JAROMIR WEINBERGER
Schwanda the Bagpiper: Polka and Fugue
Jaromir Weinberger was born in Prague on January 8, 1896, and died in St. Petersburg, Florida, on August 8, 1967. He composed his opera Švanda dudak (Schwanda the Bagpiper) in 1926; the librettist, who based his work on an old Czech children’s story, was Miloš Kareš. The work premiered at the National Theater in Prague on April 27, 1927. The score calls for three flutes (third doubles piccolo), two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, seven trumpets (three onstage, four backstage playing in unison), three trombones, tuba, timpani, glockenspiel, triangle, snare drum, cymbals, bass drum, harp, optional organ, and strings. Duration is about 8 minutes.
Jaromir Weinberg began his training in his native Prague, then went on to the Leipzig Conservatory, where his teachers included Reger. His style, though, is most closely tied to the Czech nationalism of Smetana and Dvorák, expressed though a series of operas and operettas. By far his most famous work is the opera Schwanda the Bagpiper, which, in the four years after its premiere in Prague, enjoyed more than 2000 performances worldwide in 20 languages. Although he continued writing operas and operettas (including a version, in Czech, of Bret Harte’s The Outcasts of Poker Flat) nothing else came close to this extraordinary success.
In 1938 Weinberger and his wife emigrated to the United States; they settled in Florida in 1949. Unfortunately, he began to suffer from deepening depression, reportedly in part because of his inability to match the success of his early opera, though the upheavals of the 20th century could certainly have played a part, particularly in destroying the cultural tradition in which he had grown up and for which he continued to long. He spent his last years largely in seclusion and committed suicide at seventy-one.
Even when the entire Schwanda opera is not performed, the Polka from Act I and the Fugue from Act II have formed a hugely popular orchestral number for years. It is not necessary to recount the complexities of the comic plot here, but it is worth explaining that the hero, Schwanda, plays the Polka on his bagpipes to cheer up a queen who is suffering from melancholy. The tune not only cheers her up, but causes her to fall in love with him. Later, when Schwanda encounters his jealous wife, he swears that if he has even kissed her, he will go to hell. At once he disappears, surrounded by lightning flashes. The second act takes place in hell, where Schwanda saves himself again with his bagpipes. The Fugue, which he plays there, allows him to engineer his escape and a return to his forgiving wife.
WOLFGANG AMADÈ MOZART
Violin Concerto No. 5 in A, K.219
Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgang Gottlieb Mozart, who began calling himself Wolfgango Amadeo about 1770 and Wolfgang Amadè in 1777, was born in Salzburg, Austria, on January 27, 1756, and died in Vienna on December 5, 1791. He composed his fifth violin concerto, K.219, during the twelve weeks that separated its date of completion, December 20, 1775, from that of its predecessor, the Violin Concerto No. 4 in D, K.218; it probably had its premiere in Salzburg not long afterward. In addition to the solo instrument, the score calls for two each of oboes and horns plus orchestral strings. Duration is about 31 minutes.
Wolfgang’s father Leopold was himself a musician of some note, a violinist and composer, whose great contribution was a violin method, Versuch einer gründlichen Violinschule, published in the very year of Wolfgang’s birth and for a long time the standard work of its type. Needless to say, when Wolfgang’s musical talent became apparent, the father undertook to devote himself wholeheartedly to his training and exhibition both as a moral obligation and a financial investment. Mozart’s earliest musical training came at the keyboard. At the same time, though, he was provided with a small violin, and he no doubt spent a great deal of time watching his father play and experimenting on his own.
One of the many astonishing stories of Mozart’s musical abilities came from a friend of his father’s, Andreas Scachtner, who wrote this account after Mozart’s death to his sister Nannerl, who was gathering material for a biography. Schachtner recalled an evening in 1762 when a visiting composer, Wenzel Hebelt, brought six new trios he had written. Leopold Mozart was to play the bass line on his viola, the composer to play the first violin part, and Schachtner the second violin. (Schachtner was the court trumpeter, but instrumentalists were far less specialized then than they are today!) Little Wolfgang, six years old, badgered his father to allow him to play the second violin part. Leopold wanted him to leave them alone, since he had never studied the instrument, but Wolfgang replied, “You don’t need to have studied in order to play second violin.” Schachtner was willing to let Wolfgang play along with him, so Leopold said, “Play with Herr Schachtner, but so softly that we can’t hear you, or you will have to go.” Schachtner’s letter to Nannerl continues:
Wolfgang played with me; I soon noticed with astonishment that I was quite superfluous. I quietly put my violin down and looked at your Papa; tears of wonder and comfort ran down his cheeks at this scene, and so he played all six trios. When we had finished, Wolfgang was so encouraged by our applause that he insisted he could play the first violin too. For a joke, we made the experiment, and we almost died for laughter when he played this, too, though with nothing but strange and incorrect fingerings, in such a way that he never actually broke down.
