(Born in Venice, Italy, on March 4, 1678;
died in Vienna, Austria, on July 28, 1741)
Guitar (Lute) Concerto in D major, RV 93
1. Allegro giusto
2. Largo
3. Allegro
The Italian composer Antonio Vivaldi wrote over 500 instrumental concertos, and his invention and imagination for the concerto genre have been celebrated from his lifetime until today. His concertos’ lyricism and overt emotionalism were immensely influential on late Baroque and early Classical composers. But in his day, Vivaldi was also extremely renowned around Europe for his operas (he wrote over 40 of them). In fact, he was beckoned to Prague to stage several operas in 1730 for the Czech royal family. While in Prague, the Bohemian (Czech) count Jan Josef Vrtba commissioned Vivaldi to compose a set of four lute concertos (RV 93) featuring solo lute, two violins, and basso continuo (typically a harpsichord), of which the Lute Concerto in D major, performed tonight, was the first in the set.
These lute concertos are the only concertos that Vivaldi wrote specifically for the lute. Actually, they were written for the archlute, an instrument that was larger than the typical lute but smaller than the theorbo. The reason Vivaldi wrote no other lute concertos is unknown, but one factor may have been the lute’s relative quietness as a solo concerto instrument. This would have been problematic in the bigger halls that were being built in the 1600s and 1700s to accommodate the increasingly popular demand for operas and larger orchestral pieces. In any case, it appears that Count Vrtba loved the archlute, and luckily for us, Vivaldi was keen to oblige his coincidental patron, creating a concerto that is alive with lyricism and infectious energy, and an absolutely gorgeous and soulful middle movement. The brisk, barely 10-minute-long Lute Concerto in D major has grown tremendously in popularity in more recent years, although this work is typically performed (as it is tonight) arranged for a guitar soloist and chamber orchestra, adding a few more strings than just the original two violins.
The opening movement, Allegro giusto (appropriately fast), begins with a vivacious ritornello (“little return”) — a Baroque musical section that returns several times in a movement. Its opening theme is joyfully declamatory and tuneful and is delightfully constructed of several seemingly off-kilter five-bar phrases. In contrast to the first phrase of this opening theme, the next phrase is hued in a minor tonality and is more subdued. These two contrasting phrases give the sense of a conversation of ideas. Some historians think the minor-keyed phrase might have been inspired by Bohemian folk music that Vivaldi heard on the streets of Prague, although there is no direct source of the tune. The solo guitar then takes the lead, playing several variants of the ritornello’s theme as it moves through the movement and shows off some wizardly virtuosity. The ritornello and the guitar-featured sections then alternate throughout this short movement in a lyrical vortex of energy.
The second movement, Largo (slowly, solemn), floats on sheer beauty. The guitar opens the movement by playing an unhurried, ruminative melody over long-held notes in the upper strings and a gentle, pulsing thrum in the bass instruments. This opening section lasts approximately one minute and then repeats. Stylistically, soloists typically embellish their part the second time through, crafting virtuosity to enhance the emotional potential of the music. (In most of Vivaldi’s concertos, the soloist’s part is merely bare bones on paper, demanding a good deal of improvisation.) After the repeat, a section painted with rich harmonies begins, and this also repeats with even more improvisatory embellishments, which will end this mesmerizing movement.
The third and final movement, Allegro, begins with the orchestra twirling with a spritely theme sparkling with perpetual triplets. The energy is infectiously fun and dance-like, and the entire movement lasts only about two minutes. After the orchestra opens with its triplet flurries, the solo guitar jumps to the fore with its own spinning whirlwinds of notes. The orchestra and soloist then trade phrases over a skipping bass line that propels everything along, and this fleet and tune-filled concerto ends with exuberant cheerfulness.
Heitor Villa-Lobos
(Born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on March 5, 1887; died in Rio de Janeiro on November 17, 1959)
Concerto for Guitar and Small Orchestra
1. Allegro preciso – Poco meno
2. Andantino e Andante
3. Cadenza: Quasi allegro – Andante – Quasi allegro – Poco moderato
4. Allegro non troppo
Heitor Villa-Lobos is inarguably Brazil’s most important Classical music composer of the 20th century. He is known for blending native Brazilian folk music into Classical idioms; most memorable are his set of nine Bachianas Brasileiras (1930–1945) — amalgamations of Brazilian folk music reimagined as if Bach had written them. Villa-Lobos was born just as his country overthrew its Portuguese ruling king and began to nationally celebrate its indigenous identity and — most important for this gifted composer — its folk arts and music. Villa-Lobos grew up playing guitar in that rediscovered musical environment, teaching himself to improvise grandly alongside the popular street musicians of his day, even (or so Villa-Lobos reported) trekking into the jungle to explore indigenous tribal music. At the same time, he was captivated by the European culture that flourished in his hometown of Rio de Janeiro. Already composing in earnest, in 1923 Villa-Lobos was persuaded to visit Paris to attract more European audiences. While there, he met the great Spanish guitar virtuoso Andrés Segovia (1893–1987). In 1930, when Villa-Lobos returned from Paris to Brazil, he retained his friendship with Segovia, writing several guitar works for him, including a commission for a guitar concerto in 1951.
Villa-Lobos finished the concerto that year in a three-movement form titled Fantasia concertante. This Fantasia version contained no cadenza, however, and it seems that Segovia was reluctant to premiere it without one (although there are alternate versions to this story). As such, in 1955, Villa-Lobos added a remarkable cadenza into the work and titled this new version Concerto for Guitar and Small Orchestra. In 1956 in Houston, Segovia performed the premier and Villa-Lobos conducted. The Concerto, hailed at its first performance as “beautiful, exquisite in its graces of theme, treatment and coloration, intensely lyric, rhythmically inventive, and in general a joy to the ear,” has become one of the foundations of the guitar concerto repertoire.
Despite the added cadenza and title change, no other alterations were made to the Concerto, allowing it to retain the loose rhapsodic feel of a Fantasia — an old musical form that emphasizes improvisation and creative expression. One of the many wonders of this unique concerto is its general quietude, in which lyricism and guitar ruminations are celebrated more than grand climaxes or exuberant gestures. In addition, its use of a reduced orchestra allows the voice of the guitar to truly gleam, and throughout, Villa-Lobos weaves the constant suggestion of folk music.
The first movement, Allegro preciso (fast without wavering of tempo), is perhaps the most overtly folk-influenced movement of the Concerto. It begins with the orchestra delivering a set of syncopated rhythms that will return many times in this movement, rippling with quiet energy and sounding like the deliberate stamped-out steps of a folkdance. The guitar quickly joins the orchestra with ebulliently ascending triplets, as if Villa-Lobos is revisiting those delightful years of his youth when he was improvising on his guitar with street musicians. The second section occurs at about three minutes, Poco meno (a little less in tempo), and a very lyrical theme is presented by the guitar over lazy strings, which Villa-Lobos described as celebrating “the melodic atmosphere of rather popular songs from the Northeast of Brazil.” After a return to the introductory dance-like syncopation, the movement races to its end in a delightfully inventive way — the orchestra suddenly stalls on a full chord. The listener has the feeling of being caught off-guard by a magical and unexpected sight, and the first movement simply stops.
The second movement, Andantino (a leisurely pace, not too slow), begins with the winds playing gossamer-like runs over calm strings and horn. The guitar soon enters with the lyrical charm of a love song, folk-like in nature, and providing gentle flourishes between the notes of the melody. This leads to the Andante (rather slow) in about one minute, which features some magical solos for both the winds and the guitar. A particularly beautiful passage begins about two and a half minutes later when the oboe sings slowly and soulfully over the accompaniment of undulating arpeggios in the guitar. The passage then winds itself up before settling down to a hushed and golden-hued end.
After a slight pause, the Cadenza — a dedicated section of a concerto that showcases the soloist’s virtuosity — follows. Villa-Lobos conceived of this as a short, separate movement, even assigning several tempo markings. At three and a half minutes, it is long for a cadenza and functions more like a keystone; this is a place for the guitar soloist to dazzle. The section also bridges the three other movements. The first two tempo markings, Quasi allegro (almost fast) and Andante (leisurely) coalesce themes from the first two movements, and the third tempo, again using the marking Quasi allegro, wanders into new thematic territory, featuring a magical and deceptively difficult series of triplets with harmonics (soaring high pitches played by lightly depressing and playing the guitar string). And the fourth section, Poco moderato (moderately paced), begins with new, jaunty, and syncopated rhythms that foretell the thematic material in the final movement. As the Poco moderato progresses, the music becomes terser until a final, grand chord stops the cadenza in preparation for the last movement.
The final movement, Allegro non troppo (fast but not too much), then dances away with the winds taking up the Cadenza’s syncopated rhythms, punctuated by strongly accented notes in the strings. Within a few measures, the guitar enters with breezy runs filled with joyful verve. In Villa-Lobos’s words, this movement is meant to metamorphosize these opening materials continuously in the pursuit of exploring the guitar’s virtuosic capabilities, with an underlying current of folk dance and song. Indeed, the guitar comes out of its shell. (Segovia himself mentioned the many difficult passages, although the writing never exploits sheer finger work over musical beauty.) A particularly bewitching example of this begins at about three minutes, when the guitar launches into a lyrical but driving passage, which seems to be preparing for pyrotechnical bravura but instead becomes a heart-catching duet with the first violin and then morphs yet again into a rhapsody between guitar and oboe. And like the first movement, this finale’s ending comes almost too abruptly. As both guitar and orchestra are busily rhapsodizing, the momentum suddenly grinds to a stop on a unison chord, only this time the guitar has one, brief, final punctuation to end this enduringly enchanting concerto.
