BY LAURIE SHULMAN, ©2008
FIRST NORTH AMERICAN SERIAL RIGHTS ONLY
Danse (Tarantelle styrienne)
Claude Debussy
Born August 22, 1862 in St-Germain-en-Laye, France
Died March 25, 1918 in Paris, France
Orchestrated by Maurice Ravel
Born March 7, 1875 in Ciboure, Basses-Pyrenées, France
Died December 28, 1937 in Paris, France
Ways to entertain oneself: a composer’s diversion
Ravel often told his friends that orchestration for him was entertainment, rather than work. Thus, when one of Debussy’s publishers approached him in June 1922 requesting orchestrations of two early piano pieces, Ravel was intrigued. After ascertaining that Debussy’s widow had no objection, he accepted the assignment and completed orchestral transcriptions of Debussy’s Tarentelle styrienne (1890) and Sarabande (1901) later that year. Paul Paray conducted the orchestral premiere with the Lamoureux Orchestra at Paris’ Salle Gaveau in March 1923.
Although Debussy and Ravel are often mentioned in the same breath, the two composers had a falling out early in the 20th century and maintained polite, but distant, civility. Their mutual admiration and respect, however, never ceased.
Ravel orchestrated works by other composers, including Satie, Chopin, Schumann and Chabrier. The most famous, of course, is Musorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition.
Musical geography: Italy, Austria, France
Tarentelle styrienne is one of several short piano pieces Debussy composed in 1890. The most famous of these early works is the Suite Bergamasque, which includes the beloved Clair de lune. The tarantella, a rapid dance in 6/8 time, comes from the Southern Italian city of Taranto. Debussy’s piece ostensibly transfers it to Austria (Styria is the region in southeast Austria whose capital is Graz), but the music could not be more French. Debussy’s publisher Jean Jobert republished the Tarantelle in 1903 with a new name: Danse.
Ravel captures the lively cross-rhythms and sparkling whimsy of Debussy’s original, brightening it with a modest but lavishly colored orchestra.
The score calls for woodwinds, horns and trumpets in pairs, timpani, side drum, triangle, bass drum, cymbals, crotales, harp and strings.
Timing: Approximately 6 minutes.
Suite from The Cunning Little Vixen
Leoš Janácek
Born July 3, 1854 in Hukvaldy, Moravia
Died August 12, 1928 in Ostrava, Moravia
If Bedrich Smetana is regarded as the great-grandfather of Czech music and Antonín Dvorák as the grandfather, Leoš Janácek was the logical heir to their tradition and, in his turn, the father of modern Czech music. Janácek was a late bloomer. Although his musical talent manifested itself early, most of his youthful works were cloaked in the forms and style of the late 19th-century romantics, garb that ill-suited Janácek. Eventually, he abandoned those models, seeking more personal expression. Like his younger contemporaries Bartók and Kodály in Hungary, Janácek became absorbed with the folk music of his native land, developing a highly individual musical language. His mature style derives in large part from the speech cadences of Slovak tongues and the rhythms and melodies of Moravian folk music.
Listening to the voice of the people – literally
Janácek considered his operas to be his best works. The opera Jenufa (1904) was a turning point for him delving into the rhythms and inflections of the Czech language. He once said, “When anyone speaks to me, I listen more to the tonal modulations in his voice than to what he is actually saying.” After Jenufa, he constructed all his music from simple melodic motives that evoke his mother tongue.
Mother Nature and the eternal life cycle
The Cunning Little Vixen (1924) is a gloriously romantic opera whose protagonists are a pair of foxes. Janácek crafted his libretto after a Czech novel that was in turn written to accompany cartoon drawings that appeared in a Brno newspaper. The plot revolves around a young female fox who is raised in captivity by a gamekeeper. She escapes, finds a mate and rears a family. Humans and a wide variety of animals interact and converse, fall in love and lament lost love, squabble and deceive, procreate and die. The anthropomorphic message is one of renewal: the power of nature and the eternal perpetuation of the life cycle.
Janácek was a great nature lover. More than in any other composition, we hear the sounds of nature in the score to The Cunning Little Vixen. Its characters include Mosquito, Badger, Blue Dragonfly, Cricket, Grasshopper, Frog, Owl and Woodpecker, as well as the gamekeeper’s hens and dog. The opera includes a ballet sequence for gnats, squirrels and hedgehog, along with Blue Dragonfly’s dance, when the vixen and her fox retreat to her burrow to mate.
