Program Notes
Overture to Candide
- Leonard Bernstein
Born August 25, 1918 in Lawrence, Massachusetts
Died October 14, 1990 in New York
This work received its premiere on October 29, 1956, at the show’s first preview in Boston. It is scored for piccolo, two flutes, two oboes, E-flat clarinet, two clarinets, bass clarinet, two bassoons, contrabassoon, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, harp, and strings.
An American composer of Russian-Jewish parentage, Leonard Bernstein worked his way from a middle class suburb of Boston to become America’s greatest musical figure. Equally adept as a pianist conductor, teacher, and composer, Bernstein became the great American ambassador to the world’s musical community. Before his successes, students were often turned away from study in the great European conservatories because many viewed Americans as incapable of artistic ability. Such was the opinion in much of postwar Europe in the 1950s. Bernstein single-handedly changed that opinion. He conducted all of the world’s major orchestras, and served as music director of the New York Philharmonic from 1958 to 1969. As a composer, Bernstein’s output was diverse, with three symphonies and numerous other orchestral pieces. Despite his many chamber works, art songs, and two operas (Trouble in Tahiti and A Quiet Place), he remains best known for his Broadway shows, especially Candide and West Side Story.
Candide was the idea of playwright Lillian Hellmann, who suggested the project to Bernstein. The two found particular resonance in Voltaire’s stinging 1759 political satire of the same name, ridiculing German philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibnitz’s popular “political optimism,” with its proclamation that “all’s for the best in this best of all possible worlds.” With the 1950s’ communist witch hunts in the U.S. Congress, led by the overzealous Senator Joseph McCarthy, the two-hundred-year-old novella seemed strangely pertinent.
Hellmann adapted the book, Bernstein composed the music, and a veritable who’s-who of lyricists contributed to the project. Most of the lyrics are by Richard Wilbur, but John LaTouche, Stephen Sondheim, Dorothy Parker, John Wells, and Bernstein all penned smaller sections. Candide opened in Boston on October 29, 1956, and enjoyed a short run at the Martin Beck Theater in New York, beginning on December 1 of the same year. It ran for just two months and two days, closing on February 2, 1957.
The Overture to Candide is a boisterous curtain-raiser of the highest order, featuring quotations from four of the operetta’s musical numbers interspersed with an original “overture theme.” Setting the satirical tone for the operetta’s fast-paced romp, it begins with a festive and brassy fanfare, drawn from the song “Best of All Possible Worlds.” The quick scalar principal theme follows in the strings, giving way to a section drawn from the play’s “Battle Music.” As the Overture progresses, two other themes are heard – drawn from Candide and Cunegonde’s love duet “Oh, Happy We,” and Cunegonde’s coloratura jewel-laden lament, “Glitter and Be Gay.” In honor of Lenny, each performance of this work by the New York Philharmonic since Bernstein’s death has been played without a conductor – demonstrating their reverence for this uniquely American musical master of international stature.
“Clair de lune” from Suite bergamasque
- Claude Debussy
Born August 22, 1862, in St. Germain-en-Laye, France
Died March 25, 1918, in Paris, France
This work was originally scored for solo piano, but was later orchestrated for pairs of woodwinds, four horns, harp, celesta, and strings.
In the late nineteenth century, the music of Richard Wagner was generally regarded as the newest and most progressive in Europe. In Vienna, Paris, and a few other cities, a younger generation of composers began to write in reaction to Wagner’s music – some following his model, and others rejecting it and producing newer styles. One of the newer fashions in music was that of Impressionism. There is a dream-like atmosphere, loose flowing rhythms, diffuse textures, and mysterious tone colors.
The first composer to gain prominence writing in this style was Claude Debussy. However, he should not be grouped solely with the Impressionists. Debussy had a varied career, beginning with his admission to the Paris Conservatoire at the age of ten, in lieu of ordinary school. His first compositions date from seven years later when he began to write art songs. Soon afterward, he was hired as a tutor by Nadezhda von Meck, the wealthy widow who became Tchaikovsky’s patroness shortly thereafter. After returning from Russia, Debussy found a mentor in the famous French composer Charles Gounod. After winning the coveted Prix de Rome in 1884 for his dramatic cantata L’enfant prodigue (The Prodigal Son), he was on the course for an illustrious career as a composer. Debussy composed piano pieces, art songs, and opera, constantly searching for new methods of depicting the texts and vast varieties of images associated with his numerous compositions. In 1894, Debussy lived in Paris with little money and almost no critical notice. Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun, the piece in which Debussy introduced his mature impressionistic style, would change his life later that year.