Franz Schubert
(Born in Vienna, Austria, on January 31, 1797; died in Vienna on November 19, 1828)
Symphony No. 5 in B-flat major, D. 485
1. Allegro
2. Andante con moto
3. Menuetto – Allegro molto – Trio
4. Allegro vivace
Franz Schubert was only 19 years old in 1816 when he composed his Fifth Symphony. That he had already written four symphonies and almost 500 compositions spanning virtually every genre is extraordinary for such a young composer. From an early age, Schubert’s near-manic, lifelong need to constantly compose seemed to have come from an almost magical wellspring of creativity. Clearly, one of his early inspirations was Mozart, who had died only five years before Schubert’s birth. As he recorded in his diary shortly before he began composing this Fifth:
As from afar the magic notes of Mozart’s music still gently haunt me […] O Mozart, immortal Mozart, how many, oh how endlessly many such comforting perceptions of a brighter and better life hast thou brought to our souls!
Of these first five symphonies, the Fifth is considered Schubert’s best creation in that genre during this early period of his orchestral writing. The work displays both a mature artifice and a light and extroverted beauty that gleams with charm.
Although Schubert’s Fifth is indebted to Mozart’s influence, it foreshadows many of the distinctive hallmarks of Schubert’s works throughout his lifetime: It is filled with beautifully lyrical, singable themes as well as experiments with harmonic inventions. Both characteristics overflow in this work, and they are traits that Schubert used with increasing mastery in his oeuvre. In fact, as Schubert composed his Fifth during the month of September 1816, he was simultaneously working on 16 other compositions, 13 of which featured voice, including lieder (songs), a cantata, and a Magnificat. It is not surprising, then, that much of the symphony’s lyricism could have worked equally well for voice.
The first movement, Allegro (fast), evokes Mozart’s style. After a brief, four-bar introduction, the initial theme is presented by the first violins playing an ascending tune with a carefree skipping rhythm, which is answered immediately in the string bass line. This thematic gem is one of the most lighthearted, singable tunes of any Schubert work. One minute later, a second theme is introduced by the first violins, a wonderfully lyrical tune that could easily be an aria. Between and around these themes, the flute and oboes add a good-natured breeziness to the work. At about four minutes, the two themes begin to morph in sure Classical symphonic method, but Schubert also introduces some darker, dramatic harmonic regions that bring a sense of quietly stewing conflict. The effervescent two opening themes then return to end the movement in sheer joyfulness.
The second movement, Andante con moto (slowly but with motion), begins with the first violins singing an extremely expressive, slightly wistful tune, as though Schubert is telling a story of long ago, transporting us to a world of beauty. At about two and a half minutes, a very atypical key change (up one step) leads to a dreamy, floating duet between the violins and the winds, underpinned by pulsing lower strings. Throughout the rest of the movement, Schubert continues to stoke a restless but beautiful shifting between major and minor tonal regions. The overall bucolic feel of this Andante prevails throughout until the horn gently heralds the final bar.
The third movement, Menuetto – Allegro molto (very fast) – Trio, cast in a minor key, immediately grabs our attention with its fervency, even aggression. The overt dramaticism of its opening theme — an arpeggiated rise followed by an accentuated descent — can be traced back to a portion of Schubert’s unfinished opera Des Teufels Lustschloss (The Devil’s Pleasure Palace), which he had begun writing two years earlier, in 1814. Musicologists argue, too, that the theme recalls the dance movement (Menuetto) of Mozart’s Symphony No. 40 in G minor, which is likely intentional. Most distinctive is how this movement contrasts with the lightness and the serenity of the prior movements; Schubert will develop this type of mood shift with enormous success through the rest of his writing life. Continuing these contrasts, the Trio section that begins about two minutes later is completely charming and rustic and cast in a major key, with its second full section gorgeously lyrical. The opening dramatic music returns to finish the Menuetto with a certain urgency.
The final movement, Allegro vivace (fast and very spirited), returns to the glorious lightness of the opening movement with some vivacious flair. The themes are airy and cheerful throughout, although Schubert allows the harmonies to sneak into more shadowy realms, with fleeting, dark chordal moments in nearly every phrase. Rather than creating conflict via these contrasts, however, Schubert appears to be evolving his harmonic language into the Romantic Era, where dark and light harmonies combine to create thicker, more multidimensional musical expression. Even with its darker dustings, this movement flits very happily through, with especially rich moments for the woodwinds. The ending returns to the opening section, which closes this delightful symphony with an air of smiling merriment.
Born in Lucca, Italy, in 1743; died in Madrid, Spain, in 1805
String Quintet in C Major, Op. 30, No. 6 (G. 324) La Musica notturna delle strade di Madrid (Night Music of the Streets of Madrid)
Le campane de l’Ave Maria (The Ave Maria Bell)
Il tamburo dei Soldati (The Soldier’s Drum)
Minuetto dei Ciechi (The Minuet of the Blind Beggars)
Il Rosario — Largo assai, allegro, largo come prima — (The Rosary)
Passa Calle de Los Manolos — Allegro vivo — (The Passacaglia of
the Street Singers)
Il tamburo (The Drum)
Ritirata — Maestoso — (The Retreat of the Madrid Military Night Watch)
Luigi Boccherini was born in Italy and began his musical life as a cello prodigy. His debut concert occurred when he was 13 in his hometown of Lucca, and soon after, he and his father traveled to Vienna to show off Luigi’s talents. At the age of 22, he impressed audiences in Paris, including the Spanish ambassador to France who encouraged the young Boccherini to go to Madrid. Boccherini arrived in Madrid in 1768, and two years later he became “virtuoso of the chamber and composer of music” for the Royal Court of Infante Luis Antonio, the younger brother of King Charles III of Spain.
A few years later, political machinations led Charles to banish Luis to the small town of Arenas de San Pedro, Spain. Boccherini soon followed Luis, and on the condition of their staying in that small village, the king supported them with a generous patronage. It was here, from 1776 almost until his death in 1805, that Boccherini wrote his finest works. Usually, the only court musicians that Infante Luis had at his disposal in Arenas were members of a small string orchestra, so most of Boccherini’s compositions were for string ensembles. Aside from a few dozen fine symphonies and 12 cello concertos, Boccherini wrote more than 100 string quartets, trios, and sonatas; more than 100 general chamber works; and more than 100 string quintets for various combinations.
Boccherini’s idea of writing string quintets for two violins, one viola, and two cellos (rather than the more typical two violas) came to him in Arenas and was a natural invention for him as a virtuoso cellist. He composed a particularly excellent set of two-cello string quintets in 1780 (counted as G. 319–324), the sixth of which, Quintet in C Major, La musica notturna delle strade di Madrid, was a rare programmatic piece describing the many songs and sounds of a typical night in Madrid. The set made its way to Berlin before Boccherini’s death but wasn’t published until much later (first in 1822, and then in 1921 as the first “official” publication in Paris). Boccherini himself said that no one outside Madrid would understand the work because of the quintet’s hyperlocal representations. Nonetheless, the quintet’s fame blossomed throughout Spain, such that Boccherini reused the tune of its last movement (Ritirata) for three of his later works. The entire work is surprisingly inventive for its time, brimming with imagination and delightful tunes and containing interesting instructions from the composer. The movements are quite short (often under a minute, with no movement longer than three minutes), and they occasionally wander into the next movement without much break.
The first movement is one of the shortest and perhaps most ingenious. Titled Le campane de l’Ave Maria, it represents the ringing of a particular set of bells, the Ave Maria church bells, as the main church in Madrid calls the faithful for end-of-day prayers. Boccherini instructs the musicians to pluck their instruments with “all [strings] pizzicato imitating the sound of the bells when the Ave Maria is rung.” Three slow and somber chords — spread throughout the second violin, viola, and two cellos — “strike” three repeated chords in three sequences, with no tune, just representing the hollow, clanging sound of these meaningful bells. With dusk having arrived in Madrid, and the faithful so evocatively called and engaged in prayer, Boccherini moves to his next nocturnal evocation.
The second movement, Il tamburo dei Soldati (The Soldier’s Drum), is played by solo 1st violin. Boccherini instructs the violinist to “imitate a military drum” by forcefully playing a vigorous rhythm on a repeated low C. (Occasionally, the 1st violinist waits offstage until this movement, entering the stage for the first time playing this rhythm.) The effect is dramatic and conjuring — here, the local military barracks are preparing themselves for the night patrol of the city. This passage is brief and marches directly into the third movement.
Next is Minuetto dei Ciechi (The Minuet of the Blind Beggars), in which Boccherini recalls the locally famous groups of blind musicians performing in the streets for charity. Apparently, not all groups were composed of expert musicians, however, as Boccherini instructs the quintet to play con mala grazia (with clumsy grace). He also asks the two cellists to hike their instruments up on their knees and strum them like guitars “with their fingernails.” Over that strumming and some light harmony from the viola, the two violins play a catchy tune that is suitable for dancing but also a little awkward. In the second phrase, the tune is loud and “harsh.” Delightfully redolent of this unique kind of folk ensemble, the whole movement, even with its repeats, lasts less than a minute and a half.
The fourth movement, Il Rosario (The Rosary), brings us inside a church where the prayers of the Rosary are being intoned in harmony by two priests, played by the 1st violin and 1st cello. Bewitchingly, the cello plays high in its register — a third above the violin — creating a very rich sound. Boccherini asks that the two “singers” play “sweetly and gracefully,” without strict attention to tempo. For spiritual emphasis, an acolyte rings a small handbell, represented by the 2nd violin occasionally plucking two high pitches. The tune is contemplative, much like a prayer might be sung, until about one and a half minutes when the tempo speeds up and the entire quintet plays a brief and rousing refrain from the congregation. The officiants return to the prayer, now with the cello playing a reservedly rhapsodic accompaniment and being asked to “imitate a bassoon” — it was customary at the time in Spain for prayers to be sung accompanied by a bassoon or an instrument like it. The sequences alternate several times until the movement ends with the congregation’s final response.
