Vienna Nights 5
Johannes Brahms 1833-1897
Johannes Brahms
1833-1897
Johannes Brahms
Hungarian Dances No. 4, 5 & 6

“It is hard to write down what one has been improvising wildly for a long time,” wrote Johannes Brahms to his publisher Simrock. Brahms had become familiar with Hungarian and Gypsy melodies in 1853, while on tour with the Hungarian violinist Eduard Remény. He often played them at his concerts and sporadically wrote them down. His challenge now was to cast them in the formal language of classical music without destroying their freshness and spontaneity. Attuned to the great demand for music for home entertainment – since a well-used piano in the parlor was the symbol of the cultured family before the phonograph turned people into musical couch potatoes – he set these dances for piano four-hand.

Brahms compiled the dances in four books. Books I and II, containing five dances each, were published in 1869, the rest in 1880. According to a list published in Vienna’s Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung in 1874, the melodies of Books I and II were by Hungarian composers of popular music – except for No. 7, which is a true folk melody. The eleven melodies of Books III and IV are probably mostly by Brahms himself.

In naming these pieces “Hungarian Dances,” Brahms may have fallen for the common practice in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries of supposedly discovering nationalistic or ethnic styles, which turned out actually to be the popular tunes in the Coffee houses. Four of the first ten dances, for example, are czárdáses, supposedly a Hungarian peasant dance, but actually invented – name and all – by a nationalist aristocrat early in the nineteenth century. The peasants had never heard of it.

Brahms himself transcribed the first ten Hungarian Dances for solo piano and Nos.1, 3 and 10 for orchestra. Many other composers and arrangers have made orchestral transcriptions of the other dances. Virtually all information about the original composers of the tunes on which the dances are based has been lost. Each dance is in a standard ABA form with a contrasting melody for the middle (B) section.

No.4 in F minor is from a czardas, Kalocsay-Emlék (Reminiscences of Kalocsay) by N. Mérty Example 4

No. 5 in F-sharp minor is based on Czárdás Bartfai-Emlék (Reminiscences oif Bartfai Czárdás), Op. 31 by Béla Kéler (1820-1882). It is probably the best known of the whole set. Example 5

No.6 in D-flat major: The melody comes from the song Rózsa Bokor (Rosebush) by Adolph Nittinger Example 6

Antonin Dvořák 1841-1904
Antonin Dvořák
1841-1904
Antonin Dvořák
Cello Concerto in B minor, Op. 104

Antonín Dvořák’s sojourn in the United States from 1892 to 1895 came about through the efforts of Mrs. Jeanette B. Thurber. A dedicated and idealistic proponent of an American national musical style, she underwrote and administered the first American music conservatory, the National Conservatory of Music in New York. Because of Dvořák’s popularity throughout Europe, he was Thurber’s first choice as director. He, in turn, was probably lured to the big city so far from home by both a large salary and a passion regarding musical nationalism that paralleled Mrs. Thurber’s own. He was eager to learn more of the Indian and Negro music, which he believed should be the basis of the American style of composition. He also shared with Mrs. Thurber the conviction that the National Conservatory should admit Negro students.

The years in New York were quite productive in spite of his administrative and teaching duties. He composed string quartets, a string quintet, the Ten Biblical Songs, Symphony No.9 and, lastly, the Cello Concerto in b minor.
For a number of years, Dvořák had been asked by his friend, the cellist Hanus Wihan, for a cello concerto. But the ultimate push was a performance by cellist, composer and conductor Victor Herbert of his Cello Concerto No. 2 at a New York Philharmonic concert. Dvořák thought the work splendid, and a few months later sat down to write his own concerto, finishing it just before he left New York to return to his native Bohemia.

Dvořák resisted Wihan’s suggestions for a bravura piece, preferring to focus on the emotional rather than the technical, with the cellist not pitted against the orchestra, but rather enhancing it. While writing the concerto he received news that his sister-in-law, Josefina Kaunitzová was critically ill. Dvořák had been in love with her and had wanted to marry her 30 years earlier, but he had to settle for her sister instead. As a tribute to Josefina, he included in the second movement of the concerto a reference to his song “Leave me alone,” which was her favorite. Shortly after his return to Prague, Josefina died and Dvořák changed the ending of the Concerto, adding the elegiac and exquisitely painful coda to the final movement, again briefly quoting the song in a duet between the cello and the concertmaster.

The Concerto is a monument to Dvořák’s incredible gift for melody, not only in the basic thematic material but also in the “connective tissue” that holds together any great musical work of art. The winds, especially the flutes, play an extremely important role in this Concerto, sometimes seeming to shut out the rest of the orchestra from their private conversation with the soloist.