Only after this did Wolfgang begin formal training with his father on the violin, yet his progress was so rapid that he appeared in public as the soloist in a concerto only three months later, on February 28, 1763, a month after his seventh birthday! The extraordinary talent of both Wolfgang and Nannerl suggested to Leopold that he should make a grand tour of Europe to show them off to the crowned heads and wealthy patrons of music; this tour began only a few months after Wolfgang’s debut as a concerto soloist. Until he moved to Vienna and gave up the violin entirely, Wolfgang was able to make professional use of his skill on both string and keyboard instruments.
In his maturity Mozart preferred the keyboard as the principal vehicle of his virtuosity, and it was for the keyboard that he composed his most profound concertos, whether for himself, for his students, or for other virtuosos. But during the earlier years, when he was still concertmaster in the court orchestra of the Archbishop Hieronymus Colloredo of Salzburg, playing the violin was one of his duties—one that he fulfilled with some distaste. His father constantly encouraged his violin playing. In a letter of October 18, 1777, Leopold wrote, “You have no idea how well you play the violin, if you would only do yourself justice and play with boldness, spirit, and fire, as if you were the first violinist in Europe.” Perhaps it was the constant paternal pressure that caused Wolfgang ultimately to drop the violin as a solo instrument. His move to Vienna was in part a declaration of independence from his father, and his giving up the violin as a concert instrument should probably be understood in that light. (He continued to play the viola, preferring it in chamber music, for the rest of his life, but his concert appearances were as a pianist.)
It is generally said that the five violin concertos were all composed during a single year, 1775, while Wolfgang was nineteen and still concertmaster in Salzburg. Recently Wolfgang Plath, in a detailed study of Mozart’s handwriting and the way it changed over the years, suggested that the first concerto was written in April 1773 (the date on the original manuscript is smudged and illegible, so this is quite possible). Perhaps it was this piece that Leopold meant when he referred in a later letter to “the concerto that you wrote for Kolb [a Salzburg amateur],” which is otherwise a mystery. In any case, the other four concertos were composed in the space of some six months in 1775.
It is not clear whether he wrote them for himself or for Gaetano Brunetti, an Italian violinist also in the Archbishop’s orchestra. There is some evidence to suggest the latter possibility: a few years later, when Mozart wrote a new slow movement (Adagio in E major, K.261) to replace the middle movement of the Fifth Violin Concerto (K.219), Leopold referred to K.261 in a letter of October 9, 1777, as having been written for Brunetti “because he found the other one too studied.” But that is certainly not solid proof that the original concerto, much less all five of them, was composed for the Italian instrumentalist.
When Mozart wrote the violin concertos, he was still consolidating his concerto style; he had not yet developed the range and dramatic power of his mature piano concertos. Though he was developing quickly in those years, his violin concertos still resemble the Baroque concerto, with its ritornello for the whole orchestra recurring like the pillars of a bridge to anchor the arching spans of the solo sections. Mozart gradually developed ways of using the tutti solo opposition of the Baroque concerto in a unique fusion with the dramatic tonal tensions of sonata form, but the real breakthrough in his new concerto treatment did not come until the composition of the E flat piano concerto, K.271, in January 1777. Thus all of the five violin concertos precede the “mature” Mozart concerto, which is not at all the same thing as saying that they are “immature” pieces.
Even within the space of the six months during which the last four were composed, Mozart’s concerto technique underwent substantial development. The last three concertos have long been a regular part of the repertory. Whatever it was that happened during the three months between the composition of the Second and the Third violin concertos, it had the effect of greatly deepening Mozart’s art, of allowing him to move beyond the pure decoration of the galant style to a more sinewy and spacious kind of melody. The violin seems to have taken on some of the character--both lyric and dramatic--of the human voice in his operas. As the principal “singer” in the concerto, the soloist becomes a real personality from the moment of the violin’s first entrance. The Allegro exposition presents several ideas, all in A major, followed by a little unison coda ending with a quirky upward arpeggio. The soloist suddenly enters in a dreamy state before reverting to the original tempo, Allegro aperto, with a new theme. Again the unison orchestral coda appears, but the soloist grabs its last figure and uses it to start an entirely new idea that will introduce various passages in the development.