Initially, Janácek did not wish to extract an orchestral suite from the opera. Late in life he reconsidered. Nine years after his death, the task fell to the conductor Václav Talich, who compiled the suite in 1937 for a revival of the opera in Prague. Talich drew on preludes and instrumental interludes in the score, as well as some vocal segments. Nearly 30 years later, Czech oboist and conductor Václav Smetácek revised it into the two extended movements we hear.
The Talich/Smetácek score calls for four flutes, three oboes, three clarinets, three bassoons, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, harp, celesta and strings.
Timing: Approximately 20 minutes.
Carmina Burana
Carl Orff
Born July 10, 1895 in Munich, Germany
Died March 29, 1982 in Munich
Carl Orff’s music has been regularly performed, yet it is little known. That paradox results from his reputation resting almost exclusively on Carmina Burana, which catapulted Orff to international fame in 1937. It has remained in the standard repertoire ever since. His other stage and choral compositions are curiosities, infrequently recorded and rarely performed. His most enduring legacy other than Carmina Burana is the educational material he developed for schoolchildren. Carmina remains his crowning achievement as a composer.
An ancient manuscript: the sacred and the profane
The manuscript from which Orff took his texts for Carmina Burana was discovered at the Benedictbeuern monastery in the Bavarian Alps by Johann Andreas Schmeller, who published the collection in 1847. Dating from the 11th through 13th centuries, the texts are in medieval German, Latin and old French. They deal with love, religion and moral issues, the worldly and the metaphysical. Their style ranges from naïve to vulgar, from cynical to philosophical. Authors of wide educational and cultural backgrounds contributed to the compilation. The texts are highly dramatic.
Like Janácek, Orff was a late bloomer as a composer. He studied at Munich’s Akademie der Tonkunst. For many years he worked as a theatrical rehearsal pianist, thereby learning the mechanics of drama. In the 1920s, he adapted several works by Monteverdi for the stage. He later directed the Munich Bach Society. Through these experiences, he cultivated his strong interest in early music.
Reconciling old and new
In the early 1930s, Orff became acquainted with the Benedictbeuern manuscript. Its medieval languages fascinated him. So did the beautifully illuminated cover, depicting a wheel of fortune. Its musical manifestation was the massive “Hymn to Fortune” that frames Carmina Burana. The texts warranted treatment consistent not only with the medieval poems but also with the vocabulary of 20th-century music. He bypassed the French texts in favor of those in German and Latin. In his music, he sought to echo the simple and naïve style of the poems, thus Carmina Burana contains primarily strophic songs with little or no variation in verses. Orff’s melodies are diatonic and frequently scalar, a couple strongly flavored by Gregorian chant.
His rhythm, by contrast, is enormously complex. Vibrant and driven, the primitive pulsation of Carmina Burana unites medieval peasantry with sophisticated effects available from a bevy of modern instruments. An expanded percussion section provides much of the vivid color so essential to Carmina’s impact. Orff’s two orchestral pianos flavor some choruses (“Ecce gratum”) and dominate the musical fabric in others (“Veni, veni, venias”).
The big picture: a journey from spring, to the tavern, to love
Carmina Burana divides into three principal segments, preceded by Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi (“Fortune, Empress of the World”), which returns to conclude the work. The first section, Primo vere (“Spring,”) is a celebration of youth and the promise of the season. It introduces the theme of love and the eternal games played by young people of both sexes seeking to attract one another.
Part II, In taberna (“In the Tavern”) belongs to the men: the tortured hypocrite with craven heart (baritone solo); the swan roasting on the spit, lamenting his former domain as he contemplates being devoured by the hungry men who fill the tavern (tenor solo and men’s chorus); the corrupt abbot who—among other vices—drinks (baritone and men’s chorus); and finally “In taberna,” one of the great drinking choruses.
In Part III, Cour d’amours (“The Court of Love”), Orff presents a mini-drama of contemplated love, indecision (“In trutina,” soprano solo), seduction and the joy of ultimate surrender to passion (“Dulcissime,” soprano solo). Following the exultant Blanziflor et Helena hymn, his repetition of the “Fortune” chorus reminds us that all human happiness is transitory.
Throughout Carmina Burana, Orff’s vocal tessitura is abnormally high. We notice this characteristic more in the melismatic solo numbers, particularly those for soprano and tenor. But the soloists never obscure the prominent role of the chorus, which is central to the work’s narrative, sensual and musical power.
The score calls for triple woodwinds, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, a huge percussion battery requiring five players, two pianos, celesta, strings, full chorus and soprano, tenor and bass vocal soloists.
Timing: Approximately 65 minutes. |
