Masters Program Notes: Bursts of Creativity, January 9 & 10, 2009.

Masters Program Notes: Bursts of Creativity, January 9 & 10, 2009.

Bursts of Creativity
Friday, January 9, 2009 – 7:30 pm
Saturday, January 10, 2009 – 8 pm

Alexander Mickelthwate, conductor
Nora Bumanis, harp

Afterthoughts
Join us post-performance on Friday in Main Lobby for a discussion with Alexander Mickelthwate & Nora Bumanis about the performance.

Symphony Prelude
Learn more about the performance on Saturday, 7:15 pm, Third Level (Upper Circle) Lobby with Aaron Au

DEBUSSY
Danses sacrée et profane  (10’)*
    Nora Bumanis, harp

MOZART
Symphony No. 39 in E-flat Major, K.543  (32’)*
    Adagio – Allegro
    Andante con moto
    Menuetto: Allegretto – Trio – Menuetteo
    Finale: Allegro

INTERMISSION

R. STRAUSS
Le bourgeois gentilhomme: Suite, Op.60  (35’)*
    Overture to Act I
    Menuett
    The Fencing Master
    Entrance and Dance of the Tailors
    Lully’s Menuett
    Courante
    Entrance of Cleonte
    Prelude to Act II (Intermezzo)
    The Dinner

*indicates approximate performance duration

Program Notes - Bursts of Creativity

Danses sacrée et profane
Claude Debussy
(b. Saint-Germain-en-Laye, 1862 / d. Paris, 1918)

First performed: November 6, 1904 in Paris
Last ESO performance: April 1996

“What joy to be invited to perform this wonderful work by Claude Debussy!   The two movements, which flow together, explore Portuguese and Spanish Dance styles.  The work was commissioned to demonstrate the new chromatic abilities of the harp in 1903.  I have worn out several pairs of shoes on the pedaling of the Danse profane.  I would say that this piece took the harp out of the drawing room and onto the concert hall stage.”

-Nora Bumanis

The pedal harp, the type of harp most familiar to us, and the one on which Nora Bumanis will perform at these concerts, has seven pedals which allow it to move through the full range of keys. In the early 20th century, Parisian instrument maker Pleyel came up with a “chromatic” harp, without pedals, and containing many more strings to cover the range of notes. It caught on well enough that the Paris Conservatoire began offering classes on the instrument, and because of that, Pleyel commissioned Claude Debussy to create a work which would both serve as a test piece for the instrument, and showcase its range.

Pleyel’s harp, alas, ebbed quickly from public favour, but the Danses sacrée et profane, the work Debussy composed for the chromatic harp, has not. The first dance (“sacrée”) is given an antique feel with modal harmonies, and is reminiscent of the gossamer Gymnopédies of Erik Satie (solo piano works which Debussy admired so much that he orchestrated some of them). Following that, the next dance (“profane”) is in a waltz metre, featuring harp passages that grow in complexity, until the work finishes with playful suddenness.

Video Preview with Nora Bumanis - Danses sacrée et profane

Symphony No. 39 in E-flat Major, K.543
Wolfgang Amadé Mozart
(b. Salzburg, 1756 / d. Vienna, 1791)

First performed: unknown; it is unlikely the work was performed in Mozart’s lifetime
Last ESO performance: June 2003

“To H.G. Nägeli (1792-1836), the Swiss music publisher, composer, educationalist, and critic, Mozart’s music stood for dangerous modernism…The ending of the E-flat Symphony (K.543) he found ‘so noisily inconclusive, such a bang, that the unsuspecting hearer does not know what has happened to him’.”

-Hyatt King, Mozart in Retrospect, 1955

In a six-week blaze of inspiration in 1788, Mozart wrote his final three symphonies – all distinctly different from each other in conception and design. He would live another two and a half years, but not return to the symphony as a form. The period directly prior to this time had been disappointing for Mozart. After a promising start, his opera Don Giovanni failed to become the hit he had hoped it to be. A court appointment made available upon the death of Christoph Willibald Gluck failed to materialize. Not one to compose just for the sake of it, Mozart clearly had some design in mind in preparing the three symphonies, but documentary evidence as to why is lacking. Some feel Mozart hoped to publish them, others that he wanted to present them. He had hoped for a tour to London, the place where Haydn’s symphonies had always proved welcome, but there were also concerts planned for the summer, at a Casino in the Spiegelgasse, which ultimately never took place.

