|
Sir Arthur (Seymour) SULLIVAN (1842-1900)
Overture di Ballo
Sullivan was born in London. His father was an army
bandsman and professor of clarinet at the Royal Military
School of Music (Kneller Hall).
As a boy he sang in the Chapel Royal; aged 14 he won a
scholarship to study at the Royal Academy of Music and
later at Leipzig Conservatory.
From the time of his “Opus 1” at the age of 18, to the
last of his completed comic operas, The Rose of
Persia, nearly 40 years later, Arthur Sullivan
produced music in all the forms beloved of Victorian
England - orchestral music (a charming Irish
Symphony), oratorios (The Golden Legend, at one
time second in popularity only to Handel’s Messiah),
songs (The Lost Chord), hymns (Onward
Christian soldiers) and concert overtures (Marmion
and Macbeth).
Sullivan’s music, influenced by Rossini and Schubert, is
rich in spontaneous melody, humorous, rhythmically
subtle and harmonized and orchestrated in perfect taste.
For fifteen years, Sullivan experienced uninterrupted
success and fame with the series of operettas written
with W.S. Gilbert. Most of Sullivan’s overtures are
little more than selections of tunes from the operetta,
usually assembled by an assistant. (The Yeoman of the
Guard is an exception.)
Although these pieces overshadowed Sullivan’s other
work, the concert overture di Ballo, written five
years before Trial by Jury, was regularly
included in Sullivan’s concert programmes. It is
vivacious and tuneful and shows Sullivan’s scoring at
its most felicitous.
Sullivan uses the Italian title, di Ballo, to
suggest that the overture is not A dance or
THE dance. The overture seeks to capture the “Spirit
of the Dance” – in a rather more lightweight manner than
the “Apotheosis of the Dance” in the last movement of
Beethoven’s Seventh symphony!
Ralph VAUGHAN WILLIAMS (1872-1958)
Symphony No. 5 in D (1938-43 rev. 1951)
Vaughan Williams’ music often features two contrasting
moods - one contemplative and trance-like and the other
pugnacious and sinister. The latter aspects of his work
are shown in the calculated violence of his Fourth
Symphony which he wrote in 1935.
The first mood is evident in the grave serenity of the
Fifth symphony. The radiant music of this symphony
appeared to many at the time as foreseeing an end to
war; and to others, as a serene farewell from a composer
who was then turned 70. Neither view was accurate as the
symphony was begun in 1938 and the composer was to write
a further four.
Having composed his one act opera The Shepherds of
the Delectable Mountains in 1922, Vaughan Williams
was working on a full-scale dramatisation of Bunyan’s
“Pilgrim’s Progress” in 1938. Believing that the
“morality” (as he later called it) might never be
performed he diverted some of the music into a new
symphony – his Fifth.
First
movement
Preludio (Moderato)
The Fifth symphony is dedicated “to Jean Sibelius,
without permission” – but there is little resemblance in
style and method between the two composers. One
similarity, though, is that each began his Fifth
symphony with a horn-call. This call dominates the
movement and it is followed by the strings playing a
melody which immediately establishes a tranquil mood.
There is a beautiful transition into E major which is
followed by a more agitated Allegro section. The
music becomes suddenly tempestuous - a passage which is
certainly reminiscent of Sibelius. A horn-call marks the
beginning of the recapitulation. The brass lead to a
noble climax for full orchestra
before the movement ends as serenely as it began.
Second movement
Scherzo (Presto)
This swift-moving, uneasy movement opens with a
Presto for strings followed by a melody for flute
and bassoon. The scoring is mostly light and brilliant,
but there are emphatic explosions from the brass and
some tart comments by the oboe and cor- anglais. The
lumpish, snarling contribution for brass is described by
Michael Kennedy as “music for a ballet of hobgoblins,
gargoyles and other fantastic creatures”. The movement
peters out mysteriously with a light, mercurial section
for flute, bassoon and strings.
Third
movement
Romanza (Lento)
The slow movement originally bore the following
quotation from Bunyan:
“Upon that place there stood a cross and a little below
a sepulchre. Then he said, “He hath given me rest by
His sorrow and life by His death”.
In the opera Pilgrim sings the italicised words to the
poignant cor anglais tune, which follows after the
strings have set the solemn scene. A hesitant, less
tranquil section follows, leading to an agitated
animato passage which in the opera represents
Pilgrim’s cries of “Save me, Lord. My burden is greater
than I can bear”.
By way of consolation the horns and trumpets repeat the
cor anglais theme. The anguish is soothed by a return of
the main theme, richly scored for lower strings and
developing into an Alleluia phrase of increasing
richness and expressiveness. The solo violin, solo horn
and strings end this beautiful movement in a tone of
quiet contentment and contemplation - all struggles have
been resolved.
Fourth
movement
Passacaglia (Moderato)
The cellos, soon joined by the flutes, violins and
violas, play a gentle, spacious theme which is subject
to considerable variation (a characteristic of a
passacaglia or chaconne). An Allegro section
follows, before the trumpets and trombones proclaim the
opening horn call from the first movement.
A scherzando folk dance variation is terminated by the
return of the horn-call.
