Day 121
1 May 2017: Shostakovich
– Symphony No. 3, 'The First of May' (1929)
I had to listen to
this today, really, and as a consequence I decided to break the chronology of
Dmitri Shostakovich's symphonies over the year (you might recall that the 7th
featured on Day 104). The first of May has always been a significant date in
the Russian calendar, having been declared a holiday in the 1880s. In writing a
symphony seemingly to pander to the Soviet authorities that were later to
become the bane of his life, many have viewed this as Shostakovich being the
loyal patriot. However, this predates the Stalinist purges and the concept of
Socialist Realism in the arts. The third symphony was written when Shostakovich
was just 23 years old, and the mood in the country was still one of optimism
for the new Soviet state.
The symphony is cast
in a single movement divided into four sections, with the fourth being a choral
setting of words by the poet Semyon Isaakovich Kirsanov. If I'm being brutally
honest, it's not Dmitri's finest hour (or half-hour, or however long it takes
to perform). Along with his similarly propagandist second 'To October', it represents a backward step, musically, from the
prodigious brilliance of his first symphony. It has its moments, and certainly
the form of the work is original, but it remains rarely performed for a reason.
Day 122
2 May 2017: Dora
Pejačević – Symphony in F#m (1917)
Definitely the only
female Croatian composer I'll be featuring this year, Dora Pejačević was of
very noble blood. She was the daughter of a Croatian Count and a Hungarian
Countess, and received private lessons in piano, violin and compositions.
Although she wrote quite prolifically, her works were rarely played in her
native Croatia and were often premiered in Germany, where she eventually
settled.
This symphony was
written during World War I, at a time when she was conscientiously doing her
bit for the war effort by volunteering as a nurse in her home village. It is a
really fine work; firmly in the Late-Romantic style but with occasional flashes
of a more early-20th-century harmonic language. It showed far more promise than
the first symphonic explorations of many more household names. Sadly, it was to
be her only symphony, however, as she died at the tragically young age of 37,
from kidney failure shortly after the birth of her first child. Pejačević was a
unique voice in the history of music, who would surely have gone on to even
greater things.
Day 123
3 May 2017: Ives –
Symphony No. 4 (c.1924)
Oh my word, where do
you start with this? Charles Ives's absolutely barmy fourth symphony was so far
ahead of its time in almost every respect that it might have arrived in 1920s
America via some wormhole in the space-time continuum. There are groups of
musicians playing completely different music simultaneously, a feat that
requires two (or sometimes three) conductors. There is a completely novel use
of quarter-tones, utilizing a quarter-tone piano that had to be created
specifically for this purpose. There's a subterranean percussion ensemble, a
separate group given the name 'Star of Bethlehem' who are supposed to be
suspended above the stage, and it's hard to think of another work before or
since that makes quite so much use of quotation. Tunes as diverse as Yankee Doodle, Nearer My God To Thee, and JS Bach's Toccata in D minor all get thrown into a mind-blowing melting pot.
What Ives was doing
here was creating a whole new genre of music, known broadly as American Experimental
Music, which gave rise to a generation of composers such as John Cage, Morton
Feldman, Conlon Nancarrow, the minimalist school and a whole host of others who
threw the classical rulebook out of the window. The sad thing is that the
logistical difficulties of performing the work meant Ives never heard it played
in its entirety. It didn't receive its full premiere until 1965, eleven years
after Ives's death, although the first two movements were first performed in
1927, with the third being first heard six years later. The fact that the ideas
Ives had took 40 years to be realised into a performable version goes to show
how advanced they were. It is an extraordinary work, which takes several
listens to absorb fully.
Day 124
4 May 2017: Schoenberg
– Chamber Symphony No. 1 (1906)
Arnold Schoenberg is
most famous for inventing the twelve-tone technique as a means of providing
order to the complete breakdown of conventional tonality in music that he as
much anyone instigated. In 1906, Schoenberg was still writing nominally tonal
music, extending the already stretched notion of tonality espoused by his
predecessors Gustav Mahler and Richard Strauss. In this piece, however, the
boundaries were pushed to the limits, with most of the thematic material making
use of intervals of a fourth – something which wouldn't lend itself naturally
to diatonic writing. The end result is music that sounds atonal for the most
part whilst still conforming to many of the rules of tonality.
Certainly the
audiences struggled with it when it first came to light, with early
performances causing protests and riots. It is alleged that it was booed at its
premiere in 1907, with no less a figure than Mahler taking issue with those of
his fellow audience members responsible for the booing. It also featured in the
infamous Skandalkonzert six years
later, in which a concert of works by composers of the Second Viennese School
was ended prematurely after the audience started throwing punches! Schoenberg's
decision to write a Chamber Symphony for just 15 players was a clear indication
that he did not wish to continue the tradition of gigantic symphonies passed on
by Bruckner and Mahler. Yet within these much reduced forces there is a level
of complexity that had never previously been achieved in Western music. It's a
challenging piece, especially for the players, and it's fair to say Schoenberg
wasn't out to make friends when he wrote this.
Day 125
5 May 2017: Boyce –
Symphony No. 1 (c.1750)
It's worth taking a
step back at this point and looking at the very genesis of the symphony as a
form. In the Baroque period, the term 'symphony' was interchangeable with
'overture' and was usually reserved for the instrumental introduction to a
larger work such as an oratorio. A typical example can be heard at the start of
Handel's Messiah. William Boyce was
an English composer born about 25 years after Handel, and he too wrote a number
of overtures in the French or Italian style for other bigger, but now
long-forgotten, pieces. However, in 1760, he took the unusual step of
publishing eight of them as stand-alone three-movement symphonies. Although
published in 1760, they had been composed at various times during the previous
20 years, so dating any of them is nearly impossible.
Symphony No.1 is in B
flat major, and is a joyful work of barely five or six minutes' duration. In
common with most Baroque music, the movements are mostly dance forms with the
second being a Loure and the third a Gigue (although neither are named as
such). In truth, this a case of a piece qualifying by my adherence to the rule
of anything calling itself a symphony is a symphony. That said, it's not hard
to see how the form evolved from these early explorations.
Day 126
6 May 2017: Rimsky
Korsakov – Symphony No. 2 (1868)
Nikolai
Rimsky-Korsakov was a man who constantly changed his mind. The fact that this,
his second symphony, predates what we now accept to be the definitive version
of his first by about 16 years gives a clue as to the confused nature of his
back catalogue. This work was published in 1868 as Symphony No. 2, but was revised repeatedly and also underwent a
fundamental title change. At some point, probably after writing his third
symphony, he decided to call this work Symphonic
Suite, "Antar". Rimsky had apparently decided that the term
symphony was unsuitable for a work that effectively told a story – an approach
he also applied to his later masterpiece Scheherazade.
This piece in fact has
many features in common with Scheherazade.
Both are based on Arabian themes and subject matter, and having arrived at the
term Symphonic Suite to describe Antar,
he used it again for Scheherazade
when it could be argued that it is a symphony in all but name. As one might
expect from anything Rimsky committed to paper, the orchestration is brilliant,
and it really comes into its own in the beautiful final movement culminating a
form of Liebestod as the lovers
ascend to heaven. Such a quiet ending, almost a fade-out, is certainly quite
unsymphonic. This work is often recommended as a follow-up piece to people who
like Scheherazade and want to explore
more of Rimsky's oeuvre. It is a view I would subscribe to unreservedly.
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