Out of the church and back onto the streets at night for the fifth movement, Boccherini now conjures the Passa Calle de Los Manolos (The Passacaglia of the Street Singers). (The performance of this tune, incidentally, became more famous recently in Peter Weir’s 2003 film, Master and Commander, starring Russell Crowe.) Manolos were a typical group of singing and playing street buskers that became beloved and yet somewhat notorious in 18th and 19th century Madrid. The manolos strutted with confident grace but were keen on mischief — they distinguished themselves by singing vulgarly in the early evenings, cavorting a little, and attracting attention from passersby. They were generally not appreciated by polite society. Here, the tune Boccherini created is representative of the manolos’ fun-lovingness and swagger. The movement has come to be called a “passacaglia” (a serious Baroque musical structure), but this was at some point confused with its true origins, pasa calle (along the street), in reference to where the manolos would sing and dance seguidillas (a popular Spanish dance form). As the two violins are instructed to strum like guitars, the viola and 2nd cello pluck away at a peppy pace, setting the harmonic field for the 1st cello to sing a song to all who may, or may not, wish to hear. The song is tuneful and filled with little runs that speak bravura in curious phrase lengths, as though the soloist may be inebriated. Out of the blue, the 2nd violin bursts into a rhapsodic and virtuosic little cadenza — obnoxiously intruding — and then fades out. The whole song and dance are repeated, yet interrupted profoundly by the violinist, and the piece then runs straight into the sixth movement, shut down by the military drum.
In Il tamburo (The Drum), the 1st violinist again plays a vigorous rhythm, this time calling the military to signal citywide curfew and the conclusion of the night watch.
This final movement, Ritirata(The Retreat of the Madrid Military Night Watch), begins as the “drum” concludes. The tune is one of Boccherini’s most famous, though in fact it was composed around 1761 by King Charles’s chamber musician, Mauel Espinosa de los Monteros. Monteros’s Ritirata was used to call all soldiers back to their barracks, whether on duty or carousing on leave. Boccherini uses Monteros’s tuneful melody here, transforming it into a rather regal affair in 11 variations. In those variations, different members of the quintet play a perpetually repeated rhythm in imitation of a military drum – beginning with the 1st cello, and then to the 2nd cello, then the 2nd violin, and lastly the viola. Generally, Boccherini wanted this movement to start very quietly, as though the military band’s calling of all wayward soldiers had begun far down the avenue. Gradually, the volume would grow as if the band were approaching and then passes by to fade into the distance and into the night. Other versions exist, however, that do not specify this transit and sonic shift, giving the tune itself more gravitas. The final variation brings this wonderful piece to an end, leaving a delightful feeling of having just experienced an evening in 18th century Madrid.
Franz Schubert
Born in Vienna, Austria, in 1797; died in Vienna, Austria, in 1828
String Quintet in C Major, D. 956
Allegro ma non troppo
Adagio
Scherzo: Presto — Trio: Andante sostenuto
Allegretto
In the final two years of his life, between 1827 and his death in November 1828, the barely 31-year-old Schubert was a genius on fire with ideas and compositional accomplishments. In this short time, Schubert wrote, or began, more than 60 works spanning nearly every genre, including multiple masterpieces: the C Major Symphony, his last three Piano Sonatas, the song cycle Winterreise, several Masses, and his last instrumental masterpiece, String Quintet in C Major, composed for two violins, one viola, and two cellos. The latter was written in under two weeks, just two months before his death. As the British composer Benjamin Britten (1913–76) said, this astounding period in the great composer’s life may be “the richest and most productive 18 months in our [Western] music history.”
This exceptional quintet has captured many hearts and minds since its posthumous publication in 1853 and is now considered to be Schubert’s greatest chamber piece. With its joyfulness, exquisite lyricism, and intimate emotion, it is widely cherished as one of the most moving pieces in the entire chamber repertoire; words such as “sublime” and “bottomless pathos” have been used to describe it. Having written more than 15 string quartets and countless works for string ensembles, Schubert had previously only dabbled during his teenage years with an all-string quintet. And although the precedent of using two cellos in a string quintet had been set by Italian composer Luigi Boccherini around 1780 (also performed tonight), Schubert was likely unaware of it. Instead, for this late quintet, Schubert was probably inspired by his heroes, Mozart and Beethoven, who had created quintets that included two violas (instead of two cellos). But Schubert’s imagination for sonic density was now entering a magical phase, and this use of two cellos creates amazing fields of sound, dense and singingly rich, rippling with athleticism.
The first movement, Allegro ma non troppo (fast but not too much), opens with a long chord that grows and dims in luminosity and over the next several bars blossoms into a gentle, but slightly restless, short theme. As the movement gathers vitality, at about one minute, Schubert unleashes the exuberant power of the two cellos as they play in unison, octaves, or harmony. The crowning theme of the movement occurs about a minute later, played as a soaring and singing cello duet. This theme is without care, tenderly lyrical and affable, and is often regarded as one of Schubert’s most magnificent. Even with sure moments of dramatic passion, the movement abounds with cheerful freshness and imaginative instrumental combinations, until it winds calmly down to its final bars, first capped with an exclamatory chord, and then with a soft goodbye.
The second movement, Adagio (slowly), is a tempo rarely used by Schubert. This movement is more timeless than slow, as it quietly unfolds. The music is gentle, slyly rhapsodic, and beckoning. The long opening theme is played by the three inner voices of the quintet (the 2nd violin, viola, and 1st cello) which create a slowly winding hymnlike tune that luxuriously harmonizes around itself. Underneath this hymn plucks the 2nd cello, lazily, solidly, unhurriedly. Overtop, the 1st violin gives an equally unhurried, but pensively self-absorbed, commentary, quietly filling in the spaces between the long-held notes of the inner voices’ theme. After about two and a half minutes of this beautiful wandering, Schubert sneaks in a truly sublime chord of B minor — a tonal region that he seemed to save for moments (and works) of greatest pathos. Here, it appears like an apparition of incomparable sadness, and then it vanishes into the next beat. This air of timelessness is interrupted by a dramatic and virtuosic middle section, and then the opening music returns, featuring the 1st violin and 2nd cello in a delicately quiet, yet virtuosic, duet over that long flowing hymn. When their conversation finally calms, the movement settles into a serene, ethereal conclusion.
Schubert had a lifelong love of dance music (he wrote over 500 dances in his short career) and the third movement, Scherzo presto (very fast), is a frolicking dance, complete with country stomping double-stops in the two cellos and hunting-horn heralding in the violins. Every instrument has a demanding role in this manic dancing music, during which Schubert includes a cascade of remarkable key changes (at about one and a half minutes) and bold dissonances. This rowdiness, however, is soothed by an Andante sostenuto (rather slow and sustained) Trio section. Here, Schubert creates the quintet’s most vulnerable moments, lyrical and resigned, almost confessional. And then, the bliss-seeking music of the first section returns to round out the movement and prepare us for the mirthful last movement.
The final movement, Allegretto (somewhat fast), flirts again with dance music, beginning with a very Hungarian-style country dance. It is bucolic, filled with the friendliest of cheer, as it moves oh so nonchalantly through several keys in a matter of seconds. A Viennese-sounding tune is next, followed by other danceable themes, and Schubert cycles cheerfully through them in this Rondo (a structure that cycles and recycles through several musical sections). After a good deal of merriment and some particularly fine virtuosic playing from the 1st violin, at about eight and a half minutes, the movement changes out of dance mode and into a Piu allegro (more fast) trot. Soon after that, the tempo speeds up again to Piu presto (much more fast), which launches the music into an excited sprint to the end, bringing this masterpiece to a close in a blaze of joy.
Born in Bologna, Italy in 1879; died in Rome in 1936
Gli uccelli (“The Birds”), Suite for Small Orchestra, P. 154
1. Preludio
2. La colomba (“The Dove”)
3. La gallina (“The Hen”)
4. L’usignuolo (“The Nightingale”)
5. Il cucù (“The Cuckoo”)
By the late 19th century, composers throughout Europe were rediscovering older music. In Italy, for example, the older forms being adapted and celebrated ranged from the plainchant of the Roman Catholic Church and Gregorian chant of Medieval times to the exquisite music of Italy’s Baroque composers such as Scarlatti, Corelli, and Pergolesi, as well as many other lesser-known musicians. The great Italian composer Ottorino Respighi was one of those engaged in this rediscovery. And although he is typically remembered for his three gigantic Rome-centric orchestral tone poems (particularly The Pines of Rome), he was also very much in the avant-garde of composers who shared a keen interest in early music. Respighi used many “rediscovered” melodies from his “ancient” forebears and recast them into more modern instrumental and harmonic dressings. Starting with his 1902 Suite for Strings, he then achieved some certain popularity with his three instrumental suites collectively entitled Ancient Airs and Dances (composed in 1917, 1923, and 1932).
Perhaps Respighi’s most enjoyable foray into older music was his Gli uccelli (The Birds), composed in 1928, a gloriously fun instrumental suite celebrating and recasting several Baroque composers’ evocations of bird songs. (Respighi had already established himself as a great admirer of birdsong: He created one of the most groundbreaking and enchanting moments in modern symphonic history when he insisted that the first performance of his Pines of Rome in 1924 include a phonograph recording of an actual Italian nightingale. This was the first time recorded sound was used in a classical music concert.)
For his Gli uccelli, Respighi uses a small, Baroque-sized orchestra and begins with a Preludio (Prelude) based on a melody from a harpsichord suite by one of Italy’s most influential keyboard players of the middle Baroque period, Bernardo Pasquini (1637–1710). While we bask in this lovely melody of old, Respighi cleverly also uses this Preludio to introduce bits of the bird songs that he will feature in the following movements, delightfully evoking birds in all their quirky glory. After a brief and regal introduction, at just under a minute, the violins begin a series of quickly repeated pitches with the violin bows bouncing off the strings to evoke a sort of manic pecking. Embedded in the pecking, the violins and flute erupt in chirpy upward squeaks, followed by the sound of a cuckoo, then a birdlike chattering from the trumpets, and then a fluttering of wings in the clarinets and, at just after two minutes, a marvelous section of unbridled flight with rapid notes in the violins. The Preludio comes to a gallant close as it returns to the regal music of the opening melody.
