Program Notes (Friday, March 13, 2009 @ 8pm)
Ludwig van Beethoven Mass in C
Benjamin Britten Orchestral Suite from Death in Venice
Gerald Finzi Lo, the Full, Final Sacrifice
Notes by David Hoose
“Music, verily, is the mediator between intellectual and sensuous life... the one incorporeal entrance into the higher world of knowledge which comprehends mankind but which mankind cannot comprehend.” Britten would have subscribed enthusiastically to Beethoven’s words, even though he did come to criticize the sound of Beethoven’s music as crude and haphazard. But the intellectual and sensuous rarely have there been two composers who brought to their music so powerful an integration of mind and heart. With both composers, the heart sometimes leads, and sometimes, the head. But neither ever disappears.
Ludwig van Beethoven: Mass in C, op. 86
Composed for quartet of soloists, mixed chorus, and orchestra of pairs each of flutes, oboes, clarinets, bassoons, horns, and trumpets, timpani, and strings.
Although Beethoven’s Mass in C traditionally has lain in the shadow of his grander Missa Solemnis, it deserves to be brought into its own light. The relatively humble reputation of this mass setting, one seen as less overwhelming, apocalyptic, and universal than its younger and larger companion, may not lie so much in their relative strengths, but rather in the fact that Beethoven wrote only two masses, not five, or even the magic number, nine. Those nine symphonies actually keep any one, save the Ninth, from dominating the field, or any one, possibly save the First, from receding into obscurity. Which is your favorite Beethoven symphony? “The Seventh,” you may say. But the person next to you may retort, “No, the Eroica!” Anything’s possible. Whatever the comparisons, they are not predictable, at least merely on the merits of size and ambition. Today, I may love the second more than the seventh, even though the earlier one is much more modest in ambition and invention, and tomorrow I may love the sixth more than any of them.
Had Beethoven composed only two symphonies–say, the B-flat and the D minor one of them would inevitably become the “Little,” and the other, the “Great.” Then we would end comparing their strengths, choosing one, and probably letting the “Little” fade away. So, imagine that Beethoven had really composed nine masses, not just two, and that the entire panoply of character, scope and aspiration were fulfilled by the full collection. How freed from the shadow of the Missa Solemnis the C Major Mass could be! How easy it would be to see the depth, personality and power this mass has always had. Like the fourth and sixth symphonies, with which the C major Mass shares a spiritual kinship, this setting is precise in execution and dramatic in feeling, and it bursts with ebullient optimism. The bracing Gloria and Credo shout their praises—rather than shaking their fists—toward heaven. Throughout, the music responds seriously and inventively to the details of text, to the tensions between the needs of the mass structure and those of a highly evolved and precise musical sensibility, and to the theatrical possibilities of the chorus, solo quartet and orchestra.
The overarching spirit of the C major Mass is pastoral and personal. The Kyrie that effortlessly comforts as lullaby, the Benedictus (occasionally erupting in frustration) that embraces, and the Dona nobis, ushered in with irresistible graciousness, that sails to the gentle close as if suspended by Heaven itself, all remind us that Beethoven’s musical mind and heart, while often rough and chaotic (as Britten heard), could be calm, gentle and supremely humane. Into the C major Mass Beethoven poured his soul as unreservedly as, years later, he would with its larger companion.
Benjamin Britten:
Orchestral Suite from Death in Venice
(1973; Suite devised in 1985 by Steuart Bedford)
Written for orchestra very similar to that of the opera: 2 flutes (one doubling on piccolo), 2 oboes, 2 clarinets (one doubling on bass clarinet), 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, 2 trombones, 1 tuba, a large array of percussion (timpani, keyboard instruments–xylophone, marimba, xylophone, glockenspiel; and unpitched instruments–various cymbals, tamtam, gong, tomtoms and Chinese drums), harp, piano, and strings.
