“Poetic Tone Poems, Op. 85, No. 6: Sorrowful Reverie” by Antonin Dvořák [1889], performed by Rudolf Firkusny [1974]

My grandfather’s funeral yesterday was difficult for me, but it was moving to see how many people showed up to see him one final time. Today, I vowed to move on, so this will be the last post related to his passing. My grandfather was a full-blooded Bohemian (Czech to those of you a little fuzzy on your historical Old World geography), so I looked through my collection of Antonin Dvořák, the greatest Czech composer, for a piece that would honor his proud heritage. (In fact, my grandfather’s great grandmother, whom he knew well because she lived into his high school years, was born just a few years after Dvořák and less than a dozen miles away.)

“Sorrowful Reverie” captures the mood of my grandfather’s funeral perfectly. Sorrow filled the room, but so did memories of his greatest passion: flying. Soaring above the earth is a sort of reverie, naturally sending one into “a state of dreamy meditation or fanciful musing.” Before he died, my grandfather requested that a certain poem be read at his funeral. The words express the dream-like characteristics of flying and make clear my grandfather’s appreciation and gratitude for the world around him. I gathered enough composure to share with those gathered what he chose to be his final words:

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds, — and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of — wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there,
I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air… .

Up, up the long, delirious burning blue
I’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, or ever eagle flew —
And, while with silent, lifting mind I’ve trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.

(High Flight, by John Gillespie Magee, Jr.)

Emotive music was written for such occasions, but thanks for putting up with my personal life anyway.

“Ten Czech Dances, Book 2: 9. Sousedská” by Bedřich Smetana [1879]

Performed by Rudolf Firkusny [1979]

Music History has previously covered a number of works which fall under the various categories of nationalist music from the Romantic Era, from a simple piano rendering of a Polish mazurka by Dvořák (1880) to epics like Borodin’s “In the Steppes of Central Asia” (1880) and Bedřich Smetana’s own Ma Vlast (1875). From the same period comes Smetana’s compilation of short piano pieces based on traditional Czech dance styles.

In 1853 Hungarian composer Franz Liszt published a series of solo piano pieces based on local folk melodies. It started a trend. Those Hungarian Rhapsodies likely informed Johannes Brahms’ 1869 publication of 21 Hungarian Dances (though the two were fairly different in form and style). Within a decade of Brahms, Czech composer Antonin Dvořák released his first set of Slavonic Dances. That work was the most obvious influence on fellow Bohemian Smetana’s 1879 10 Czech Dances.

The piece posted above was the ninth of the set. Smetana titled it Sousedská, “Neighbor’s Dance,” and it was essentially a Czech waltz. As offensive (and anachronistic) at it is to say this, the repetitive hammered chords make me think of this movement as a 19th century power ballad. Sousedská is simply a fun power waltz.

“Six Mazurkas, Op. 56 - No. 2 Vivo e risoluto in C” by Antonin Dvořák [1880] performed by Rudolf Firkušný [1974]

Random Music History Song of the Day

The Romantic Era is well-known for the nationalist pride of many of the era’s premiere composers. That nationalism was especially notable in Eastern Europe. We already encountered one example when we discussed Czech composer Bedřich Smetana’s 1875 ode to the Vltava River. Today’s song of the day brings us another famous Czech, Antonin Dvořák. In this case, however, the song is not about Bohemia nor does it utilize Bohemian or Moravian folk melodies. Instead, Dvořák wrote his “Six Mazurkas” after the style of Polish-born Frédéric Chopin, who brought the simple mid-tempo Polish folk dance the “mazurka” to prominence as a high-art folk-classical hybrid a half century earlier. 

The recording posted above was made by Czech-born pianist Rudolf Firkušný, a Moravian who worked and lived in America after fleeing the Nazi invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1939. Firkušný performing this piece in 1974 added additional layers of meaning to the original nationalism, since both Poland and Czechoslovakia were effectively controlled by the Soviet Union at the time. This recording comes from Rudolf Firkušný: Czech Piano Music, which also includes pieces by Smetana, Dussek, Benda, Tomásek, and Vorisek. Czech it out. (Unfortunately the collection is out of print, so it appears to be rather expensive now.)

“Nuages” from Trois Nocturnes by Claude Debussy [1900] performed by Pierre Boulez and the New York Philharmonic [1973]

Random Music History Song of the Day

Two days of classical music in a row… that’s a first for this tumblelog.