The second movement, La colomba (“The Dove”), employs a tune that Respighi discovered in the works of the Parisian Baroque lutenist and composer, Jacques de Gallot (ca. 1625–ca. 1695). Gallot was one of his era’s greatest lute players and known for musical portraits of his human contemporaries as well as of animals, including an alluring composition entitled “Dove.” For his own “Dove,” Respighi uses the oboe to represent this most gentle of winged creatures, making Gallot’s original tune sing with gentleness and mournfulness. The harp strums and plucks gently with a nod to Gallot’s lute. To give his Dove even more character, Respighi has the violins play high, warbled pitches at what seems to be random moments, allowing for the bird’s tendency to flitter back and forth to shine through. Especially enjoyable is the way the melody tracks all around the orchestral instruments — through the basses, flutes, violins, and clarinets — while the flittering warbles grow and spread, as if the Dove is in conversation with the whole bird kingdom. At last, all flutter away into the sky to end the portrait.
In the third movement, La gallina (“The Hen”), Respighi quotes from the French musician, Jean-Phillippe Rameau (1683–1764). Rameau was one of the great composers and theorists of the Baroque era, perhaps most famous today for his 1722 monograph entitled Treatise on Harmony, a scientifically based music theory book on which all modern study in Western music theory is based. But Rameau was equally renowned as a composer, and Respighi turned to Rameau’s engagingly fun composition entitled La poule (“The Hen,” or “gallina” in Italian) from a 1727 harpsichord suite. The main theme here is a manic bird-pecking motive, borrowed from Rameau, that Respighi hinted at in his Preludio. (Rameau directed this motive to be played “like a hen pecking for bugs on the ground,” accompanied by surprised [accented] little chirpy clucks.) Respighi, however, ups the ante: He drops us into an entire field of fidgety, jerky, wildly beautiful feathered hens and creates a comically dramatic sense of seriousness to all their cavorting. Soon, this hen motive is heard nearly everywhere in the orchestra, even in the lower registers, suggesting that the roosters are marching into the pecking joy, too, creating an absolutely magical fantasy. The magic ends, appropriately, with a muted trumpet call evoking the beginnings of a rooster crowing.
The tune for the fourth movement, L’usignuolo (“The Nightingale”), comes from the very early Broque period in Holland when the great blind composer Jacob van Eyck (c. 1590–1657) wrote a piece for solo recorder that reimagined an old folksong entitled “Engels Nachtegaeltje” (“English Nightingale”). The nightingale’s song clearly bewitched Respighi — we’ve already noted that he used a phonograph recording of it in the premier performance of his Pines of Rome. Here, this movement opens with mystery and surreal beauty. Beginning with low, long-held notes in the horns and basses, the strings begin to slowly pulse and undulate, growing from their depths and building higher in range, depicting the deep and dark of the depth of night. Shortly, the flute plays van Eyck’s extremely popular and catchy Nachtegaeltje folk tune outright — a lyrical tune that wanders like an improvisation — accompanied by a good-natured countermelody in the bassoon. While the string undulations tumble gently onward, Respighi adds more winds to the tune, some of them beginning to warble and wiggle, like the growing chorus of birdsong before sunrise. The addition of the celeste (a metallic keyboard instrument) adds a delightfully magical sound to this chorus. Eventually, the tender and graceful song of this beautiful bird fades out, as do the strings, into silence of night.
The final movement of Gli uccelli returns to another tune, Il cucù
(“The Cuckoo”) by the Italian composer Pasquini whose Preludio inspired Respighi’s first movement. Here, Respighi borrows an exquisite 1698 Pasquini harpsichord composition called “Toccata con lo Scherzo del Cucco.” This Toccata was a piece of many faces — from the almost giddy recitation of the two-downward-note call of the cuckoo bird to flights of magisterial splendor and frolicking runs of notes — all combining to create a masterful piece of light-spirited entertainment. It’s no wonder Respighi was drawn to this work, and he upholds its multifaceted qualities, while also giving it a rather cinematic grandeur. As the music dashes about, with grandness to fleet flashes of fanciful rhapsodizing, the cuckoo’s call returns consistently, yet never predictably, sung out by every instrument in some fashion or another. It’s comical and wonderful. As this marvelous musical aviary ends, Respighi returns to Pasquini’s music of the Preludio to recount all the birds that flew through his suite, and to end, lastly, on a note of great and valiant cheer.
Ludwig van Beethoven
Born in Bonn in 1770; died in Vienna in 1827
Symphony No. 6 in F major, Op. 68, “Pastoral”
1. Awakening of Cheerful Feelings Upon Arrival in the Country —
(Allegro ma non troppo)
2. Scene by the Brook — (Andante molto mosso)
3. Merry Gathering of Country Folk — (Allegro)
4. Thunderstorm — (Allegro)
5. Shepherd’s Song.Happy and Thankful Feelings After the Storm — (Allegretto)
Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony, the Pastoral, is filled with charm and gratefulness, the light of the sun through summer leaves, and the grace and quietude of nature observed, as well as a little bit of stormy drama and a sprinkling of levity. When one regards Beethoven, with all his scowling portraits and allusions to monumental struggle in his Fifth Symphony, hearing his Sixth comes as a complete surprise.
As with his Fifth Symphony, the essence of the composition had been germinating in Beethoven’s mind for many years. His busy city life in Vienna was increasingly counterbalanced by long sojourns to its parks and out into the countryside, and especially in the lovely town of Heiligenstadt, where in the summer of 1808 he escaped to finish the Pastoral. As he wrote to a friend, “No one can love the country as much as I do. For surely woods, trees, and rocks produce the echo that man desires to hear.” The composer, now truly suffering from his increasing deafness and dissatisfaction with human nature, found some of his greatest joy in nature that he captured in the expression he knew best – music.
Beethoven himself chose the name Pastoral for his Sixth Symphony as well as each movement’s subtitle, and together they suggest a “program,” or narrative series of scenes shaping a perception of the work. As such, the Pastoral is regarded as one of the first successful “programmatic” symphonies in the Classical repertoire — a fundamental structure that would soon dominate symphonic writing in the Romantic era. But despite these programmatic allusions, Beethoven cautioned against pictorial precision. In the brief, and rare, program note that he provided for its premiere, Beethoven called the Pastoral “… more of a matter of feeling than of painting in sounds… no picture, but something in which the emotions are expressed that are aroused by the pleasures of the country.” His subtitles evoke, in a metaphysical way, the psychological essence of what being in nature meant to him, honoring nature’s “music” with his own. Even so, Beethoven provides a few obvious, and delightful, musical representations in this symphony. The result is Beethoven at his happiest and most tenderhearted.
In the first movement, “Awakening of Cheerful Feelings…”, Beethoven focuses on this gentle vein with quietness, repetition, and a relaxed (or, as the musicologist Donald Tovey called it, “lazy”) pace. The mood is exquisitely peaceful, and Beethoven seems to blissfully luxuriate in the simple repetition of themes: one little five-note descending motive is repeated 80 times. And the harmonic pace of the movement is also on holiday; for example, near the middle of the movement, the key (B flat) lollygags for some 50 measures before Beethoven moves to a new key (of D). All this contentment-in-your-bones nurtures us, calms us, and brings us into nature’s pacific realm. And this will be the spirit pervading the whole symphony.
The second movement, “Scene by the Brook,” contains some especially lovely naturalistic representations. The first one can be heard in the opening measures — a slow and sauntering triplet figure is played by the second violins, violas, and cellos representing a flowing brook. The brook gathers a little speed as Beethoven doubles the triplet’s rhythm. Most beautiful here is the melody in the first violins above the burbling of the lower strings — as if the sojourning Beethoven is simply basking in nature’s delights. It’s some of the sweetest music in the entire symphony. And just before the end, some delightful imitations of birdsong arrive in an unlikely little quartet. The birds themselves are identified by Beethoven in the conductor’s score: a nightingale, a quail, and a cuckoo are played by the flute, oboe, and two clarinets, respectively.
The third movement, “Merry Gathering of Country Folk,” is Beethoven at his most witty. His friend Anton Schindler remembered something Beethoven had observed:
Beethoven asked me if I had noticed how village musicians often played in their sleep, occasionally letting their instruments fall and keeping quite still, and then waking up with a start, getting in a few vigorous blows or strokes at a venture, although usually in the right key, before dropping to sleep again.
It’s likely that Beethoven is making musical jokes at the musicians’ expense in this movement. Although the “Gathering” begins in a relaxed way, quite soon the instruments start getting a little out of hand in volume — making “Merry” indeed. Shortly, at about one minute into the movement, this friskiness leads to some overzealous French horn heralding, and it’s a gloriously fun moment. Perhaps Beethoven was having the horns wake up the bassoonist, for as the next section immediately begins with a chirpy little tune in the oboe, the sleepy bassoon apparently can manage only two different pitches in accompaniment.
The fourth movement, “Thunderstorm,” is another of the famous musical representations in this symphony. It’s a marvelous moment, too, crafted as a kind of “Meanwhile, as the band is engaged in their frivolity, a storm is brewing on the horizon.” Without a break, the country musical scene cuts to pianissimo (very quiet) tremolos (quickly repeated bow strokes creating a shimmering effect) in the basses, evoking the electricity that’s quivering in the atmosphere. The storm builds up rather quickly. To capture it, Beethoven uses thunderous timpani, piercing piccolo chirps, and, as the storm passes directly overhead of the now shelter-seeking country folk, the trombones sound out with a colossally dissonant set of chords to create the storm’s blistering climax.