The Passacaglia theme returns, moving to a climax
for full orchestra. The string theme re-appears
heralding a coda of remarkable beauty and
tranquillity. The strings proclaim a benediction in a
murmur of Alleluias and a mood of serene radiance – as
our pilgrimage ends with a vision of the Celestial City.
The symphony was first produced at a Promenade Concert
on the 24th June 1943 with the composer
conducting the London Philharmonic Orchestra.
Since that time, the characteristic warmth and poetry of
Vaughan Williams music, as shown in his Fifth symphony,
have led many to regard it as the greatest of his nine
symphonies.
INTERVAL
Ralph VAUGHAN WILLIAMS
Fantasia on “Greensleeves”
IN 1580 the tune “Greensleeves” was referred to as “a
new Northern dittye” but it may be of an earlier date.
It is mentioned by Shakespeare in his play The Merry
Wives of Windsor” where reference is made to the
lamentable practice of singing the words of the 100th
Psalm to the tune.
In the early 1890s Vaughan Williams became involved in
the collection and study of English folk song. It is
therefore no surprise to encounter “Greensleeves” in his
opera Sir John in Love (1929) based on the same
Shakespearian play.
An offshoot from the opera was the well-known
Fantasia on “Greensleeves” first performed in 1934.
Sir Edward (William) ELGAR (1857-1934)
Variations on an Original Theme, “Enigma”,
Op. 36
In February 1898, at the age of forty-one, Edward Elgar
began to write his Variations on an Original Theme
for orchestra, Op. 36.
The work derives its popular title “Enigma Variations”
from the fact that the theme is labelled “Enigma”.
According to the composer, this theme could be combined
in counter-point with another (unheard) melody with
which everyone was familiar. Although numerous attempts
have been made to “discover” this other tune, there has
never been a successful solution. Elgar himself would
never divulge his secret. A postcard reply to an
enquirer read, “No, Auld Lang Syne won’t do”.
THEME: The poignant and expressive theme is built on
two contrasting though interwoven ideas. The first, in
the minor, is patterned sequentially over a firm rising
bass; the second is more flowing and rhapsodic in the
major key. A cadence in the major leads into the first
variation.
The Variations were dedicated by the composer “To my
friends pictured within”, and each variation is actually
a musical portrait of one of these friends.
1. C.A.E. The initials are those of Elgar’s wife,
Caroline Alice Elgar. The theme is treated with great
warmth and tenderness.
2. H. D. Steuart –Powell. A devout lover of chamber
music who, after practicing finger exercises similar to
the figuration of this variation, would play the piano
accompaniments to Elgar’s violin and Basil G. Nevison’s
(subject of Variation 12) ’cello. The theme appears in
the bass and suggests that H.D.S.P. was an imaginative
and a nimble-fingered pianist.
3. Richard Baxter Townsend was an amateur actor whose
reedy voice was capable of remarkable changes in pitch,
here reflected in the bassoon and high woodwind
4. William Meath Baker was a country squire renowned
for his hospitality – a forthright man of considerable
energy and decision.
5. Richard Penrose Arnold, the scholar son of the poet
Matthew Arnold, was a quiet, contemplative man and a
good amateur pianist.
6. Miss Isabel (“Ysobel”) Fitton, a pupil of Elgar’s,
played the viola which is featured prominently in this
variation. She was, according to Elgar, “pensive and for
a moment romantic”. The large intervals in the first
viola part may suggest that she was very tall.
7. Arthur Troyte Griffith was described as a refreshing
but highly argumentative individual. His work, as an
architect in Malvern, is alluded to by Elgar in music
which hammers out great blocks of sound, as if in
preparation for some noble edifice.
8. This variation is dedicated to the graceful, gentle
Miss Winifred Norbury, a local pianist who often
accompanied Elgar in performances of sonatas, although
Elgar maintained that his music was “really suggested by
an eighteenth century house”!
9. Linked to the previous variation, this solemn
movement pays tribute to Elgar’s close friend, A. J.
Jaeger of Novello & Co. (Jaeger, in German = hunter =
Nimrod, the hunter; hence the title). At the beginning
of this long and beautiful variation, richly scored for
strings and brass, there is an allusion to the slow
movement of Beethoven’s Sonata Pathetique, of which
Jaeger was very fond.
10. (Intermezzo) Here Elgar describes his young friend,
Miss Dora Penny (“Dorabella”). The woodwind delicately
suggest a slight impediment in her speech.
11. Hereford Cathedral organist and keen walker, Dr.
George Sinclair, owned a bulldog called Dan. One day,
whilst strolling along the banks of the River Wye, the
dog fell into the river and after much splashing and
barking it managed to climb out further downstream.
Sinclair challenged Elgar to set the incident to music.
12. This meditative ’cello solo, clearly derived from
the main theme, was written for Basil G. Nevison.
13. (***)Romanza Lady Mary Trefusis was on a sea voyage
when this lovely variation was written. This is assumed
to be the reason for the quotation (a clarinet solo)
from Mendelssohn’s Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage
overture.
14. E.D.U. The initials refer to a nickname of Elgar’s.
The finale is a brilliant self-portrait of the composer
himself, with reference to earlier variations.
The first performance of the “Enigma” variations was
conducted by Hans Richter at a concert in St. James’s
Hall, London on June 19th 1899. Its huge
success brought Elgar national acclaim.
Back to
top of page |
