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Richard WAGNER - “Rienzi” Overture
Over the years Richard Wagner has attracted wildly
differing reactions.
Debussy made fun of him, Busoni was hostile towards him,
Stravinsky contemptuous. Totally self-centred, like many
men of short stature, Wagner had a frighteningly
powerful personality, and behaved as one who knew he was
a supreme genius - selfish, arrogant and full of
prejudice. Understandably, he was Hitler’s favourite
composer.
What is clear is that Wagner stands at the end of a
long, symphonic and dramatic tradition. “The Ring”
is the last successful attempt to create a large work on
the grandest scale.
In his mid-twenties “Rienzi” was an attempt by
Wagner to copy the Grand Opera style, as practised by
Meyerbeer and others at the Paris Opera. He had already
put a tremendous effort into writing two comparatively
conventional operas which were not very successful and
had left him impoverished: “I can’t live on a
miserable organist’s pittance like Bach”.
Wagner based his libretto on “Rienzi, The Last of
the Tribunes”, a novel written by Bulwer Lytton in
1835. The story is concerned with Rienzi, the people’s
Tribune and a Papal Notary, who filled with pride of
birth and country, succeeds in releasing his native city
from the hands of the nobles. Later popular opinion
changes and even the Church turns against him. In the
end the populace burns the Capitol, in which Rienzi and
a few of his followers have made a last stand.
In spite of cuts the first performance in Dresden in
1842 lasted for six hours.
The brilliant overture quotes five themes later heard in
the opera:
1. The slow introduction which has three long sustained
notes on the trumpet, is later used as a signal for the
people to rise against the nobles.
2. A broad melody which is Rienzi’s prayer in Act V.
3. A theme heard first in the finale to Act 1 which is
associated with the people.
4. The battle hymn.
5. A march from the finale to Act 2.
Edward GERMAN - “Henry VIII” Incidental Music: Three
Dances
“There is only one man to follow me who has
genius, and that is Edward German”. Thus did Sir
Arthur Sullivan, in the last years of his life,
acknowledge the stature of the modest but highly
talented composer.
German Edward Jones was born in the old Shropshire
market town of Whitchurch on February 17th 1862. Whilst
a student at the Royal Academy of Music in London he
changed his name to Edward German which seemed like a
good idea at the time but was less appropriate when war
broke out in 1914.
In 1888 he was appointed Musical Director of the Globe
Theatre in London. His gift for charming melody and
light orchestration, combined with his theatrical
interests and experience, soon made him one of the
leading London providers of ‘incidental music’ and when
Henry Irving intended to mount a production of “Henry
VIII” at the Lyceum Theatre he asked Edward German
to compose the score.
When the production finally opened at the Lyceum Theatre
in London on January 5th 1892, German’s music, designed
to reflect the spirit of the play and its era, was
lavishly praised.
The set of Three Dances were responsible for spreading
the name of Edward German far and wide. They became
especially popular, by all accounts, in Italy of all
places!
1. A Morris Dance (in A minor) gets proceedings under
way. The simple rhythm laid down by the drum at the very
outset is never absent and provides a firm foundation,
rather like a village tabor, for the charming unhurried
melody.
2. In Act 1, Scene 4, the King, disguised as a shepherd,
dances with his wife’s Maid of Honour, Anne Boleyn.
“The fairest hand I ever touch’d! O beauty! Till now I
never knew thee", he tells her as monarch, maid and
courtiers tread a dainty step to the strains of the
Shepherds’ Dance. This charming movement was a
particular favourite of Sir Edward Elgar, who revealed
that he could never listen to it without a lump coming
into his throat.
3. And finally, there is the Torch Dance, performed by
mummers. One writer explained that “it describes a
frenzied and tragic scene at the Court of France in
1393, when a flake of fire falling on one of the
maskers, sent the dancers flying up and down the hall in
the wildest saraband ever danced”. German simply
observed that he had attempted to portray the flickering
of flames in the music.