As the storm gradually subsides, Beethoven creates one of the loveliest moments in any of his symphonies. Out of the shivering tremolos arise the oboes; then, without any pause, the final movement, “Shepherd’s Song. Happy and Thankful Feelings after the Storm,” opens up musically through the winds, then horns, and then the strings, like the breaking of the clouds and the glow of the sun spilling through the storm clouds and across the earth. The symphony ends in this happy radiance with a beautiful hymn-like theme, and as the essayist Basil Lam astutely observed, it’s Beethoven’s thanks to “… the Creator …, not for ending the storm, but for the glory of Nature, of which the storm is a part.”
https://www.friendswv.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/1-FOM_2025-26-Season-Concert-Graphics_Beethoven.jpg13501080Jen Rolstonhttps://www.friendswv.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/FOM_logo_340x156-300x138.jpgJen Rolston2025-09-24 09:46:402025-11-13 11:58:56Beethoven: For the Birders – September 27 & 28, 2025
Guitar Mania – TRCO – March 28 & 29, 2026
Program NotesAntonio Vivaldi
(Born in Venice, Italy, on March 4, 1678;
died in Vienna, Austria, on July 28, 1741)
Guitar (Lute) Concerto in D major, RV 93
1. Allegro giusto
2. Largo
3. Allegro
The Italian composer Antonio Vivaldi wrote over 500 instrumental concertos, and his invention and imagination for the concerto genre have been celebrated from his lifetime until today. His concertos’ lyricism and overt emotionalism were immensely influential on late Baroque and early Classical composers. But in his day, Vivaldi was also extremely renowned around Europe for his operas (he wrote over 40 of them). In fact, he was beckoned to Prague to stage several operas in 1730 for the Czech royal family. While in Prague, the Bohemian (Czech) count Jan Josef Vrtba commissioned Vivaldi to compose a set of four lute concertos (RV 93) featuring solo lute, two violins, and basso continuo (typically a harpsichord), of which the Lute Concerto in D major, performed tonight, was the first in the set.
These lute concertos are the only concertos that Vivaldi wrote specifically for the lute. Actually, they were written for the archlute, an instrument that was larger than the typical lute but smaller than the theorbo. The reason Vivaldi wrote no other lute concertos is unknown, but one factor may have been the lute’s relative quietness as a solo concerto instrument. This would have been problematic in the bigger halls that were being built in the 1600s and 1700s to accommodate the increasingly popular demand for operas and larger orchestral pieces. In any case, it appears that Count Vrtba loved the archlute, and luckily for us, Vivaldi was keen to oblige his coincidental patron, creating a concerto that is alive with lyricism and infectious energy, and an absolutely gorgeous and soulful middle movement. The brisk, barely 10-minute-long Lute Concerto in D major has grown tremendously in popularity in more recent years, although this work is typically performed (as it is tonight) arranged for a guitar soloist and chamber orchestra, adding a few more strings than just the original two violins.
The opening movement, Allegro giusto (appropriately fast), begins with a vivacious ritornello (“little return”) — a Baroque musical section that returns several times in a movement. Its opening theme is joyfully declamatory and tuneful and is delightfully constructed of several seemingly off-kilter five-bar phrases. In contrast to the first phrase of this opening theme, the next phrase is hued in a minor tonality and is more subdued. These two contrasting phrases give the sense of a conversation of ideas. Some historians think the minor-keyed phrase might have been inspired by Bohemian folk music that Vivaldi heard on the streets of Prague, although there is no direct source of the tune. The solo guitar then takes the lead, playing several variants of the ritornello’s theme as it moves through the movement and shows off some wizardly virtuosity. The ritornello and the guitar-featured sections then alternate throughout this short movement in a lyrical vortex of energy.
The second movement, Largo (slowly, solemn), floats on sheer beauty. The guitar opens the movement by playing an unhurried, ruminative melody over long-held notes in the upper strings and a gentle, pulsing thrum in the bass instruments. This opening section lasts approximately one minute and then repeats. Stylistically, soloists typically embellish their part the second time through, crafting virtuosity to enhance the emotional potential of the music. (In most of Vivaldi’s concertos, the soloist’s part is merely bare bones on paper, demanding a good deal of improvisation.) After the repeat, a section painted with rich harmonies begins, and this also repeats with even more improvisatory embellishments, which will end this mesmerizing movement.
The third and final movement, Allegro, begins with the orchestra twirling with a spritely theme sparkling with perpetual triplets. The energy is infectiously fun and dance-like, and the entire movement lasts only about two minutes. After the orchestra opens with its triplet flurries, the solo guitar jumps to the fore with its own spinning whirlwinds of notes. The orchestra and soloist then trade phrases over a skipping bass line that propels everything along, and this fleet and tune-filled concerto ends with exuberant cheerfulness.
Heitor Villa-Lobos
(Born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on March 5, 1887; died in Rio de Janeiro on November 17, 1959)
Concerto for Guitar and Small Orchestra
1. Allegro preciso – Poco meno
2. Andantino e Andante
3. Cadenza: Quasi allegro – Andante – Quasi allegro – Poco moderato
4. Allegro non troppo
Heitor Villa-Lobos is inarguably Brazil’s most important Classical music composer of the 20th century. He is known for blending native Brazilian folk music into Classical idioms; most memorable are his set of nine Bachianas Brasileiras (1930–1945) — amalgamations of Brazilian folk music reimagined as if Bach had written them. Villa-Lobos was born just as his country overthrew its Portuguese ruling king and began to nationally celebrate its indigenous identity and — most important for this gifted composer — its folk arts and music. Villa-Lobos grew up playing guitar in that rediscovered musical environment, teaching himself to improvise grandly alongside the popular street musicians of his day, even (or so Villa-Lobos reported) trekking into the jungle to explore indigenous tribal music. At the same time, he was captivated by the European culture that flourished in his hometown of Rio de Janeiro. Already composing in earnest, in 1923 Villa-Lobos was persuaded to visit Paris to attract more European audiences. While there, he met the great Spanish guitar virtuoso Andrés Segovia (1893–1987). In 1930, when Villa-Lobos returned from Paris to Brazil, he retained his friendship with Segovia, writing several guitar works for him, including a commission for a guitar concerto in 1951.
Villa-Lobos finished the concerto that year in a three-movement form titled Fantasia concertante. This Fantasia version contained no cadenza, however, and it seems that Segovia was reluctant to premiere it without one (although there are alternate versions to this story). As such, in 1955, Villa-Lobos added a remarkable cadenza into the work and titled this new version Concerto for Guitar and Small Orchestra. In 1956 in Houston, Segovia performed the premier and Villa-Lobos conducted. The Concerto, hailed at its first performance as “beautiful, exquisite in its graces of theme, treatment and coloration, intensely lyric, rhythmically inventive, and in general a joy to the ear,” has become one of the foundations of the guitar concerto repertoire.
Despite the added cadenza and title change, no other alterations were made to the Concerto, allowing it to retain the loose rhapsodic feel of a Fantasia — an old musical form that emphasizes improvisation and creative expression. One of the many wonders of this unique concerto is its general quietude, in which lyricism and guitar ruminations are celebrated more than grand climaxes or exuberant gestures. In addition, its use of a reduced orchestra allows the voice of the guitar to truly gleam, and throughout, Villa-Lobos weaves the constant suggestion of folk music.
The first movement, Allegro preciso (fast without wavering of tempo), is perhaps the most overtly folk-influenced movement of the Concerto. It begins with the orchestra delivering a set of syncopated rhythms that will return many times in this movement, rippling with quiet energy and sounding like the deliberate stamped-out steps of a folkdance. The guitar quickly joins the orchestra with ebulliently ascending triplets, as if Villa-Lobos is revisiting those delightful years of his youth when he was improvising on his guitar with street musicians. The second section occurs at about three minutes, Poco meno (a little less in tempo), and a very lyrical theme is presented by the guitar over lazy strings, which Villa-Lobos described as celebrating “the melodic atmosphere of rather popular songs from the Northeast of Brazil.” After a return to the introductory dance-like syncopation, the movement races to its end in a delightfully inventive way — the orchestra suddenly stalls on a full chord. The listener has the feeling of being caught off-guard by a magical and unexpected sight, and the first movement simply stops.
The second movement, Andantino (a leisurely pace, not too slow), begins with the winds playing gossamer-like runs over calm strings and horn. The guitar soon enters with the lyrical charm of a love song, folk-like in nature, and providing gentle flourishes between the notes of the melody. This leads to the Andante (rather slow) in about one minute, which features some magical solos for both the winds and the guitar. A particularly beautiful passage begins about two and a half minutes later when the oboe sings slowly and soulfully over the accompaniment of undulating arpeggios in the guitar. The passage then winds itself up before settling down to a hushed and golden-hued end.
After a slight pause, the Cadenza — a dedicated section of a concerto that showcases the soloist’s virtuosity — follows. Villa-Lobos conceived of this as a short, separate movement, even assigning several tempo markings. At three and a half minutes, it is long for a cadenza and functions more like a keystone; this is a place for the guitar soloist to dazzle. The section also bridges the three other movements. The first two tempo markings, Quasi allegro (almost fast) and Andante (leisurely) coalesce themes from the first two movements, and the third tempo, again using the marking Quasi allegro, wanders into new thematic territory, featuring a magical and deceptively difficult series of triplets with harmonics (soaring high pitches played by lightly depressing and playing the guitar string). And the fourth section, Poco moderato (moderately paced), begins with new, jaunty, and syncopated rhythms that foretell the thematic material in the final movement. As the Poco moderato progresses, the music becomes terser until a final, grand chord stops the cadenza in preparation for the last movement.
The final movement, Allegro non troppo (fast but not too much), then dances away with the winds taking up the Cadenza’s syncopated rhythms, punctuated by strongly accented notes in the strings. Within a few measures, the guitar enters with breezy runs filled with joyful verve. In Villa-Lobos’s words, this movement is meant to metamorphosize these opening materials continuously in the pursuit of exploring the guitar’s virtuosic capabilities, with an underlying current of folk dance and song. Indeed, the guitar comes out of its shell. (Segovia himself mentioned the many difficult passages, although the writing never exploits sheer finger work over musical beauty.) A particularly bewitching example of this begins at about three minutes, when the guitar launches into a lyrical but driving passage, which seems to be preparing for pyrotechnical bravura but instead becomes a heart-catching duet with the first violin and then morphs yet again into a rhapsody between guitar and oboe. And like the first movement, this finale’s ending comes almost too abruptly. As both guitar and orchestra are busily rhapsodizing, the momentum suddenly grinds to a stop on a unison chord, only this time the guitar has one, brief, final punctuation to end this enduringly enchanting concerto.