The slow movement is a rapturous contemplation for the soloist in the bright and extremely rare (for Mozart) key of E major. Except for its opening statement, when it is in the foreground, the orchestra mostly provides a rich bed of sonority on which the lush and elaborate violin melody can loll.
The last movement opens with a straightforward but uneventful dance melody in minuet tempo, but the soloist then presents a new melody that breaks out from the formality of the minuet and opens up the rondo form. But any expectation of predictability or regularity is dashed with the surprising appearance of a “Turkish” episode, a sequence of five melodies, of which four are drawn from Hungarian folk music (perhaps transmitted by Mozart’s friend Michael Haydn, just back from a trip to Hungary), while one (the second tune of this group) had already appeared in Mozart’s ballet music Le Gelosie del Seraglio, K.135a, written at age sixteen for his opera Lucio Silla. There it was in A major; in the concerto it is presented in the minor, with the addition of violent sforzandi, which seem to give it that “Turkish” air. After this astonishing interruption, balance is restored with the stately minuet tune and a recapitulation that brings the concerto to an end with a rising arpeggio on a charmingly quizzical note.
PYOTR ILYICH TCHAIKOVSKY
Symphony No. 5 in E minor, Opus 64
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky was born in Votkinsk, Vyatka Province, on May 7, 1840, and died in St. Petersburg on November 6, 1893. He began his Fifth Symphony in May 1888 and completed it on August 26. Tchaikovsky himself conducted the premiere in St. Petersburg on November 26, 1888. Theodore Thomas introduced it to America at a concert in New York on March 5, 1889 (Edward MacDowell’s Piano Concerto No. 2 in D minor, with the composer as soloist, had its premiere on the same program). The score calls for three flutes (third doubling piccolo), two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones and tuba, three timpani, and strings. Duration is about 50 minutes.
By 1888, when Tchaikovsky composed the Fifth Symphony, he was far from being the hypersensitive artist—virtually a neurotic cripple—of popular accounts. To be sure, he had gone through a major emotional crisis ten years earlier, brought on by his ill-advised, catastrophic marriage (undertaken partly in an attempt to “overcome” his homosexuality) and a series of artistic setbacks. His own brother Modest described the Tchaikovsky of 1878 as “nervous and misanthropic,” but declared that he “seemed a new man” by 1885. The masterly achievement of the Fourth Symphony (premiered in 1878) had marked the end of the real crisis. In the decade that followed, Tchaikovsky had composed the violin concerto, the three orchestral suites, Manfred, four operas, his piano trio, and much else—hardly a sign of inability to deal with life’s pressures! With the consolidation of his reputation as a composer, he had even managed to overcome, to a degree, his earlier panic at the thought of having to conduct. Indeed, his confidence was such that, when demands were made for changes in his opera The Sorceress, he was able to write, “I find The Sorceress an opera that has been properly and seriously written, and if the public does not like it, so much the worse for the public.”
His decision to write a symphony again after ten years was an overt expression of Tchaikovsky’s willingness to tackle once more the largest and most demanding musical form of his day. He began the symphony in May 1888, shortly after returning from a successful European tour. By the beginning of July he had finished the draft and started the orchestration, completing the full score on August 17. The premiere, which took place in St. Petersburg that November, was a success, though critics questioned whether the Fifth Symphony was of the same caliber as the Second and Fourth. In March 1889 Tchaikovsky went to Hamburg for the German premiere. There he found Brahms staying in the same hotel and was gratified to learn that the German composer had remained an extra day in Hamburg just to hear the first rehearsal of his new work. The two composers had lunch after the rehearsal “and quite a few drinks,” Tchaikovsky wrote to his brother Modest. “Neither he nor the players liked the Finale, which I also think rather horrible.” But this negative mood was soon dispelled. A week later the composer wrote, “The players by degrees came to appreciate the symphony more and more, and at the last rehearsal they gave me an ovation. The concert was also a success. Best of all—I have stopped disliking the symphony.” Later he wrote even more positively, “I have started to love it again.”
Certainly audiences have loved the symphony for more than a century for its warmth, its color, its rich fund of melody. Tchaikovsky always wrote music with “heart,” music with an underlying emotional significance, though he was wary of revealing that meaning publicly, preferring to let the listener seek it personally. Still, for his own use, before starting in on the composition, he planned a rough program for the first movement—but, characteristically, he kept these notes entirely private, so that the music might make its own case. Still his first ideas are highly suggestive:
Introduction. Complete resignation before Fate, or, which is the same, before the inscrutable predestination of Allegro (I) Murmurs, doubts, plaints, reproaches against xxx. (II) Shall I throw myself in the embraces of faith???