Debussy’s Suite bergamasque predates the Prelude by at least four years. In this set of four piano pieces, the composer revisits the seventeenth-century tradition of the French Dance Suite as made popular by Jean-Baptiste Lully at the court of Louis XIV. All but one of the movements follows the framework of actual dances performed at court – the exception being “Clair de lune.” Probably Debussy’s most popular work for solo piano, “Clair de lune” was originally entitled “Promenade sentimentale,” gaining its popular name when the work was revised and finally published in 1905.
Rhapsody in Blue
- George Gershwin
Born (Jacob Gershowitz) on December 26, 1898, in Brooklyn, New York
Died on July 11, 1937 in Hollywood, California
This work received its premiere on February 12, 1924, by the Palais Royal Orchestra under the baton of Paul Whiteman. Gershwin was the soloist. The original 1924 Ferde Grofé orchestration is almost never performed. The familiar 1942 revision is scored for solo piano, two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, bass clarinet, two alto saxophones, tenor saxophone, two bassoons, three horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, banjo, and strings.
George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue was his first work for the concert hall. Refined and structured, the work pays allegiance more to the piano showpieces of Liszt and Tchaikovsky than to more popular forms, such as Joplin’s ragtime and W. C. Handy’s blues. However, there is an undeniable link to dance music of the 1920s.
The popular version of the composition of the Rhapsody is that the famous bandleader Paul Whiteman approached Gershwin in 1924 about composing a jazz-flavored work for the composer to play with Whiteman’s band. When Whiteman discovered that a rival bandleader was planning a concert featuring symphonic works in the jazz idiom, he booked his band in New York’s Aeolian Hall and planned a similar concert of his own – at an earlier date. Most versions of the story have Gershwin hearing of the upcoming premiere from a newspaper advertisement before he wrote a single note of the work. In a letter to a friend a few years later, Gershwin details a much more plausible version.
“I was summoned to Boston [on December 23, 1923] for the promotion of Sweet Little Devil. I had already done some work on the rhapsody. It was on that train, with its steely rhythms, its rattlety bang that is so often stimulating to a composer – I frequently hear music in the very heart of noise – I suddenly heard – and even saw on paper – the complete construction of the rhapsody, from beginning to end . . . I heard it as a sort of musical kaleidoscope of America, of our vast melting pot, of our national pep, of our blues, our metropolitan madness.”
The work was arranged by Ferde Grofé, Whiteman’s arranger. It was not until Gershwin’s Concerto in F in late 1925 that the composer would feel comfortable with his own orchestrations.
The premiere on February 12, 1924, was one of the most anticipated events of the New York concert season. Attendees included dignitaries from a cross-section of the music industry – from Broadway, Fred and Adele Astaire; from the classical field, violinists Fritz Kreisler and Jascha Heifetz, conductor Leopold Stokowski, composers Leopold Godowsky, Igor Stravinsky, and Sergei Rachmaninoff; and bandmaster john Philip Sousa. Billed as “An Experiment in Modern Music,” the concert featured nearly two dozen works and lasted about three hours. Rhapsody in Blue was the next-to-last work on the program, representing a culmination of influences and serving as the musical centerpiece.
Rhapsody in Blue opens with one of the most familiar moments in music – a sultry slide of over two octaves played by a lone clarinet. Although Gershwin wrote this as a seventeen-note scale, the clarinetist of the Whiteman band, Ross Gorman, played it as the now-famous slide. Gershwin changed his score. The remainder of the work is segmented into many sections constructed from five major themes, most of which feature the piano in a tour-de-force of popular and romantic techniques. A difficult cadenza, improvised by Gershwin at the premiere from a blank page in his piano part, lies at the heart of the work.
An American in Paris
- George Gershwin
Born (Jacob Gershovitz) on September 26, 1898, in Brooklyn, New York.
Died on July 11, 1937 in Hollywood, California.
This work was premiered on December 13, 1928, by the New York Philharmonic under the baton of Walter Damrosch. The work is scored for piccolo, two flutes, two oboes, English horn, two clarinets, bass clarinet, three saxophones, two bassoons, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, celesta, and strings.
After the resounding success of Rhapsody in Blue and the Concerto in F, George Gershwin decided to compose a purely orchestral work. An American in Paris dispensed with the piano, in hopes that music for strictly symphonic performance would receive more hearings than pieces that required him to be on stage as soloist. Although sketches date from as early as 1921, the bulk of the new work was composed in 1928 on an extended Paris vacation.