Franz Schubert
(Born in Vienna, Austria, on January 31, 1797; died in Vienna on November 19, 1828)
Symphony No. 5 in B-flat major, D. 485
1. Allegro
2. Andante con moto
3. Menuetto – Allegro molto – Trio
4. Allegro vivace
Franz Schubert was only 19 years old in 1816 when he composed his Fifth Symphony. That he had already written four symphonies and almost 500 compositions spanning virtually every genre is extraordinary for such a young composer. From an early age, Schubert’s near-manic, lifelong need to constantly compose seemed to have come from an almost magical wellspring of creativity. Clearly, one of his early inspirations was Mozart, who had died only five years before Schubert’s birth. As he recorded in his diary shortly before he began composing this Fifth:
As from afar the magic notes of Mozart’s music still gently haunt me […] O Mozart, immortal Mozart, how many, oh how endlessly many such comforting perceptions of a brighter and better life hast thou brought to our souls!
Of these first five symphonies, the Fifth is considered Schubert’s best creation in that genre during this early period of his orchestral writing. The work displays both a mature artifice and a light and extroverted beauty that gleams with charm.
Although Schubert’s Fifth is indebted to Mozart’s influence, it foreshadows many of the distinctive hallmarks of Schubert’s works throughout his lifetime: It is filled with beautifully lyrical, singable themes as well as experiments with harmonic inventions. Both characteristics overflow in this work, and they are traits that Schubert used with increasing mastery in his oeuvre. In fact, as Schubert composed his Fifth during the month of September 1816, he was simultaneously working on 16 other compositions, 13 of which featured voice, including lieder (songs), a cantata, and a Magnificat. It is not surprising, then, that much of the symphony’s lyricism could have worked equally well for voice.
The first movement, Allegro (fast), evokes Mozart’s style. After a brief, four-bar introduction, the initial theme is presented by the first violins playing an ascending tune with a carefree skipping rhythm, which is answered immediately in the string bass line. This thematic gem is one of the most lighthearted, singable tunes of any Schubert work. One minute later, a second theme is introduced by the first violins, a wonderfully lyrical tune that could easily be an aria. Between and around these themes, the flute and oboes add a good-natured breeziness to the work. At about four minutes, the two themes begin to morph in sure Classical symphonic method, but Schubert also introduces some darker, dramatic harmonic regions that bring a sense of quietly stewing conflict. The effervescent two opening themes then return to end the movement in sheer joyfulness.
The second movement, Andante con moto (slowly but with motion), begins with the first violins singing an extremely expressive, slightly wistful tune, as though Schubert is telling a story of long ago, transporting us to a world of beauty. At about two and a half minutes, a very atypical key change (up one step) leads to a dreamy, floating duet between the violins and the winds, underpinned by pulsing lower strings. Throughout the rest of the movement, Schubert continues to stoke a restless but beautiful shifting between major and minor tonal regions. The overall bucolic feel of this Andante prevails throughout until the horn gently heralds the final bar.
The third movement, Menuetto – Allegro molto (very fast) – Trio, cast in a minor key, immediately grabs our attention with its fervency, even aggression. The overt dramaticism of its opening theme — an arpeggiated rise followed by an accentuated descent — can be traced back to a portion of Schubert’s unfinished opera Des Teufels Lustschloss (The Devil’s Pleasure Palace), which he had begun writing two years earlier, in 1814. Musicologists argue, too, that the theme recalls the dance movement (Menuetto) of Mozart’s Symphony No. 40 in G minor, which is likely intentional. Most distinctive is how this movement contrasts with the lightness and the serenity of the prior movements; Schubert will develop this type of mood shift with enormous success through the rest of his writing life. Continuing these contrasts, the Trio section that begins about two minutes later is completely charming and rustic and cast in a major key, with its second full section gorgeously lyrical. The opening dramatic music returns to finish the Menuetto with a certain urgency.
The final movement, Allegro vivace (fast and very spirited), returns to the glorious lightness of the opening movement with some vivacious flair. The themes are airy and cheerful throughout, although Schubert allows the harmonies to sneak into more shadowy realms, with fleeting, dark chordal moments in nearly every phrase. Rather than creating conflict via these contrasts, however, Schubert appears to be evolving his harmonic language into the Romantic Era, where dark and light harmonies combine to create thicker, more multidimensional musical expression. Even with its darker dustings, this movement flits very happily through, with especially rich moments for the woodwinds. The ending returns to the opening section, which closes this delightful symphony with an air of smiling merriment.
© Max Derrickson
Double Down: Two Cellos, Twenty Strings – November 15, 2025 – 7:30pm
Program NotesLuigi Boccherini
Born in Lucca, Italy, in 1743; died in Madrid, Spain, in 1805
String Quintet in C Major, Op. 30, No. 6 (G. 324)
La Musica notturna delle strade di Madrid (Night Music of the Streets of Madrid)
the Street Singers)
Luigi Boccherini was born in Italy and began his musical life as a cello prodigy. His debut concert occurred when he was 13 in his hometown of Lucca, and soon after, he and his father traveled to Vienna to show off Luigi’s talents. At the age of 22, he impressed audiences in Paris, including the Spanish ambassador to France who encouraged the young Boccherini to go to Madrid. Boccherini arrived in Madrid in 1768, and two years later he became “virtuoso of the chamber and composer of music” for the Royal Court of Infante Luis Antonio, the younger brother of King Charles III of Spain.
A few years later, political machinations led Charles to banish Luis to the small town of Arenas de San Pedro, Spain. Boccherini soon followed Luis, and on the condition of their staying in that small village, the king supported them with a generous patronage. It was here, from 1776 almost until his death in 1805, that Boccherini wrote his finest works. Usually, the only court musicians that Infante Luis had at his disposal in Arenas were members of a small string orchestra, so most of Boccherini’s compositions were for string ensembles. Aside from a few dozen fine symphonies and 12 cello concertos, Boccherini wrote more than 100 string quartets, trios, and sonatas; more than 100 general chamber works; and more than 100 string quintets for various combinations.
Boccherini’s idea of writing string quintets for two violins, one viola, and two cellos (rather than the more typical two violas) came to him in Arenas and was a natural invention for him as a virtuoso cellist. He composed a particularly excellent set of two-cello string quintets in 1780 (counted as G. 319–324), the sixth of which, Quintet in C Major, La musica notturna delle strade di Madrid, was a rare programmatic piece describing the many songs and sounds of a typical night in Madrid. The set made its way to Berlin before Boccherini’s death but wasn’t published until much later (first in 1822, and then in 1921 as the first “official” publication in Paris). Boccherini himself said that no one outside Madrid would understand the work because of the quintet’s hyperlocal representations. Nonetheless, the quintet’s fame blossomed throughout Spain, such that Boccherini reused the tune of its last movement (Ritirata) for three of his later works. The entire work is surprisingly inventive for its time, brimming with imagination and delightful tunes and containing interesting instructions from the composer. The movements are quite short (often under a minute, with no movement longer than three minutes), and they occasionally wander into the next movement without much break.
The first movement is one of the shortest and perhaps most ingenious. Titled Le campane de l’Ave Maria, it represents the ringing of a particular set of bells, the Ave Maria church bells, as the main church in Madrid calls the faithful for end-of-day prayers. Boccherini instructs the musicians to pluck their instruments with “all [strings] pizzicato imitating the sound of the bells when the Ave Maria is rung.” Three slow and somber chords — spread throughout the second violin, viola, and two cellos — “strike” three repeated chords in three sequences, with no tune, just representing the hollow, clanging sound of these meaningful bells. With dusk having arrived in Madrid, and the faithful so evocatively called and engaged in prayer, Boccherini moves to his next nocturnal evocation.
The second movement, Il tamburo dei Soldati (The Soldier’s Drum), is played by solo 1st violin. Boccherini instructs the violinist to “imitate a military drum” by forcefully playing a vigorous rhythm on a repeated low C. (Occasionally, the 1st violinist waits offstage until this movement, entering the stage for the first time playing this rhythm.) The effect is dramatic and conjuring — here, the local military barracks are preparing themselves for the night patrol of the city. This passage is brief and marches directly into the third movement.
Next is Minuetto dei Ciechi (The Minuet of the Blind Beggars), in which Boccherini recalls the locally famous groups of blind musicians performing in the streets for charity. Apparently, not all groups were composed of expert musicians, however, as Boccherini instructs the quintet to play con mala grazia (with clumsy grace). He also asks the two cellists to hike their instruments up on their knees and strum them like guitars “with their fingernails.” Over that strumming and some light harmony from the viola, the two violins play a catchy tune that is suitable for dancing but also a little awkward. In the second phrase, the tune is loud and “harsh.” Delightfully redolent of this unique kind of folk ensemble, the whole movement, even with its repeats, lasts less than a minute and a half.
The fourth movement, Il Rosario (The Rosary), brings us inside a church where the prayers of the Rosary are being intoned in harmony by two priests, played by the 1st violin and 1st cello. Bewitchingly, the cello plays high in its register — a third above the violin — creating a very rich sound. Boccherini asks that the two “singers” play “sweetly and gracefully,” without strict attention to tempo. For spiritual emphasis, an acolyte rings a small handbell, represented by the 2nd violin occasionally plucking two high pitches. The tune is contemplative, much like a prayer might be sung, until about one and a half minutes when the tempo speeds up and the entire quintet plays a brief and rousing refrain from the congregation. The officiants return to the prayer, now with the cello playing a reservedly rhapsodic accompaniment and being asked to “imitate a bassoon” — it was customary at the time in Spain for prayers to be sung accompanied by a bassoon or an instrument like it. The sequences alternate several times until the movement ends with the congregation’s final response.
