Musical Director's notes and sound files for the Spring Term
Franz Schubert: Symphony No. 2 D. 125
- Largo - Allegro vivace
- Andante
- Menuetto - Allegro vivace
- Presto vivace
While working full-time as a teaching assistant, taking composition lessons twice a week and playing viola in a student orchestra, the 17 year old Franz Schubert managed to write new music at an astonishing rate that averaged at least 65 bars of music every single day. His efforts that year (1815) included his Symphony No. 2, which probably would have received a reading from a student orchestra. Not a note of his music had reached the public yet, and during his entire short life he never managed to secure a single public performance of any symphony.
As a student composer in Vienna, Schubert could not help but be strongly influenced by the towering achievements of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven (who had by then produced eight of his nine symphonies). Like Beethoven before him, Schubert used the instrumentation and general outline of Haydn's final London symphonies as a point of entry. In the Symphony No. 2, the instrumentation, slow introduction and the use of a minuet as the third movement instead of a Beethovenian scherzo all point to Haydn's influence. One particular trick found throughout Haydn's symphonies comes in the Allegro vivace main part of Schubert's first movement, when the main theme enters in the strings at a pianissimo dynamic before being repeated fortissimo by the full orchestra.
The Andante second movement takes the form of a theme and variations, with a simple song-like theme that adds a playful extra bar in its second half. The climactic fourth variation moves to C minor, which returns as the surprising key centre for the Menuetto. Before the finale launches, four introductory bars bridge the harmonic distance back to the home key of B-flat major. Then, like horses in the hunt, the orchestra gallops off.
Georges Bizet: Carmen Suite No. 2
Carmen was first performed in Paris in 1875. Sadly Bizet died following the 33rd performance, so never lived to see the success this opéra comique achieved in Vienna later that year. It has gone on to become one of the most popular and frequently performed operas, with the "Habanera" and "Toreador Song" being some of the most well-known operatic arias in the repertoire. The music of Carmen is widely praised for its melody, harmony, atmosphere and orchestration. Two orchestral suites were compiled posthumously by Bizet's friend, Ernest Guiraud. Both comprise six extracts, with the second suite (published in 1887) as follows:
Marche des Contrabandiers (Act 3) The "Smugglers' March" opens Act 3. It is set in the smugglers' camp in a wild spot in the mountains. The smugglers are returning to camp with their booty.
Habanera (Act 1) The full name for this aria is "L'amour est un oiseau rebelle" ("Love is a rebellious bird"). As the soldiers wait to be released from guard duties, the cigarette factory girls break from work. Carmen appears for the first time and sings this aria while flirting with the young men in the square.
Nocturne (Act 3) The aria is "Je dis que rien ne m'épouvante" ("I say that nothing frightens me"). It is sung by Micaäla who is seeking José, determined to rescue him from Carmen so that he will marry her in accordance with his mother's wishes.
Chanson du Toréador (Act 2) The famous Toreador's Song is sung by Escamillo when he arrives in town ahead of the bullfight. It depicts various situations in the bullring, the cheering of the crowds and the fame that comes with victory. It features a solo cornet.
La Garde Montante (Act 1) "The new guard" march accompanies the fresh soldiers as they arrive to take over guard duties in the square outside the cigarette factory. Again a solo cornet is prominent.
Danse Bohème (Act 2) The Gypsy Dance opens the second act and provides a thrilling finale to the second suite. Carmen and her friends entertain the officers in the local inn.
Arthur Sullivan: Overture to Iolanthe
Many of the overtures to the Gilbert and Sullivan operettas were written at the very last minute, often put together by an assistant from existing material. The overture to Iolanthe was scored by Sullivan himself, and is a work of considerable merit which can stand alone in the concert hall. Much of it is derived from the operetta rather than simply copied from it. After a delicate opening a plaintive melody on the clarinet leads to the main part of the work, an Allegro giojoso in six-eight. Much of the orchestration here is quite light, Sullivan being particularly fond of combining flutes and clarinets in scoring reminiscent of Mendelssohn. The final section is in two-four time, using the full orchestra and increasing the tempo (Animato and then Più vivo) to an exhilarating climax.
Richard Wagner: Siegfried Idyll
Wagner composed the symphonic poem Siegfried Idyll as a birthday present for his second wife, Cosima, after the birth of their son Siegfried in 1869. It was first performed on Christmas morning, 25 December 1870, by a small ensemble of the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich on the stairs of their villa at Tribschen (today part of Lucerne), Switzerland. Cosima awoke to its opening melody. Conductor Hans Richter learned the trumpet specially in order to play the brief trumpet part - which lasts only 13 bars - in that private performance, reportedly having sailed out to the centre of Lake Lucerne to practise, so as not to be heard. He may also have played the second viola part, which is briefly required towards the end of the piece.
Wagner's opera Siegfried, which was premiered in 1876, incorporates music from the Idyll. Wagner adapted the material from an unfinished chamber piece for the Idyll before giving the theme to Brünnhilde in the opera's final scene, the "Ewig war ich" love duet between Brünnhilde and Siegfried. This theme, Wagner claimed, came to him during the summer of 1864 at the Villa Pellet, overlooking Lake Starnberg, where he and Cosima consummated their union. He is contradicted, however, by his own obsessive record keeping: the melody was composed on 14 November of that year, when he was alone in Munich. The work also uses a theme based on the German lullaby, "Schlaf, Kindlein, schlaf", which was jotted down by Wagner on New Year's Eve 1868 and is introduced by the solo oboe. Ernest Newman discovered it was linked to the Wagners' older daughter Eva. This and other musical references, whose meanings remained unknown to the outside world for many years, reveal the Idyll's levels of personal significance for both Wagner and Cosima.
Wagner originally intended the Siegfried Idyll to remain a private piece. However, due to financial pressures, he decided to sell the score to publisher B. Schott in 1878. The piece is scored for a small chamber orchestra of 13 players: flute, oboe, two clarinets, bassoon, two horns, trumpet, two violins, viola, cello and double bass. It is most commonly played today by orchestras with more than one player on each string part.