“I am trying to do ‘something different’ - in a way realities - what the imbeciles call `impressionism’ is a term which is as poorly used as possible, particularly by art critics.” - Claude Debussy, 1908 (source: Impressionist Influences on Claude Debussy).

Claude Debussy never liked being tagged an “impressionist” composer. While he felt the term may in some ways capture the inspiration and emotion contained in certain period paintings (the art form which the term was first and most often used), instrumental music was by its very nature symbolic and impressionistic, whether traditional program music or Debussy’s own “something different.” The label, therefore, contains no substance. 

It is, however, quite easy to see how critics and the public applied the label to Debussy and his works. His set of three symphonic poems, Trois Nocturnes, composed between 1897 and 1899, was inspired by paintings of the same title by impressionist painter James McNeill Whistler. Furthermore, Debussy wrote the following preface to the musical score of Trois Nocturnes: 

“The title Nocturnes is to be interpreted here in a general and, more particularly, in a decorative sense. Therefore, it is not meant to designate the usual form of the Nocturne, but rather all the various impressions and the special effects of light that the word suggests. ‘Nuages’ renders the immutable aspect of the sky and the slow, solemn motion of the clouds, fading away in grey tones lightly tinged with white. ‘Fêtes’ gives us the vibrating, dancing rhythm of the atmosphere with sudden flashes of light. There is also the episode of the procession (a dazzling fantastic vision), which passes through the festive scene and becomes merged in it. But the background remains resistantly the same: the festival with its blending of music and luminous dust participating in the cosmic rhythm. ‘Sirènes’ depicts the sea and its countless rhythms and presently, amongst the waves silvered by the moonlight, is heard the mysterious song of the Sirens as they laugh and pass on.” (source)

He even used the word “impressions.” If he truly wanted to avoid the label, one would think he would have avoided the word itself. On the other hand, the word captures the essence of the work better than any other.

Debussy’s note gave an expressive description of the first movement, titled “Nuages,” so I won’t add too much here except to say that the music matches his intent. Just as clouds appear from nowhere, change only in subtle ways, and never settle into a stable condition - they either disappear just as they were born, implode in a violent storm, or simply drift out of view over the horizon - “Nuages” floats along on minor-ish chords using a non-tradition scale (I can’t quite tell which type), rarely settling on the home note. I’d say it gives quite the impression of clouds. Wow, OK, terrible wordplay. I know. I’m done.

“Romeo and Juliet Fantasy-Overture” by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky [1886] performed by Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic [1957]

Random Music History Song of the Day

Firstly, a note on dates. As a standard convention when I post Classical music, I have use the premiere date instead of the composition date. This is the most similar event to the release of work in the era of audio recording - the first date when the intended audience could potentially have heard the music. Some Classical works present problems, however. A fair quantity were published as sheet music years before a full staging, while others, like Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet saw numerous revisions and, hence, numerous premieres. Tchaikovsky completed his third and final version of Romeo and Juliet in 1880, a full decade after its initial composition. Still, the revised work did not see its first performance until 1886.

Romeo and Juliet was Tchaikovsky’s first composition to be well-received by his fellow Russian composers, even if the Russian public or the rest of Europe initially ignored it. Tchaikovsky started composing this piece when he was 28, during a rut in his ambition. Mily Balakirev suggested Romeo and Juliet as a source of inspiration and Tchaikovsky went to work. When the piece premiered in 1870, but was merely standard fare for the era. With luke-warm reception even from Balakirev, Tchaikovky immediately rewrote parts of the work and dramatically changed the structure. While still in sonata form, the order and convergence of the piece’s three themes were no longer predictable. Now the famous romance theme was not integrated, contrasted, and eventually overwhelmed by the conflict theme until the very end, recreating the dramatic climax of the play.

Tchaikovsky revised the ending in 1880. and the final product is what we hear in this 1957 recording, which, unlike some of Bernstein’s other Tchaikovky recordings, is certainly among the best recorded performances of Romeo and Juliet.

*sigh*

By the Romantic Era, composers had figured out how to convey nearly any emotion with purely instrumental music. Think about that for a minute. It truly is profound. For other examples from the same era see my earlier posts of Smetana’s Vltava and “Siegfried’s Death and Funeral Music” from Wagner’s Götterdämerung.

 The second point I want to make is that there is such a thing as a masterpiece. Shakespeare wrote in a part of Europe that was at the time (c1600) still somewhat of a cultural backwater, but his plays have become defining works of literature. Here we have a Russian composer writing a gorgeous piece of music based on the drama of a 270-year-old foreign language play. Both are now considered masterpieces.

