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Program notes for "a dance of emotions"
L’histoire du soldat
Igor Stravinsky
b. Oranienbaum, now Lomonosov, near St. Petersburg, Jun 5, 1882
d. New York, April 6, 1971
Premiered, September 28, 1918, in Lausanne, Switzerland
In Stravinsky’s Faustian L’histoire du soldat, a soldier deserts the army and carries around a violin that represents his soul. The devil wants the soldier’s soul and tempts him with a book that will tell the soldier how to get whatever he wants in life.
Stravinsky knew the tale as told by Russian writer Alexander Atanasyev. Exiled in Switzerland with The Great War waging across the border and the Spanish Influenza pandemic knocking on his door, Stravinsky needed a project. Longtime collaborator and friend Diaghilev, who worked with Stravinsky on projects such as The Rite of Spring, The Firebird and Pulcinella, was also stranded, but in Lisbon, unable to tour. Diaghilev suggested a portable staged work that could run in smaller theaters, with a limited number of actors and musicians.
Stravinsky took to the idea and began talking with Swiss novelist and friend C.F. Ramuz. Stravinsky and Ramuz frequently met at Ernest Ansermet’s house where Ramuz worked to translate Stravinsky’s vocal music into French.
Composer and novelist soon had numerous ideas for L’histoire du soldat. Wanting to keep the performers to a minimum, they decided on four dramatic roles. The Soldier, the Devil and a narrator tell the story. The Princess is silent but dances, as does the Devil. This arrangement is quite flexible; Lincoln’s Symphony Orchestra will use one narrator and dancers for the parts of the Soldier, Devil and Princess, as well as the Queen, Muses and Ladies in Waiting.
Stravinsky initially planned on writing only for unaccompanied violin, but that was far too thin. He began pairing instruments in order to fill out the range of the ensemble: violin with double bass, clarinet with bassoon, trumpet and trombone. He lastly added percussion, but the percussionist must play a host of instruments.
Originally, the premiere was set for Geneva in October, but many of the performers were sick with the Spanish Flu, and patrons were afraid to go out into the public for fear of getting sick. The premiere was moved to Lausanne and was initially successful. Numerous additional shows were planned, but ended up cancelled because of the pandemic.
Typical of his hunger for world music, Stravinsky includes an abundance of genres and dance styles in L’histoire. Tangos, waltzes, Lutheran chorales, rags, pastorals and marches all emerge at one point or another. Stravinsky was quite familiar with old and new styles, and equally well versed in adapting them into his own.
Symphony No. 4 in E minor, Op. 98
Johannes Brahms
b. Hamburg, May 7, 1833
d. Vienna, April 3, 1897
Premiered October 25, 1885 in Meiningen, Germany, conducted by Brahms
It was the music that accompanied Johannes Brahms’s final public appearance, four weeks before his death in 1897. The Viennese audience gave thunderous applause at the end of each movement of the Fourth Symphony and a seemingly ceaseless ovation at its close. The city of Vienna disliked the symphony the first time they heard it in 1886, but this time, they came to honor the composer they loved, because he was dying.
Florence May, friend and biographer of Brahms, described the scene: “The applauding, shouting house, its gaze riveted on the figure standing in the balcony, so familiar and yet in present aspect so strange, seemed unable to let him go. Tears ran down his cheeks as he stood there shrunken in form, with lined countenance, white hair hanging lank; and through the audience there was a feeling of a stifled sob, for each knew that they were saying farewell.”
Despite a successful premiere and tour of the Fourth Symphony, Vienna wasn’t fond of the work, an opinion mirrored by Brahms’s own friends. Before the premiere in Meiningen, Brahms sent scores and piano reductions of the symphony to close friends such as Eduard Hanslick, Elisabeth von Herzogenberg, Hans Richter, Max Kalbeck and Clara Schumann. Brahms was a man with little self-confidence, heavily dependent on others for support and deeply affected by criticism. Many of his friends found the symphony to be too radical, even too intelligent. After hearing Brahms and Ignaz Brüll play a two-piano reduction of the symphony, Hanslick said, “I feel like I’ve just been beaten up by two terribly intelligent people.”
Brahms used a slow Baroque dance in triple meter called a “chaconne” for the fourth movement. A chaconne uses a set harmonic progression in the bass that repeats while variations are written above it. It would become the first time anyone used a chaconne in a symphony, and his friends felt the use of such an archaic form popular two centuries ago had no place there.
Friends also criticized the opening theme; they hated some of the abrupt modulations, and felt the phrases in the scherzo were too short.
Brahms did have at least one companion who was excited to work with the new symphony. Longtime friend Hans von Bülow directed the Hofkapelle Orchestra in Meiningen, and Brahms had a great deal of respect for the manner in which von Bülow rehearsed his ensemble.
It was with von Bülow that Brahms initially discussed the possibility of writing a chaconne for the final movement, long before Brahms wrote a single note of the symphony. Brahms loved the bass Bach employed in the chaconne in Cantata no. 150, Nach Dir, Herr, verlanget mich.
“What would you think of a symphonic movement written on this theme someday?” he asked von Bülow. Brahms went on to say that Bach’s theme was too straightforward, and would have to be changed.
Brahms was hurt by the consistent lack of support demonstrated by the rest of his associates. He insisted, however, that they would feel differently once they heard an orchestra play the piece, and steadfastly defended his composition. Such unwavering faith from the man who took 20 years to write his First Symphony and only two summers to pen the Fourth, and he was exactly right.
Hans von Bülow championed the music of Brahms, and the Fourth Symphony was no exception. He said it was “colossal, completely singular, completely new, brazen individuality,” and that it breathed “unheard-of energy from A to Z.” Von Bülow agreed to take the symphony on tour and allow Brahms to conduct it. The Meiningen premiere was a tremendous success. It continued as such in every city thereafter, with exception to the ever-finicky Viennese audience.
The first movement immediately lays the ground rules for the subsequent movements with the introduction of falling thirds and ascending sixths. A Viennese critic gave the first theme lyrics following the chilly Vienna premiere in 1886: “Es viel, ihm wie, dermal, nichts ein,” meaning “yet again he has no ideas.”
But Brahms did have ideas. He chose to seed thirds throughout all four movements, weaving them into the harmonic progressions, the accompaniments and the melodies, in subtle and overt references. The absolute success of such unification is immediately reminiscent of the very composer Brahms feared and adored, the one who also based a tragic symphony on thirds: Beethoven.
The second movement begins as darkly as the first movement ends, but quickly scales back. Brahms balances the intermezzo carefully between C major and the Phrygian mode (a minor scale that contains a lowered 2nd scale degree). The pizzicato strings accompany winds for a short while, and then Brahms shows his true Romantic mastery of a full string section. The intimate moments in this movement briefly and occasionally give way to ominous moments suggestive of the first movement.
The Allegro giocoso is almost prematurely triumphant, a stark contrast 1to its surrounding movements. Intervallic thirds joyfully dance throughout, even serving as transitional material between the first and second theme.
Portentous brass introduce the harmonic progression upon which the chaconne is built in the final movement. Brahms changed the rhythm of Bach’s chaconne slightly and added one chromatic pitch, feeling that the original was “too straightforward.” Brahms scored three trombones that must wait through the first three movements before playing a single note, and he rewarded the patient players with their own chorale as the 15th variation. There is no cheerful resolution to the symphony like Beethoven wrote for his Fifth; Brahms closes his Fourth Symphony in unsettling darkness.
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