We can find here some hint as to the composer’s ideas, his emotional condition, at the beginning of the Fifth Symphony. The mysterious “xxx” probably refers to the same thing usually discussed in his diary as “Z” or “That”—namely his homosexuality (if revealed publicly, this could have been very embarrassing, or worse, for the composer). The program for the first movement and the music of the symphony as a whole suggest a somewhat philosophical acceptance of his nature, coming by the finale to the realization of some peace of mind.
The first movement opens with a motto theme that might be identified with “Providence,” if only because it is somewhat less assertive than the “Fate” theme of the Fourth Symphony. The motto features a dotted rhythmic figure in the clarinet, supported by a plagal harmony suggesting resignation. This idea recurs, in some form or other, in each of the symphony’s four movements. The soft, somber tread of this introduction yields to a syncopated little tune in the clarinets and bassoons, answered by variants of the same material and sudden fortissimo outbursts. At a moment of sudden quiet, a new theme rises expressively in the strings (with a delicate answer in the woodwinds), to be repeated with the instrumentation reversed. Using Tchaikovsky’s preliminary plan as a guide, it might well be possible to identify the murmurs, the reproaches, the embrace of faith in the various sections; but though Tchaikovsky insisted on the expressive character of his work, it is equally misleading to try to read too much beyond a certain emotional quality into a movement or a phrase. What, for instance, of the intense soaring theme that is yet to come? After these themes have been developed and restated, the movement dies away in a subdued march, still retaining a degree of tension as it fades away into silence.
The second movement contains one of the most famous instrumental solos ever written, an ardent song for the horn, with an important pendant for oboe. The opening is marked by emotional intensity, calling for subtle adjustments to the tempo every few measures. The contrasting middle section seems more objective at first, but it soon builds to a feverish climax dramatically interrupted by the motto theme blared out by the full orchestra. The strings softly sing the horn’s melody with the oboe’s gentle countermelody. Gradually this theme builds to another climax and seems to be dying away, when the motto theme bursts in again, pounding all to silence and allowing only a few broken phrases, devoid of energy, to bring the movement to a close. By this point, the motto suggests more precisely “Fate” than “Providence.”
Traditionally the third movement of a symphony is in some sort of dance meter, usually in triple meter, but few composers have written a full-scale waltz at this point, and even fewer have managed one of such grace and breadth, so evocative of the ballet. A gossamer thread of staccato sixteenth-note figures runs through the middle section deftly supported by the remainder of the orchestra. Its momentum carries it on as an accompanying figure under the first return of the waltz theme in the oboes. The full waltz is heard again (in new scoring), only to be undercut at the end by a hushed reminder of the motto theme in clarinets and bassoons.
The finale is perhaps the most problematic movement of the symphony; Tchaikovsky was at best ambivalent about it, and others have pointed out the prime weakness of what has otherwise been a most effective use of the motto theme throughout the symphony: Having just heard a reminder of it, understated and threatening, at the end of the waltz movement, we suddenly encounter the motto at the opening of the finale firmly in E major, as if the earlier minor mode had simply been an accident. There is no hard-won battle of major over minor here, as in Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony (the evident model for this symphony), or even in Tchaikovsky’s own Fourth Symphony of a decade earlier. The victory seems, at the beginning, too easily won. Fortunately, the motto and its development soon give way to the main formal structure of the movement (sonata form again, for the first time since the beginning), with a vigorous E-minor chordal theme in the strings and a broader melody in the woodwinds; the motto leads off the development section ever more forcefully (in C major), though the development thereafter continues working out the other themes.
Following the recapitulation, the rhythm of the motto builds a massive climax and a grand pause. Now the motto appears in a grand apotheosis of marching chords and swirling woodwind figures with a rich counterpoint in the brass instruments. A presto section is built of thematic materials from earlier in the finale, while the last strain of the coda is a new statement of what had been a nervously syncopated little tune early in the first movement, now ringing out with the most glorious assurance as a majestic trumpet fanfare in the major key—a triumph of sorts, if only by overstatement. The doubts and tensions of the earlier movements have been overcome by putting on a bold front, and there is no question that it has all been bravely done. But Brahms, at least, had his doubts, and Tchaikovsky, in certain moods, anyway, did not disagree. He knew at heart that he was whistling in the dark, but it is a brave whistle that provides the courage to go on.
© Steven Ledbetter (www.stevenledbetter.com)