s candidate in Musicology at Michigan State University.
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