Note by Steuart Bedford
The operas of Benjamin Britten do not lend themselves easily to excerpts for concert use: Peter Grimes with its Sea Interludes and Gloriana with its Choral Dances are conspicuous by their success. When Sir Peter Pears suggested to me the possibility of arranging a Suite from Death in Venice, shortly after the premiére, it was the use of some of the substantial dance music that he had in mind. What actually emerged some ten years later was not a selection of individual numbers but a kind of operatic symphony, which flows logically and continuously through the action of the opera.
The plot of Death in Venice, based on Thomas Mann’s novella, is simplicity itself. An ageing writer, Gustav von Aschenbach, disturbed by the apparent drying-up of his literary inspiration, wanders disconsolately through the suburbs of Munich. Stepping into a churchyard he is accosted by a stranger whom Aschenbach takes to be a ‘traveller from beyond the Alps’. He exhorts Aschenbach to seek revivification by traveling to the South. Venice is the excellent choice and there he encounters an extraordinarily beautiful Polish boy, on holiday with his family, with whom he falls hopelessly in love against all the tenets of his upbringing and life-held principles. Venice is in the grip of an epidemic of cholera, hotly denied by the locals. When Aschenbach finally learns the truth, by which time all the holidaymakers are fleeing the city, he refuses to leave and as a result dies, a victim of the disease.
The only point that need concern us here in the filling out of this design is the treatment of the Polish family. They are not singers but dancers, communicating through mime (and music); they, together with a few friends that they have made on their holiday, constitute a small corps de ballet. The music of these dances and mimes makes a special feature of the percussion instruments; timpani plus five players in the opera, but reduced to four in the Suite (with negligible loss).
The Suite is continuous but falls into seven clear sections: Summons to Venice Overture to Venice—First Beach Scene—Tadzio—I love you—Pursuit—Second Beach Scene and Death.
The Summons is very brief, consisting of a motive on the timpani, associated with the Traveller, and a progression of six chords, which suggest in a peculiarly insinuating manner what he will meet there (‘the pretty little darling’).The Overture features three elements: gondola music, which recurs in the opera whenever Aschenbach travels by canal, brass fanfares and the bells of San Marco.
Gently this subsides into the first beach scene. Rolling arpeggio figures on the violins are interspersed with a rising sixth motive first heard on the trumpets, which is soon to be associated with calls of ‘Tadzio’. There follows the first of the dances (boys at play on the beach), which is briefly interrupted by the arrival of a strawberry seller. The first entry of the vibraphone...tells us that Aschenbach has sighted Tadzio—there is a moment of calm while we hear his music, then off-stage voices, here transferred to trumpets and oboes, are heard calling his name. A second dance led by the vibraphone starts up, in the course of which Tadzio’s elegant mother wafts onto the scene (a striking descending motive in the strings). A big climax is reached after which Tadzio, while introducing a few friends to his mother, notices Aschenbach observing him. Tadzio treats him to a devastating smile and Aschenbach suddenly realises the truth—‘I love you.’
It is this idea, a descending major third, pizzicato, that continually interrupts the impressive cantilenas that follow and leads to Aschenbach’s pursuit of the boy through the streets of Venice. This is a restless passacaglia that finds two moments of repose, first in a café and second in the cathedral of San Marco, before burning itself out and ending with a reprise of the ‘I love you’ music on a solo oboe shadowed by a flute.
Finally Aschenbach, now very ill, returns to the beach and watches the children at play for the last time. Gradually the game seems to take a more violent turn and with a tremendous effort Aschenbach attempts to intervene. Sinking back in his chair he dies with the name Tadzio on his lips while the boy commences a long slow walk far out to sea.
The shape of the suite was dictated by purely musical considerations and it was only later that it was realized that a natural dramatic flow had been achieved. Inevitably one or two modifications to the original had to be made, but these are minimal and almost exclusively of two kinds. First there are moments when a vocal line has been included in the orchestral texture.... Secondly there are two links not part of the original: the opening Summons which places two motives adjacent and a little extension linking the end of the overture to the First Beach Scene. This last contains the only two bars of music not actually composed by Britten.1
1. Steuart Bedford, Preface to the score of the Suite from Death in
Venice (Faber Music, 1985).