For the premiere, Gershwin enlisted the aid of Deems Taylor to help him create a scenario to hang upon his cosmopolitan new work. Together, they created a program that is entertaining, if not completely plausible. Regardless, it still provides the best roadmap for this enchanting piece.
“You are to imagine an American visiting Paris, swinging down the Champs-Elysées on a mild, sunny morning in May or June. Being what he is, he starts without preliminaries and is off at full speed at once . . . Our American’s ears being open, as well as his eye, he notes with pleasure the sounds of the city. French taxicabs seem to amuse him particularly, a fact that the orchestra points out in brief episodes introducing four real Paris taxi horns.
“Having safely eluded the taxis, our American apparently passes the open door of a café . . . he resumes his stroll . . . announced by the clarinet in French with a strong American accent . . .
“At this point, the American’s itinerary becomes somewhat obscured . . . And now the orchestra introduces an unhallowed episode. Suffice it to say that a solo violin approaches our hero (in the soprano register) and addresses him in the most charming broken English . . .
Our hero becomes homesick. He has the blues; and if the behavior of the solo trumpet be any criterion, he has them very thoroughly. He realizes suddenly, overwhelmingly, that he does not belong to this place . . .
“However, nostalgia is not a fatal disease . . . Just in a nick of time the compassionate orchestra rushes another theme to the rescue, two trumpets performing the ceremony of introduction. It is apparent that our hero must have met a compatriot; for this last theme is a noisy, cheerful, self-confident Charleston, without a drop of Gallic blood in its veins . . . Paris isn’t such a bad place after all: as a matter of fact, it’s a grand place! Nice weather, nothing to do until tomorrow, nice girls . . . It will be great to get home; but meanwhile, this is Paris!”
Bolero
- Maurice Ravel
Born March 7, 1875, in Ciboure, Basses-Pyrénées, France
Died December 28, 1937, in Paris
This work was first performed on November 22, 1928, at the Paris Opéra, with Walter Staram conducting. It is scored for piccolo, two flutes, two oboes, English horn, oboe d’amore, E-flat clarinet, three clarinets, bass clarinet, two bassoons, contrabassoon, three saxophones (sopranino, soprano, and tenor), four horns, four trumpets (including one piccolo trumpet), three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, harp, celesta, and strings.
Just before his 1928 American tour, Maurice Ravel was approached by the famed Russian dancer Ida Rubinstein about composing a new work for her to premiere. He first thought of making a quick arrangement of music from Iberia by Spanish composer Isaac Albéniz, but could not obtain the rights. As a replacement, Ravel eventually decided upon an experimental approach. He would write an insistent melody and repeat it unchanged many times while making colorful adaptations to the orchestration. Through this technique, he would be able to keep the interest of the listener and allow for Bronislava Nijinska, Rubinstein’s choreographer and sister of Vaclav Nijinski, to create an exciting staging. At first he called the work Fandango, but changed the title to Bolero before the premiere.
Ravel was true to his concept, and described his piece as,
“. . . consisting wholly of orchestral tissue without music — of one very long, very gradual crescendo. The themes are impersonal — folk tunes of the usual Spanish-Arabian kind.”
The result is much more thrilling than Ravel would have us believe. Bolero begins almost inaudibly with its signature rhythm played by a lone snare drum. Layered onto the texture is also a harmonic pattern – little more than a slow rhythmic C major arpeggio – that acts as a foundation upon which the work’s melody is constructed. However, the heart of this work is the melody, first introduced in the low register of the flute. As the piece advances, this tune passes from one instrument to the next until it moves throughout the orchestra. Often it is presented by small groups of instruments playing simultaneous harmonizations of the theme – one of these is a convincing imitation of a steam calliope, the characteristic organ used in circuses. Meanwhile, the rhythmic and harmonic elements begin a crescendo that progresses through the entire length of the work, an effect achieved by the gradual addition of instruments. Near the end, the hypnotic atmosphere is broken by a sudden transition from the C major tonality that has been present for about fifteen minutes to a bright E major chord that is breathtaking in its simplistic grandeur. The masterful and climactic coda returns to C major with brusque horn calls outlining the interval of a tritone. Bolero ends in an unforgettably brilliant blaze of Spanish incandescence.
©2007 Orpheus Music Prose & Craig Doolin
www.orpheusnotes.com