Ludwig van Beethoven
Symphony No. 4 in B flat Major, Op. 60
The year 1806 was extremely productive for Beethoven. Early that year the composer worked on revising his opera Fidelio, which had failed miserably the year before. He also embarked on an astonishing number of masterpieces: the three Razumovsky String Quartets, the Appassionata Sonata, the Fourth and Fifth Symphonies, the Violin Concerto and the Fourth Piano Concerto.
Beethoven had started first on the stormy Fifth Symphony, sketches for which survive from as early as 1804, but put it aside to work on the Fourth, which he finished in early 1807. While the two symphonies are vastly different in mood, one of the interesting connections between them is the descending interlocking thirds that open both works, part of a tense and somber slow introduction in the Fourth, that morphs into a nervous percussiveness in the famous opening of the Fifth. The Fourth Symphony was premiered in March at a private all-Beethoven concert that also included the premieres of the Fourth Piano Concerto and the Coriolan Overture, netting the ever money-conscious composer a tidy sum.
While the Symphony’s shape is traditionally classical, looking back to Haydn, the music is unmistakably Beethoven. The extremely slow introduction of 38 measures baffled his contemporaries: “Every quarter of an hour we hear three or four notes. It is exciting!” commented composer and conductor Carl Maria von Weber sarcastically. The contrasting Allegro is one of Beethoven’s most buoyant movements, with the music cascading like a rushing waterfall. There is a tremendous buildup of tension towards the return to the original theme, starting with a pianissimo that gradually rises to a double forte, a passage that amazed even such musical iconoclasts as Hector Berlioz.
The symphony’s exuberance is sustained throughout, the only contrast being the second movement. This Adagio, featuring timpani and clarinets, begins with an elegant cantabiletheme set to an accompaniment of quiet dotted rhythm in the strings, but the sudden outburst of hammered cadence conjures echoes of Haydn’s “Surprise” Symphony. The timpani, now carrying the little rhythmic motive, subside into the background but the little motive remains, like an underlying heartbeat, the unifying force behind an outpouring of new melodies. After a passionate middle sectionwith a new rhythmic motive sustaining it, featuring a solo clarinet, Beethoven returns to a varied version of the opening section in the classic ternary ABA’ form of most slow movements of the period.
The Scherzo retains the theme of contrasting dynamics by setting the upper winds and violins against the full orchestra and timpani. In a mildly unusual move for the time, Beethoven repeats the Trio, a lilting oboe solo. He finishes up with a much abbreviated additional repeat of the Scherzo.
The Finale is unusual in that it is a classic sonata form – but on speed. Like the Adagio, there is a constant rhythmic pulse in the background, here a driving perpetuum mobile. In actuality, the entire Symphony abounds in exclamation points, created in many cases by Beethoven’s extensive use of the timpani to contrast with quiet or legato passages. There's even a surprise in the coda. With Beethoven, as with his mentor, Haydn, one should always expect the unexpected.
Leonard Bernstein
1918-1990
Leonard Bernstein
Symphonic Dances from West Side Story
West Side Story was Leonard Bernstein’s attempt to demonstrate that it was possible to write a serious musical. He succeeded beyond all expectations. With lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and with Jerome Robbins as director and choreographer, the show opened on Broadway on September 26, 1957 and ran for over 1000 performances. The movie was just as spectacular a success, as was the recording.
But its birth was not easy. The show was originally conceived eight years earlier as a conflict between Jews and Catholics during the Easter-Passover celebrations and at one point was to be called East Side Story. The protagonists were finally switched to ethnic gangs on the Upper West Side, but no backers could be found. West Side Story became notorious for having been turned down by nearly every producer because no one thought that such a tragic story was suitable material for Broadway. Finally, Harold Prince and Robert Griffith, two successful Broadway producers, emerged as the show’s financial the “angels.”
Casting was another problem. The perfectionist Robbins wanted a cast of 38 who could both dance and sing – a nearly impossible demand in those days, but now the rule rather than the exception. A choreographer first and foremost, Robbins finally settled on dancers who could sing – as opposed to singers who could dance. When Bernstein, unencumbered by staging constraints, re-recorded West Side Story in 1988, he used opera singers for the main roles: Kiri Te Kanawa, José Carreras, Tatiana Troyanos and Marilyn Horne. It became another bestseller.
While describing the tragic life of ordinary people in a New York Puerto Rican ghetto, West Side Story tackles an archetypal theme: love clashing with prejudice and clan hatred, Romeo and Juliet set in inner city tenements.
The Symphonic Dances, which Bernstein extracted from the musical, are not in the order of the original show. Comprising of nine segments played without pause, the suite was first performed by the New York Philharmonic in 1961:
1. Prologue: A fantasy on the Jets’ number, the Prologue portrays the rising violence between the two street gangs, the Sharks and the Jets in harsh, jazzy dissonances and rhythms.