When I start thinking of these cross-cultural works that stand the test of time, I can’t stop. In this case, I thought of a different genre of literature and the two above languages in reverse… A Dostoevsky novel remains immensely powerful even in translation. Think about how important the style and rhythm of the prose is in a novel. No matter how talented the translator, the speech patterns of the original language and many idioms are completely lost. Still, The Brothers Karamozov and Crime and Punishment stand among the very best novels ever published in English.

OK, enough rambling… just enjoy. 

“Má Vlast - Vltava (Die Moldau)” by Bedřich Smetana [1875] performed by Yuri Ahronovich and the Vienna Symphony Orchestra [1990]

Random Music History Song of the Day

The late Romantic period is unique from previous periods (even the first half of the Romantic Era) in the consistent use of folk music by symphonic and operatic composers to evoke nationalism. No better example exists than Bedřich Smetana’s symphonic poem Vltava, one of six independent works that made up a set he called Má Vlast (‘My Fatherland’).

Smetana based the melody of Vltava on “La Mantovana,” a popular early Baroque tune originating in Italy that quickly became a sort of shared European folk song, especially in Eastern Europe. For example, it is via Moldovian composer Samuel Cohen, a Palestian Jewish ex-patriot - apparently unaware of the melody’s long history - that “La Mantovana” became the theme of Hatikvah, the Israeli national anthem.

Vltava and the other five symphonic poems are especially moving for me. They allow me to abstractly and metaphorically visit, literally, my fatherland. My male ancestry (from my grandfather back) is pure Bohemian and I have always found it interesting to imagine the real lives of the people ultimately responsible for my existence. Smetana composed Vltava as a symphonic trip from the source of the Vltava River to its confluence with the Elbe at Mělník, a path straight through the heart of Bohemia, including the great Czech city of Prague. In fact, I even know of a family of my Czech ancestors who lived in Mělník. Listening to Vltava and looking at pictures of the river, the cities it supports, and Bohemia in general is a close as I can get to my fatherland until I actually visit in person (and one day I will). Such is the power of instrumental music!

“Piano Concerto No. 1 in F-sharp minor, Op. 1: I. Vivace” by Sergei Rachmaninoff [1892, 1917] performed by Dimitur Manolov and the Sofia Philharmonic Orchestra [1996?]

Random Music History Song of the Day

If the opening chords of this remind you of Grieg, you’re not alone. In fact, when Sergie Rachmaninoff (various English spellings) composed Piano Concerto No. 1 in 1890 and ‘91 at the tender age of 18, he used Grieg’s famous Piano Concerto as a model (Grieg himself was all of 24 years old for that composition). Listen to the beginning of Grieg’s first movement in the linked video, then to the first run of Rachmaninoff’s first movement. The similarity feels almost too obvious.

Rachmaninoff’s work premiered in March of 1892 at the Moscow Conservatory, where he was just finishing his musical education. After a roller-coaster ride of a career in his late 20s, from the depths of depression following the failed premiere of his Symphony No. 1 in 1897 to great pride after his critically acclaimed Second Piano Concerto, Rachmaninoff settled into a comfortable era, composing many of his most remembered works.

In 1917 he returned to his youthful first piano concerto, giving it a full revision. The composer thinned out the orchestration and added a few chromatic notes to the slower movements, while maintaining much of the block chording reminiscent of Grieg’s work. The revised version is heard here and is the one most often performed today. While not the masterpiece his Second or Third Piano Concertos were, the First is still quite charming.

If you find this recording particularly moving (it’s certainly adequate), the Sofia Philharmonic’s recording of the full Concerto No. 1 was were recently re-released on CD, packaged with a complete version of Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini performed by the Bulgarian Radio Symphony Orchestra.

“Symphony No. 6 in B minor, ‘Pathétique,’ Op. 74, I. Adagio - Allegro non troppo” by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky [1893] performed by Evgeny Mravinsky & the Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra [1961]

Random Music History Song of the Day

Tchaikovski composed his sixth symphony from as early as 1890 to 1893. Tchaikovski premiered the work in St. Petersburg on October 28, 1894. He titled the symphony “Патетическая” (transliterated as “Patetičeskaja”), the closest translation being “passionate.” Some confusion arises from the convention of using the French translation “Pathétique,” which common English speakers often falsely correlate to our word “pathetic.” The dramatic, dynamic first movement is posted here.

Nine days after the premiere, on November 6, the great Russian composer died of cholera (or as some legitimate historians have suggested, suicide). The strong emotions implied by his sixth symphony made a fitting goodbye.