Masters Program Notes: A Space Odyssey - May 8 & 9, 2009

Masters Program Notes: A Space Odyssey - May 8 & 9, 2009

A Space Odyssey
Friday, May 8, 2009 - 7:30 pm
Saturday, May 9, 2009 - 8 pm
Jacques Lacombe, conductor
Richard Eaton Singers Women's Chorus

MATTHEWS
Between the Wings of the Earth (19’)*

HAYDN
Symphony No. 43 in E-flat Major, Hob.I:43 "Mercury" (24’)*
    Allegro
    Adagio
    Menuetto - Trio
    Finale: Allegro

INTERMISSION

HOLST
The Planets, Op.32 (arr. I Holst/C. Matthews) (53’)*
    Mars, the Bringer of War
    Venus, the Bringer of Peace
    Mercury, the Winged Messenger
    Jupiter, the Bringer of Jollity
    Saturn, the Bringer of Old Age
    Uranus, the Magician
    Nepune, the Mystic
    Richard Eatons Singers Women's Chorus

*indicates approximate performance duration

Program Notes

Between the Wings of the Earth
Michael Matthews
(b. Gander, Newfoundland & Labrador, 1950)

First performance: March 24, 1993 in Winnipeg
This is the ESO premiere of the piece

“Like the opening of Stravinsky's Petrouchka, one is struck by the richly detailed tapestry of Matthews' writing and the mulitiplicity of ideas often layered over each other, all vividly scored with particular attention to brass and percussion."
-review of the premiere of Between the Wings of the Earth by James Manishen, Winnipeg Free Press, March 26, 1993

(Program Note by the composer)
The title of this piece is from a poem by the Chilean poet and Nobel prize winner Pablo Neruda. It is from a larger work entitled The Heights of Macchu Picchu. The excerpt quoted below is from poem number eight in the series of twelve which make up the complete cycle. Neruda’s poem was inspired by his visit in 1943 to the ruins of Macchu Picchu, the lost Inca city high up in the Peruvian Andes, a city whose existence was rediscovered only in 1911.

The cycle deals with many issues, the prevailing one being the journey to the interior of the self in search for meaning and one’s place in the world. This particular poem is an “evocation of surging nature and pre-Columbian man linked in their common dawn, and fused together by a warm instinctive love which the poet summons up from the past to transfuse the present and embrace the future” (Robert Pring-Mill, The Heights of Macchu Picchu, xvii).

Technically my piece is made up of a series of five basic ideas (stated within the first 60 bars), each of which recurs and develops independently. I see the piece as a metaphor for our (and Neruda’s) experiences of nature and life as an ever changing tapestry of related and unrelated events, and our attempt to draw meaning from them.

This work was commissioned by the Manitoba Chamber Orchestra with financial assistance from the Manitoba Arts Council. The world premiere performance took place at Westminster Church in Winnipeg, with Simon Streatfeild conducting the Manitoba Chamber Orchestra.

Ven, minúscula vida, entre las alas
de la tierra, mientras–cristal y frio, aire golpeado–
apartando esmeraldas combatidas,
oh, agua salvaje, bajas de la nieve.

(“Come, diminutive life, between the wings
of the earth, while you, cold, crystal in the hammered air,
thrusting embattled emeralds apart,
O savage waters, fall from the hems of snow.”)

Pablo Neruda, The Heights of Macchu Picchu, trans. Nathaniel Tarn, New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1966, p.39.


Symphony No. 43 in E-flat Major, Hob.I:43 “Mercury”
Franz Josef Haydn
(b. Rohrau, Lower Saxony, 1732 / d. Vienna, 1809)

Composed in 1770-71
This is the ESO premiere of the piece

“Sturm und Drang” (“Storm and Stress”) is a term misappropriately applied to Austrian music – particularly Haydn’s – beginning in the 1860s. The term was actually coined by Maximilian Klinger, from the title of a play he wrote in 1776, years after Haydn’s supposed “Sturm und Drang” period started. The term, indicating a stronger dramatic sense in Haydn’s music, was applied later by music historians looking for a thread of commonality in the art of the day.