2. Somewhere: An idyllic dream sequence in which the gangs are joined in a peaceful friendship and the lovers united, originally from Act 2 after Tony has stabbed Maria’s brother.
3. Scherzo: The dream continues as the two gangs leave the city for the bucolic countryside.
4. Mambo: The rival gangs compete at a school dance, originally from Act 1 when the two lovers first meet.
5. Cha-Cha, a continuation of the preceding scene in which the lovers, Tony and Maria, from opposing gangs, meet for the first time and dance together. The theme is a variation on “Maria.”
6. Meeting Scene: The lovers hesitantly exchanging their first words. Also based on “Maria,” this is a short transitional passage into the following number.
7. “Cool”Fugue: The hostility of the Jets gradually builds in anticipation of street warfare. A recap of the Jets’ theme precedes the fugue – actually a double fugue – one subject in long notes, the other in a faster jazzy rhythm.
8. Rumble. A violent, dissonant climax, in which both rival gang leaders are killed. The realization of the enormity of the event imposes shocked near silence, a pianissimo flute solo of the fugue theme.
9. Finale: Tony dies in Maria’s arms, a victim of gang violence. Two themes, the first comprise the funeral procession: Maria’s passionate outpouring to Anita and the dream melody of Somewhere.
Ludwig van Beethoven Symphony No. 5 in c Minor, Op. 67
The four most clichéd notes in classical music were once the most revolutionary. For the first time a rhythm, rather than a melody, became the main subject of a symphonic movement – and not merely as a first theme to be stated and picked up again for a while in the development and recapitulation sections. Beethoven wove the rhythm into the entire fabric of the first movement, and subsequently into the rest of the Symphony. The motive first appears as a repeated demand, subsequently expanded into a genuine melody in the first theme. It recurs as a throbbing accompaniment in bass and timpani in the second theme, all the way to the final cadence of the exposition.
Such an original symphonic structure did not come easily, especially to a composer who lacked the ever-ready melodic genius of a Mozart, Bach or Haydn, who all produced copiously on demand. A collection of the composer’s sketchbooks bears witness to the lengthy and often painful gestation of some of his greatest music. The Fifth Symphony took four years to complete, between 1804 and 1808. But Beethoven also had to eat, and during those four years he also produced the Fourth Symphony, the Fourth Piano Concerto, the three Op. 59 String Quartets, the Mass in C and the Violin Concerto.
Although Beethoven had already been at work on what was to become the Fifth Symphony, he composed the Fourth in fairly short order in 1806 on commission from Count Franz von Oppersdorff. The Count eventually paid the 500 florins agreed upon for the work and in 1807 commissioned another symphony with a down payment of 200 florins. Beethoven notified Oppersdorff in March 1808 that the Fifth Symphony was ready and that he should send the remaining 300 florins. But the Count sent only another installment of 150 florins, and by November Beethoven, in one of his less than ethical moves, apparently felt justified in selling the score to the publisher Gottfried Härtel. Upon finally paying in full, Oppersdorff received a copy.
The Symphony No. 5 was premiered at one of those monster concerts common in the nineteenth century that included premiere of the Sixth Symphony, the Fourth Piano Concerto, the aria "Ah! Perfido, the Choral Fantasy and several movements of the Mass in C. One can only imagine the bewilderment of the audience on their first encounter in a single evening with the "Pastoral" and the Fifth.
Because the Fifth Symphony is so familiar it is difficult to think of it as innovative, but it was not only the integration four-note rhythmic motif into the first movement that was new. It is the fact that this little rhythm becomes the motto that unifies the entire symphony. In the first movement, the principal theme hammers away at the rhythm in almost every measure. Then, the second theme, which should provide a significant contrast, starts off with the motto in the solo horn, only afterwards becoming somewhat more gentle and legato – although that, too begins to ramp up the emotional tension as it continues.
The second movement, marked Andante con moto, involves its own kind of innovation. It is made up of two short juxtaposed, contrasting themes, the first in dotted rhythm, the second a slow almost military theme in the brass. Beethoven produces from the two themes a double set of variations. And it should be noted that the second theme contains within it in augmentation the germinal four-note rhythm of the first movement.
After what has been called a "ghostly" opening of the scherzo, Beethoven takes up the motto again prominently in the horns, and it is this segment of the third movement that he chooses to repeat in the finale.
Symphony No. 5 has frequently been referred to as a struggle from darkness to light, but it is a commonplace that has palpable grounding in truth. Not only does the symphony begin in c minor and end in C major, but there is also the magnificent transition between the third and fourth movements, a kind of breaking through of sunlight clouds with violins stammering over timpani throbbing out the motto. The eruption through to the triumphant finale paved the way for the symphonic writing of the future, including Beethoven's own Ninth, Mendelssohn’s Third (The “Scottish”) and Brahms’s First.