Out of the church and back onto the streets at night for the fifth movement, Boccherini now conjures the Passa Calle de Los Manolos (The Passacaglia of the Street Singers). (The performance of this tune, incidentally, became more famous recently in Peter Weir’s 2003 film, Master and Commander, starring Russell Crowe.) Manolos were a typical group of singing and playing street buskers that became beloved and yet somewhat notorious in 18th and 19th century Madrid. The manolos strutted with confident grace but were keen on mischief — they distinguished themselves by singing vulgarly in the early evenings, cavorting a little, and attracting attention from passersby. They were generally not appreciated by polite society. Here, the tune Boccherini created is representative of the manolos’ fun-lovingness and swagger. The movement has come to be called a “passacaglia” (a serious Baroque musical structure), but this was at some point confused with its true origins, pasa calle (along the street), in reference to where the manolos would sing and dance seguidillas (a popular Spanish dance form). As the two violins are instructed to strum like guitars, the viola and 2nd cello pluck away at a peppy pace, setting the harmonic field for the 1st cello to sing a song to all who may, or may not, wish to hear. The song is tuneful and filled with little runs that speak bravura in curious phrase lengths, as though the soloist may be inebriated. Out of the blue, the 2nd violin bursts into a rhapsodic and virtuosic little cadenza — obnoxiously intruding — and then fades out. The whole song and dance are repeated, yet interrupted profoundly by the violinist, and the piece then runs straight into the sixth movement, shut down by the military drum.
In Il tamburo (The Drum), the 1st violinist again plays a vigorous rhythm, this time calling the military to signal citywide curfew and the conclusion of the night watch.
This final movement, Ritirata (The Retreat of the Madrid Military Night Watch), begins as the “drum” concludes. The tune is one of Boccherini’s most famous, though in fact it was composed around 1761 by King Charles’s chamber musician, Mauel Espinosa de los Monteros. Monteros’s Ritirata was used to call all soldiers back to their barracks, whether on duty or carousing on leave. Boccherini uses Monteros’s tuneful melody here, transforming it into a rather regal affair in 11 variations. In those variations, different members of the quintet play a perpetually repeated rhythm in imitation of a military drum – beginning with the 1st cello, and then to the 2nd cello, then the 2nd violin, and lastly the viola. Generally, Boccherini wanted this movement to start very quietly, as though the military band’s calling of all wayward soldiers had begun far down the avenue. Gradually, the volume would grow as if the band were approaching and then passes by to fade into the distance and into the night. Other versions exist, however, that do not specify this transit and sonic shift, giving the tune itself more gravitas. The final variation brings this wonderful piece to an end, leaving a delightful feeling of having just experienced an evening in 18th century Madrid.
Franz Schubert
Born in Vienna, Austria, in 1797; died in Vienna, Austria, in 1828
String Quintet in C Major, D. 956
In the final two years of his life, between 1827 and his death in November 1828, the barely 31-year-old Schubert was a genius on fire with ideas and compositional accomplishments. In this short time, Schubert wrote, or began, more than 60 works spanning nearly every genre, including multiple masterpieces: the C Major Symphony, his last three Piano Sonatas, the song cycle Winterreise, several Masses, and his last instrumental masterpiece, String Quintet in C Major, composed for two violins, one viola, and two cellos. The latter was written in under two weeks, just two months before his death. As the British composer Benjamin Britten (1913–76) said, this astounding period in the great composer’s life may be “the richest and most productive 18 months in our [Western] music history.”
This exceptional quintet has captured many hearts and minds since its posthumous publication in 1853 and is now considered to be Schubert’s greatest chamber piece. With its joyfulness, exquisite lyricism, and intimate emotion, it is widely cherished as one of the most moving pieces in the entire chamber repertoire; words such as “sublime” and “bottomless pathos” have been used to describe it. Having written more than 15 string quartets and countless works for string ensembles, Schubert had previously only dabbled during his teenage years with an all-string quintet. And although the precedent of using two cellos in a string quintet had been set by Italian composer Luigi Boccherini around 1780 (also performed tonight), Schubert was likely unaware of it. Instead, for this late quintet, Schubert was probably inspired by his heroes, Mozart and Beethoven, who had created quintets that included two violas (instead of two cellos). But Schubert’s imagination for sonic density was now entering a magical phase, and this use of two cellos creates amazing fields of sound, dense and singingly rich, rippling with athleticism.
The first movement, Allegro ma non troppo (fast but not too much), opens with a long chord that grows and dims in luminosity and over the next several bars blossoms into a gentle, but slightly restless, short theme. As the movement gathers vitality, at about one minute, Schubert unleashes the exuberant power of the two cellos as they play in unison, octaves, or harmony. The crowning theme of the movement occurs about a minute later, played as a soaring and singing cello duet. This theme is without care, tenderly lyrical and affable, and is often regarded as one of Schubert’s most magnificent. Even with sure moments of dramatic passion, the movement abounds with cheerful freshness and imaginative instrumental combinations, until it winds calmly down to its final bars, first capped with an exclamatory chord, and then with a soft goodbye.
The second movement, Adagio (slowly), is a tempo rarely used by Schubert. This movement is more timeless than slow, as it quietly unfolds. The music is gentle, slyly rhapsodic, and beckoning. The long opening theme is played by the three inner voices of the quintet (the 2nd violin, viola, and 1st cello) which create a slowly winding hymnlike tune that luxuriously harmonizes around itself. Underneath this hymn plucks the 2nd cello, lazily, solidly, unhurriedly. Overtop, the 1st violin gives an equally unhurried, but pensively self-absorbed, commentary, quietly filling in the spaces between the long-held notes of the inner voices’ theme. After about two and a half minutes of this beautiful wandering, Schubert sneaks in a truly sublime chord of B minor — a tonal region that he seemed to save for moments (and works) of greatest pathos. Here, it appears like an apparition of incomparable sadness, and then it vanishes into the next beat. This air of timelessness is interrupted by a dramatic and virtuosic middle section, and then the opening music returns, featuring the 1st violin and 2nd cello in a delicately quiet, yet virtuosic, duet over that long flowing hymn. When their conversation finally calms, the movement settles into a serene, ethereal conclusion.
Schubert had a lifelong love of dance music (he wrote over 500 dances in his short career) and the third movement, Scherzo presto (very fast), is a frolicking dance, complete with country stomping double-stops in the two cellos and hunting-horn heralding in the violins. Every instrument has a demanding role in this manic dancing music, during which Schubert includes a cascade of remarkable key changes (at about one and a half minutes) and bold dissonances. This rowdiness, however, is soothed by an Andante sostenuto (rather slow and sustained) Trio section. Here, Schubert creates the quintet’s most vulnerable moments, lyrical and resigned, almost confessional. And then, the bliss-seeking music of the first section returns to round out the movement and prepare us for the mirthful last movement.
The final movement, Allegretto (somewhat fast), flirts again with dance music, beginning with a very Hungarian-style country dance. It is bucolic, filled with the friendliest of cheer, as it moves oh so nonchalantly through several keys in a matter of seconds. A Viennese-sounding tune is next, followed by other danceable themes, and Schubert cycles cheerfully through them in this Rondo (a structure that cycles and recycles through several musical sections). After a good deal of merriment and some particularly fine virtuosic playing from the 1st violin, at about eight and a half minutes, the movement changes out of dance mode and into a Piu allegro (more fast) trot. Soon after that, the tempo speeds up again to Piu presto (much more fast), which launches the music into an excited sprint to the end, bringing this masterpiece to a close in a blaze of joy.
© Max Derrickson
Beethoven: For the Birders – September 27 & 28, 2025
Program NotesBorn in Bologna, Italy in 1879; died in Rome in 1936
Gli uccelli (“The Birds”), Suite for Small Orchestra, P. 154
1. Preludio
2. La colomba (“The Dove”)
3. La gallina (“The Hen”)
4. L’usignuolo (“The Nightingale”)
5. Il cucù (“The Cuckoo”)
By the late 19th century, composers throughout Europe were rediscovering older music. In Italy, for example, the older forms being adapted and celebrated ranged from the plainchant of the Roman Catholic Church and Gregorian chant of Medieval times to the exquisite music of Italy’s Baroque composers such as Scarlatti, Corelli, and Pergolesi, as well as many other lesser-known musicians. The great Italian composer Ottorino Respighi was one of those engaged in this rediscovery. And although he is typically remembered for his three gigantic Rome-centric orchestral tone poems (particularly The Pines of Rome), he was also very much in the avant-garde of composers who shared a keen interest in early music. Respighi used many “rediscovered” melodies from his “ancient” forebears and recast them into more modern instrumental and harmonic dressings. Starting with his 1902 Suite for Strings, he then achieved some certain popularity with his three instrumental suites collectively entitled Ancient Airs and Dances (composed in 1917, 1923, and 1932).
Perhaps Respighi’s most enjoyable foray into older music was his
Gli uccelli (The Birds), composed in 1928, a gloriously fun instrumental suite celebrating and recasting several Baroque composers’ evocations of bird songs. (Respighi had already established himself as a great admirer of birdsong: He created one of the most groundbreaking and enchanting moments in modern symphonic history when he insisted that the first performance of his Pines of Rome in 1924 include a phonograph recording of an actual Italian nightingale. This was the first time recorded sound was used in a classical music concert.)
For his Gli uccelli, Respighi uses a small, Baroque-sized orchestra and begins with a Preludio (Prelude) based on a melody from a harpsichord suite by one of Italy’s most influential keyboard players of the middle Baroque period, Bernardo Pasquini (1637–1710). While we bask in this lovely melody of old, Respighi cleverly also uses this Preludio to introduce bits of the bird songs that he will feature in the following movements, delightfully evoking birds in all their quirky glory. After a brief and regal introduction, at just under a minute, the violins begin a series of quickly repeated pitches with the violin bows bouncing off the strings to evoke a sort of manic pecking. Embedded in the pecking, the violins and flute erupt in chirpy upward squeaks, followed by the sound of a cuckoo, then a birdlike chattering from the trumpets, and then a fluttering of wings in the clarinets and, at just after two minutes, a marvelous section of unbridled flight with rapid notes in the violins. The Preludio comes to a gallant close as it returns to the regal music of the opening melody.