It is far more likely that the new, dramatic strain in Haydn’s music was due to the fact that he was composing a lot of operas for the Esterházy court at the time. Musical drama was now his stock in trade, and it spilled over into his purely orchestral works as well. A quick overview of some of the nicknames the symphonies of this period acquired (“Passione,” “Lamentatione,” “Trauer”) is proof of this.

We are not sure how his E-flat Symphony No. 43 earned the name “Mercury,” but, like the genre term “Sturm und Drang,” we know it was applied later, and not by Haydn. Aside from the planet, of course, Mercury was the Roman messenger god, wing-footed and swift. But neither the planetary nor the mythological association seems particularly suitable. This is a chamber symphony, scored only for strings, pairs of oboes and horns plus bassoon continuo, and begins with an unusually long main melody, accented by some adventurous harmonies. Contrasting material is taken from the main subject. There is a touch of humour in the stressed syncopations that crop up throughout the movement, but overall, the mood is one of buoyant energy.

The slow movement is, for lovers of minutiae, the only A-flat Major movement Haydn ever put in a symphony. Strings dominate the lyrical movement, its main subject so long that the recapitulation is actually built only on a fragment of it, rather than a variation on the entire theme. The third movement moves intriguingly through some inter-related keys. The Menuetto begins in E-flat, the main key of the symphony. The contrasting, almost wistful Trio begins in E-flat’s relative minor, C minor – but then ventures into B-flat Major (the dominant key of E-flat Major). The restatement of the Trio brings us back to C minor, and the return of the Menuetto has us back in E-flat.

The final movement begins quietly and, in contrast with so many of his rousing finales, this one has an air of restraint to it. The main melody is a light one, which spirals downward and upward, accented by darker material in the lower strings and winds. And what sounds like a build-up to the finish stops rather suddenly, and instead we get a brief restatement of the main material, and then a rather anti-climactic ending.


The Planets, Op.32 (arr. I. Holst / C. Matthews)
Gustav Holst
(b. Cheltenham, 1874 / d. London, 1934)

First performed: A private performance of The Planets took place September 29, 1918 in London. It was followed by a public performance of some of the movements in February 1919, also in London.
The first complete public premiere took place on the same night in both New York and Chicago on November 15, 1920. Because of the time difference, New York’s performance technically came first
Last ESO performance: September 1995

It was, in fact, astrology and not astronomy that attracted Gustav Holst to the subject that would become one of the most popular orchestral works of the 20th century. A friend introduced the already established and successful composer to astrology, and in the astrological role played by the planets, Holst found inspiration.

The first movement composed was Mars. Written close upon the outbreak of World War One, it pulses with the horror of the machines of war – the militaristic elements satirized in an offbeat march in 5/4 time. Venus, the opening melody taken from Holst’s A Vigil of Pentecost, offers a complete about-face, its texture glistening and soothing. Mercury (the last movement of the suite to be written) scurries with infectious energy, Jupiter is the work’s tour de force – its opening melody bold and captivating – its inner melody reminiscent of Elgar’s “Nimrod” variation.

Saturn brings us the onset of old age, its mood reflective and resigned. Uranus’ magician is, like Dukas’ sorcerer, portrayed by the bassoon (William Harrison) – a mysterious showman who works his sly magic with a wink in his eye. Neptune is ethereal, made all the more so by the haunting, wordless sound of a women’s chorus offstage, which ebbs away into silence.

The Planets is singular among Holst’s output, and while it has become, and rightfully so, one of the great orchestral works we have, it was one from which he tried to distance himself. A modest and unassuming man, the enduring success of this work was a source of puzzlement to him. The work was written for a huge orchestra, including tenor tuba, six horns and four each of the woodwinds. Tonight’s version is for a reduced orchestration, co-arranged by Holst’s daughter, Imogen Holst, a composer in her own right.

Program Notes © 2009 D.T. Baker, except as noted

Program notes © 2009 by the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra and its respective annotators. All Rights Reserved. Program notes may not be printed in their entirety without the written consent of the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra; excerpts may be quoted if due acknowledgment is given to the author and to the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra. For reprint permission, contact D.T. Baker, Music Resource, by email, dave.baker@winspearcentre.com.
 
These notes appear in galley files prepared for Signature magazine, official publication of the ESO, and may contain typographical or other errors, or may differ from the final print version. Programs and artists subject to change without notice.