MOZART Sinfonia Concertante in E flat for violin,
viola & orchestra
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born in Salzburg in 1756
and, like his father Leopold, he became a musician in
the service of the ruling Archbishop.
In 1777 the young Mozart was allowed to resign from the
Archbishop’s service, in order to travel to Mannheim and
to Paris. The object of the journey, on which he was
accompanied by his mother who fell ill and died during
their stay in Paris, was to seek a better appointment.
In January 1779 Mozart returned home, reluctantly
accepting the appointment of court organist in Salzburg.
It was now that he completed his Sinfonia Concertante in
E flat for violin and viola, K 364, scoring it for the
usual Salzburg orchestra, with pairs of oboes and horns,
together with strings. This double concerto is a mature
and deeply serious composition.
I. The first movement opens solemnly, the orchestral
exposition leading to the entry of the two soloists
together, followed by a movement in which generally one
player answers the other in antiphonal duet. A composed
cadenza for violin and viola leads to the conclusion of
the movement.
II. After a simpler statement of the principal theme of
the slow movement, the solo violin enters, echoed by the
viola, the two solo instruments sometimes joining
together and sometimes responding to each other in close
imitation.
III. In the final movement the solo violin follows the
orchestra with its own lively melody, imitated by the
viola, a procedure continued in other strands of melody
in music of delightful invention.
Perhaps the best words to describe this music are
Mozart’s own. Although written to his father to describe
an earlier work, they are certainly applicable to this
particular piece:
“This concerto is a happy medium between what is too
easy and too difficult; it is very brilliant, pleasing
to the ear without being vapid. There are passages here
and there from which connoisseurs alone can derive
satisfaction; but these passages are written in such a
way that the less learned cannot fail to be pleased
without knowing why”.
Antonin DVORAK - Symphony No. 8 in G, Op. 88
Dvorak was born near Prague in 1841 and died in that
city in 1904, aged sixty-two.
His interest in music was aroused by his father’s
zither-playing and by what he heard in his village from
travelling bands. He took to singing and to playing the
violin, and later took some lessons on piano and organ.
In 1857, when he was sixteen, he became a pupil of the
Prague Organ School. It was a time of poverty. He lacked
money to buy books and music, to hire a piano, or to
attend concerts: “As for Mozart and Beethoven, I only
just knew that they existed!”
In 1872 Dvorak obtained a good position as church
organist, gave up orchestral playing, and married. He
bought a cottage deep in the country at Vysoka, which
took him away from the pressures of city life and proved
extremely beneficial to his creativity. Surrounded by
his six children, he was able to breed his beloved
pigeons and by 1889, when Dvorak began work on his
Eighth Symphony, he was able to look back with some
satisfaction on ten years of solid achievement.
His music was being warmly received in many parts of
Europe, in the North American continent, and even as far
afield as Australia. In addition, he had forged an
exceptionally durable relationship with the English
musical public.
The Eighth Symphony shows Dvorak in a particularly
experimental mood, striking out on unorthodox lines in
the first and last movements.
I. The symphony opens with a solemn march-like melody in
G minor, for cellos and wind which is followed by a
cheerful G major flute theme But Dvorak departs from
tradition by repeating the G minor melody before the
development, and again, very richly scored, before the
recapitulation.
II. The pensive mood of the Second Movement (Adagio) is
relieved by the strains of a village band, playing a
cheerful C major melody for flute and oboe.
III. In place of a scherzo, the Third Movement is in the
form of a gracious G minor waltz, with a contrasting G
major trio section.
IV. In the finale, an initial summons to attention by
the trumpets is followed by a set of variations on a
gentle lilting theme announced by the cellos. The
variations are interrupted halfway through by an episode
in C minor, which is indirectly linked with the
trumpet-call which reappears triumphantly in the
exciting closing section.
The premiere of the new work which took place in Prague
on 2nd February 1890, was conducted by Dvorak himself,
who subsequently introduced his symphony to London
Frankfurt and Cambridge, where he received an honorary
doctorate.
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