The second movement, La colomba (“The Dove”), employs a tune that Respighi discovered in the works of the Parisian Baroque lutenist and composer, Jacques de Gallot (ca. 1625–ca. 1695). Gallot was one of his era’s greatest lute players and known for musical portraits of his human contemporaries as well as of animals, including an alluring composition entitled “Dove.” For his own “Dove,” Respighi uses the oboe to represent this most gentle of winged creatures, making Gallot’s original tune sing with gentleness and mournfulness. The harp strums and plucks gently with a nod to Gallot’s lute. To give his Dove even more character, Respighi has the violins play high, warbled pitches at what seems to be random moments, allowing for the bird’s tendency to flitter back and forth to shine through. Especially enjoyable is the way the melody tracks all around the orchestral instruments — through the basses, flutes, violins, and clarinets — while the flittering warbles grow and spread, as if the Dove is in conversation with the whole bird kingdom. At last, all flutter away into the sky to end the portrait.
In the third movement, La gallina (“The Hen”), Respighi quotes from the French musician, Jean-Phillippe Rameau (1683–1764). Rameau was one of the great composers and theorists of the Baroque era, perhaps most famous today for his 1722 monograph entitled Treatise on Harmony, a scientifically based music theory book on which all modern study in Western music theory is based. But Rameau was equally renowned as a composer, and Respighi turned to Rameau’s engagingly fun composition entitled La poule (“The Hen,” or “gallina” in Italian) from a 1727 harpsichord suite. The main theme here is a manic bird-pecking motive, borrowed from Rameau, that Respighi hinted at in his Preludio. (Rameau directed this motive to be played “like a hen pecking for bugs on the ground,” accompanied by surprised [accented] little chirpy clucks.) Respighi, however, ups the ante: He drops us into an entire field of fidgety, jerky, wildly beautiful feathered hens and creates a comically dramatic sense of seriousness to all their cavorting. Soon, this hen motive is heard nearly everywhere in the orchestra, even in the lower registers, suggesting that the roosters are marching into the pecking joy, too, creating an absolutely magical fantasy. The magic ends, appropriately, with a muted trumpet call evoking the beginnings of a rooster crowing.
The tune for the fourth movement, L’usignuolo (“The Nightingale”), comes from the very early Broque period in Holland when the great blind composer Jacob van Eyck (c. 1590–1657) wrote a piece for solo recorder that reimagined an old folksong entitled “Engels Nachtegaeltje” (“English Nightingale”). The nightingale’s song clearly bewitched Respighi — we’ve already noted that he used a phonograph recording of it in the premier performance of his Pines of Rome. Here, this movement opens with mystery and surreal beauty. Beginning with low, long-held notes in the horns and basses, the strings begin to slowly pulse and undulate, growing from their depths and building higher in range, depicting the deep and dark of the depth of night. Shortly, the flute plays van Eyck’s extremely popular and catchy Nachtegaeltje folk tune outright — a lyrical tune that wanders like an improvisation — accompanied by a good-natured countermelody in the bassoon. While the string undulations tumble gently onward, Respighi adds more winds to the tune, some of them beginning to warble and wiggle, like the growing chorus of birdsong before sunrise. The addition of the celeste (a metallic keyboard instrument) adds a delightfully magical sound to this chorus. Eventually, the tender and graceful song of this beautiful bird fades out, as do the strings, into silence of night.
The final movement of Gli uccelli returns to another tune, Il cucù
(“The Cuckoo”) by the Italian composer Pasquini whose Preludio inspired Respighi’s first movement. Here, Respighi borrows an exquisite 1698 Pasquini harpsichord composition called “Toccata con lo Scherzo del Cucco.” This Toccata was a piece of many faces — from the almost giddy recitation of the two-downward-note call of the cuckoo bird to flights of magisterial splendor and frolicking runs of notes — all combining to create a masterful piece of light-spirited entertainment. It’s no wonder Respighi was drawn to this work, and he upholds its multifaceted qualities, while also giving it a rather cinematic grandeur. As the music dashes about, with grandness to fleet flashes of fanciful rhapsodizing, the cuckoo’s call returns consistently, yet never predictably, sung out by every instrument in some fashion or another. It’s comical and wonderful. As this marvelous musical aviary ends, Respighi returns to Pasquini’s music of the Preludio to recount all the birds that flew through his suite, and to end, lastly, on a note of great and valiant cheer.
Ludwig van Beethoven
Born in Bonn in 1770; died in Vienna in 1827
Symphony No. 6 in F major, Op. 68, “Pastoral”
1. Awakening of Cheerful Feelings Upon Arrival in the Country —
(Allegro ma non troppo)
2. Scene by the Brook — (Andante molto mosso)
3. Merry Gathering of Country Folk — (Allegro)
4. Thunderstorm — (Allegro)
5. Shepherd’s Song. Happy and Thankful Feelings After the Storm — (Allegretto)
Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony, the Pastoral, is filled with charm and gratefulness, the light of the sun through summer leaves, and the grace and quietude of nature observed, as well as a little bit of stormy drama and a sprinkling of levity. When one regards Beethoven, with all his scowling portraits and allusions to monumental struggle in his Fifth Symphony, hearing his Sixth comes as a complete surprise.
As with his Fifth Symphony, the essence of the composition had been germinating in Beethoven’s mind for many years. His busy city life in Vienna was increasingly counterbalanced by long sojourns to its parks and out into the countryside, and especially in the lovely town of Heiligenstadt, where in the summer of 1808 he escaped to finish the Pastoral. As he wrote to a friend, “No one can love the country as much as I do. For surely woods, trees, and rocks produce the echo that man desires to hear.” The composer, now truly suffering from his increasing deafness and dissatisfaction with human nature, found some of his greatest joy in nature that he captured in the expression he knew best – music.
Beethoven himself chose the name Pastoral for his Sixth Symphony as well as each movement’s subtitle, and together they suggest a “program,” or narrative series of scenes shaping a perception of the work. As such, the Pastoral is regarded as one of the first successful “programmatic” symphonies in the Classical repertoire — a fundamental structure that would soon dominate symphonic writing in the Romantic era. But despite these programmatic allusions, Beethoven cautioned against pictorial precision. In the brief, and rare, program note that he provided for its premiere, Beethoven called the Pastoral “… more of a matter of feeling than of painting in sounds… no picture, but something in which the emotions are expressed that are aroused by the pleasures of the country.” His subtitles evoke, in a metaphysical way, the psychological essence of what being in nature meant to him, honoring nature’s “music” with his own. Even so, Beethoven provides a few obvious, and delightful, musical representations in this symphony. The result is Beethoven at his happiest and most tenderhearted.
In the first movement, “Awakening of Cheerful Feelings…”, Beethoven focuses on this gentle vein with quietness, repetition, and a relaxed (or, as the musicologist Donald Tovey called it, “lazy”) pace. The mood is exquisitely peaceful, and Beethoven seems to blissfully luxuriate in the simple repetition of themes: one little five-note descending motive is repeated 80 times. And the harmonic pace of the movement is also on holiday; for example, near the middle of the movement, the key (B flat) lollygags for some 50 measures before Beethoven moves to a new key (of D). All this contentment-in-your-bones nurtures us, calms us, and brings us into nature’s pacific realm. And this will be the spirit pervading the whole symphony.
The second movement, “Scene by the Brook,” contains some especially lovely naturalistic representations. The first one can be heard in the opening measures — a slow and sauntering triplet figure is played by the second violins, violas, and cellos representing a flowing brook. The brook gathers a little speed as Beethoven doubles the triplet’s rhythm. Most beautiful here is the melody in the first violins above the burbling of the lower strings — as if the sojourning Beethoven is simply basking in nature’s delights. It’s some of the sweetest music in the entire symphony. And just before the end, some delightful imitations of birdsong arrive in an unlikely little quartet. The birds themselves are identified by Beethoven in the conductor’s score: a nightingale, a quail, and a cuckoo are played by the flute, oboe, and two clarinets, respectively.
The third movement, “Merry Gathering of Country Folk,” is Beethoven at his most witty. His friend Anton Schindler remembered something Beethoven had observed:
Beethoven asked me if I had noticed how village musicians often played in their sleep, occasionally letting their instruments fall and keeping quite still, and then waking up with a start, getting in a few vigorous blows or strokes at a venture, although usually in the right key, before dropping to sleep again.
It’s likely that Beethoven is making musical jokes at the musicians’ expense in this movement. Although the “Gathering” begins in a relaxed way, quite soon the instruments start getting a little out of hand in volume — making “Merry” indeed. Shortly, at about one minute into the movement, this friskiness leads to some overzealous French horn heralding, and it’s a gloriously fun moment. Perhaps Beethoven was having the horns wake up the bassoonist, for as the next section immediately begins with a chirpy little tune in the oboe, the sleepy bassoon apparently can manage only two different pitches in accompaniment.
The fourth movement, “Thunderstorm,” is another of the famous musical representations in this symphony. It’s a marvelous moment, too, crafted as a kind of “Meanwhile, as the band is engaged in their frivolity, a storm is brewing on the horizon.” Without a break, the country musical scene cuts to pianissimo (very quiet) tremolos (quickly repeated bow strokes creating a shimmering effect) in the basses, evoking the electricity that’s quivering in the atmosphere. The storm builds up rather quickly. To capture it, Beethoven uses thunderous timpani, piercing piccolo chirps, and, as the storm passes directly overhead of the now shelter-seeking country folk, the trombones sound out with a colossally dissonant set of chords to create the storm’s blistering climax.
As the storm gradually subsides, Beethoven creates one of the loveliest moments in any of his symphonies. Out of the shivering tremolos arise the oboes; then, without any pause, the final movement, “Shepherd’s Song. Happy and Thankful Feelings after the Storm,” opens up musically through the winds, then horns, and then the strings, like the breaking of the clouds and the glow of the sun spilling through the storm clouds and across the earth. The symphony ends in this happy radiance with a beautiful hymn-like theme, and as the essayist Basil Lam astutely observed, it’s Beethoven’s thanks to “… the Creator …, not for ending the storm, but for the glory of Nature, of which the storm is a part.”
© Max Derrickson