The clarinet opens the Concerto with one of the most emotionally evocative eight notes in the repertory, Example 1 a theme that lends itself to a variety of harmonizations that Dvořák makes good use of in the course of the movement. He makes particular use of the first three notes of the theme to generate new ones. Example 2 It is followed shortly by a second theme in the relative major key, D major, introduced by the French horn. Example 3 While the Concerto is certainly not a bravura piece, the cello part in this movement is difficult both technically and emotionally. It requires a “private” and intense development of the two themes, as well as rapid figurative accompaniments to the orchestra. Example 4 The movement adheres to the basic structure of sonata allegro form, but Dvořák, like many other composers, does not adhere slavishly to the template. He uses the recapitulation to insert the first of the several tragic reveries in the Concerto, here a dialogue between cello and flute. Example 5 There is no formal cadenza, nor would one have been appropriate in this piece.

The Adagio is another dialogue for cello and woodwinds. It begins gently, with a choir of woodwinds quoting from the song, Example 6 then echoed by the cello, which is joined by a pair of clarinets for the next strain of the theme. Example 7 The cello continues with a poignant sighing motive that increases the emotional tension Example 8 in preparation for the only appearance of the full orchestra in the entire movement in a sudden anguished interruption, an almost funereal cry. Example 9 But the movement quickly returns to the quiet but intense conversation between cello and winds.

A march opens the final movement, Example 10 the faster pace is sustained for a couple of minutes, but soon the cello’s reflective personality takes over, periodically slowing the tempo, returning to the original only to repeat the opening theme. Example 11 A middle section introduces a proper second theme, but this one is already more subdued than the first. Example 12 Throughout this Concerto it has seemed difficult for the cello to break out of its passionate reverie, and Dvořák “ends” the movement two thirds of the way through, replacing the customary cadenza with the coda, in memory of Josefina. A gentle reprise of the opening of the Concerto informs us in retrospect that it is she who has been the focus of the entire work. Example 13
Johannes Brahms
Symphony No. 3 in F major, Op. 90

Unlike Beethoven, Johannes Brahms allowed not a trace of his compositional process to be revealed to the public. Any sketches, drafts or pre-orchestrations were consigned to flame, along with early works the composer considered inferior. We know, therefore, virtually nothing about the genesis of the Symphony No.3, only that it was composed during the summer of 1883 in the German town of Wiesbaden, some six years after the Second Symphony. There has been some discussion of one of the composer’s many infatuations, this time with a talented young contralto, Hermine Spies, with whom the fifty-year-old composer kept up an intense – but almost certainly chaste – relationship for several years. He apparently spent the fruitful summer in Wiesbaden because of her, but the extent of her influence on his creative output of that period, beyond a number of vocal works, is impossible to ascertain.

The Symphony, premiered on November 9, 1883 in Vienna, was a stupendous success, far greater than anything Brahms had ever experienced. Apparently, he was more than a little unnerved by the acclaim, remarking, “The reputation [it] has acquired makes me want to cancel all my engagements.”

The Third is the shortest of Brahms’s symphonies, containing thematic interrelationships among the movements that to some degree determine its compact structure. It is unusual also in the fact that three of its movements are in sonata form, in the absence of a scherzo/trio and in the general uniformity of tempo of all but the final movement.

One cannot discuss the Symphony without spending some time on the dramatic opening measures whose major-minor ambiguity pervades the entire work. The opening three-note motive in the horns, F-A-flat-F (an f minor third), is followed by a sharply descending melody line in the violin, first in F major, then immediately revised in f minor, the rest of the theme finally clarifying the major. Example 1 Brahms biographer Jan Swafford notes the strong similarity, especially in rhythm, between the theme and the opening theme of Schumann’s Symphony No 3; and, given the close personal relationship between the two composers during Brahms’s youth, Swafford considers the thematic relationship as probably deliberate. Example 2 & Example 11 The second theme, presented by the clarinets, is a mini-variation form, stating the opening phrase three times in a more elaborate form.

In the second movement Andante, Brahms continues to play with the major-minor ambiguity. The movement, like the first, is in sonata form, but the first theme in C major Example 3 is followed by a second in A minor, the reverse of the key order that would be expected. Example 4 And in the recapitulation, Brahms omits repeating the second theme altogether, saving it for the Symphony’s last movement.

The third movement was the “hit” of the entire Symphony and was frequently encored at performances in Brahms’s time, when such concert etiquette as applause between movements and internal encores were acceptable. This melancholy waltz with its triple meter and only slightly contrasting middle section are all that remain of the traditional classical minuet or scherzo Example 5 and trio. Example 6

Certainly the darkest and most tempestuous movement in the Symphony, the finale begins clearly in F minor, accentuating the major/minor ambiguity that Brahms set up from the start. Example 7 Immediately after the fluid opening theme, Brahms brings back in slightly altered form the second theme from the second movement that he had omitted in the recapitulation, this time also in F minor. Example 8 Sections of minor storminess are resolved with a C major “heroic” theme first heard in the horns and cellos. Example 9 But this symphony is not a Beethoven’s Ninth nor even a Brahms’s First. Rather than ending in a resounding climax, the darkness and ambiguity dissolve the final measures when Brahms brings back the opening bars of the Symphony, with their clear-cut transformation into F major, but now serene, pianissimo. Example 10


Copyright © Elizabeth and Joseph Kahn 2011