Symphony No. 39 begins with an extended and ceremonial slow introduction. The Allegro which follows not only changes the time signature from the 4/4 opening to 3/4, but bursts from the introduction with sudden urgency. There is a calming second subject, and the fire of the opening and more serene elements exchange throughout. Along the way, Mozart adds some rather daring harmonic contrasts as well. The slow second movement is dominated by a gently lilting song in 2/4 time. In the middle, Mozart wrote some wonderfully transparent passages for woodwinds – bassoons and flute in particular. There is a more agitated variant of the main section two-thirds of the way through, but it is lulled by a return of the gentle song.

The third movement contrasts a stately Minuet – a court dance of French origin – with a Ländler in the Trio section, an Austro-German folkdance in 3/4 time, the precursor of the Viennese waltz. The court dance is presented with strings and timpani, while the folkdance is first heard in the clarinets, flute and horns. Mozart has a bit of fun in the finale. Based on a contredanse (“country dance”), there is a perpetual motion feel to this energetic movement. But the almost commonplace nature of the melody is subjected to some fascinatingly complex harmonic and orchestral textures, lending a very deliberate sense of irony to the proceedings that should not be overlooked in the mad dash to the merry end.


Le bourgeois gentilhomme: Suite, Op.60
Richard Strauss
(b. Munich, 1864 / d. Garmisch-Partenkirchen, 1949)

First performed: October 25, 1912 in Stuttgart
Last ESO performance: March 1987

“You’re quite right: from Act III, Scene 8 onwards it becomes weak. The last really good bit is the second scene of Act III; the rest would have to be invented anew…For the dances of the Dancing Master, tailors and scullions one could write some pleasant salon music. I shall enjoy the thing very much, and I am sure I can bring off something striking. I am impatiently waiting your consignment.”

-Richard Strauss, writing Hugo von Hoffmansthal about the 18th-century Beiner translation of Molière’s play, in a letter dated May 20, 1911

The music which makes up the suite published as Richard Strauss’ Opus 60 is the ultimate example of a pastiche. For one thing, the original intent behind the music was an evening’s entertainment that is itself a pastiche. Strauss and his frequent collaborator, the poet Hugo von Hoffmansthal, crafted a production in which Molière’s play Le bourgeois gentilhomme would feature dances written by Strauss, followed by a spoken linking scene, followed by the Strauss/Hoffmansthal opera Ariadne auf Naxos. In this form, it premiered to very little acclaim in Stuttgart in October 1912.

So, back to the drawing board, Hoffmansthal punted the play, rewrote the character of Jourdain into “the richest man in Vienna,” and wrote a musical Prologue showing the opera Ariadne being readied, then the opera. This is often how productions of Ariadne auf Naxos are now staged. But all this was done without Strauss knowing, and some of his music was cut – and he was less than pleased. In an effort to meet his friend halfway, Hoffmansthal came up with a third version, a reworking of Le bourgeois gentilhomme. This 1917 version also flopped.

Cutting his losses, Strauss rescued his music, and crafted a suite for the same-size chamber orchestra as was used in the original 1912 production. The nine movements of the suite are not only a pastiche, as most suites are, but include music from the original as well as music from the 1917 version. The Arrival and Dance of the Tailors, Lully’s Menuett, and the Courante are all from 1917, and deliberately recreates the feel of the 17th century, much as Stravinsky would do with his Pulcinella music, adapted from works by Pergolesi, in 1920. As well as combining bits from both incarnations of his incidental music, Strauss also borrowed some of the tunes for this suite from an abandoned ballet, Kythere.

This is Strauss at his most disarming. Le bourgeois gentilhomme brims with clever touches and references – more pastiche! For example, The Dinner begins with a fish course, set to a bit of Wagner’s Rhine music. The mutton is next, set to a bit from Strauss’ own Don Quixote, in which sheep feature in a scene. And listen for a bit of Verdi’s La donna è mobile during the fowl course. The many dances of ancient origin that dot this suite: gavottes, courantes, minuets – are given a proper Viennese conclusion. When the kitchen boy comes in at the finale of The Dinner, it is, naturally, to a waltz.

Program Notes © 2008 D.T. Baker

Program notes © 2008 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.