Tarantella

During his lifetime, Saint-Saëns achieved a rare type of fame: renowned to the general musical public, and respected by his friends and colleagues. Gounod called him “the French Beethoven.” Liszt noted his outstanding talent as an organist. Making his public debut as a pianist at age ten, Saint-Saëns quickly moved beyond being simply a child prodigy to embrace his academic studies as well as educate himself thoroughly in the history of music. Thanks to his tireless work proselytizing to audiences and students about the virtues of Wagner, Schumann, Liszt, Mozart, Handel, and Bach, he educated and enlightened a whole generation of French men and women—including his most famous student, Gabriel Fauré.

His interest in a wide range of music is evident in the composition of his Tarantella. A type of Italian folk music, the tarantella is a dance shrouded in some confusing mysteries regarding its origins and thus has led to a duel definition of its purpose. It is alternately described as a flirtatious dance between a man and a woman, or a dance meant for victims of a venomous spider bite in which rapid and somewhat violent gestures keep the poison from settling and expel it from the body through the dancer’s sweat. Whilst it might seem at first glance to be an unusual choice to form the basis of a rather tame sounding work (considering the urgency of venom) for flute, clarinet (traditional instruments for a tarantella) and piano (versions for orchestra accompaniment in place of piano or for two pianos also exist), it is perfectly logical in light of simply being folk music. From this perspective, it is akin to writing an arrangement of a mazurka or a landler. Additionally, it was a popular folk dance to set in as art music; Liszt, Chopin, and Mendelssohn all also wrote versions of tarantellas.

The story goes that Rossini hosted the premiere of the work building in a bit of a practical joke on Saint-Saëns: “[The guests] were allowed to believe it was the work of their illustrious host. When it was over, Rossini received the customary extravagant praises, and only then pointed his mortified admirers to the real author, holding him firmly by the hand so he could not escape.”

(From the program notes by Kathryn J Allwine Bacasmot)

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Youthful Beethoven

When he was twenty-two years old, Beethoven moved to Vienna to study with Franz Joseph Haydn. Only a year later, he parted ways with the elder composer when Haydn returned to England. It wasn’t a good parting, either, as Haydn discovered Beethoven might have lied about his financial situation, and about when he composed some of the works he was going over with Haydn in his lessons. Finding himself in one of the most musical cities in Europe (and with a new teacher, Johann Georg Albrechtsburger, who was recommended by Haydn), Beethoven quickly rose to the occasion of embracing the opportunity to establish his reputation as both a performer and composer.

Living in Vienna, and providing the foundation for much of its musical activity, were many wealthy aristocratic families all striving to prove their cultural superiority (some of them going bankrupt in the process) by hosting elaborate private concerts—often retaining sizable ensembles simply for these purposes. Beethoven enraptured members of this society, finding many patrons among them, including Prince Karl Lichnowsky, Count Rasumovsky, and Count Waldstein, each of whom received thanks in the form of beautiful pieces of music dedicated in their honor.

In this musical environment chamber music flourished, and the string quartet was the pinnacle formation of the genre. Maynard Solomon postulates that Beethoven’s chamber works during this period show evidence of a young composer striving to completely master the language of the era—Classical. With this depth of knowledge he was then able to tweak, move, reshape, reorder (and eventually dismantle) its syntax to push its boundaries out to meet the Romantic.

Written in 1795, but not published until 1810 (when it would share an opus number with the piano sonata op. 81a, no. 26, “Das Lebewohl”), the sextet combines a string quartet with two horns, joining a number of other chamber works Beethoven wrote for wind instruments in various combinations. It’s likely the work was composed to be performed at one of the private musical evenings proliferating the nightlife of the Viennese elite.  A refined, elegant sensibility, shaded only briefly by agitation, permeates the opening Allegro con brio, whilst the sublime beauty of the Adagio floats effortlessly like cloud through the waning light of the gloaming sky. A jovial rondo built around and bouncing motive completes the work.

(From the program notes by Kathryn J Allwine Bacasmot)

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Arguably, no artist grows up…

“Arguably, no artist grows up: If he sheds the perceptions of childhood, he ceases being an artist.”

Pulitzer prize winning composer Ned Rorem was born in Indiana, raised in Chicago, educated at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia and The Juilliard School in New York. He eventually found his way into the rarefied environment of Parisian art music, studying with Arthur Honegger and, through Honegger, becoming acquainted with well-known members of Les Six—Cocteau and Poulenc.

Rorem wrote at length about his piece, Bright Music, commissioned in 1987 by the Bridgehampton Chamber Music Festival to be performed by flutist Marya Martin, violinists Ida and Ani Kavafian, cellist Fred Sherry, and pianist André-Michel Schub. Following is Rorem’s summary of the work’s character.

“Fandango, for example, which is actually a rondo, is built from a ritornello of four adjacent notes, E-D-G-F. The net effect is meant to evoke a rat in an ashcan, commencing with spasmodic flurries, starts and stops, then gusting into a raucous mazurka. Pierrot is a meditation on Picasso’s early blue-period paintings, although this was decided ex post facto. Dance-Song-Dance is a scherzo based on a major triad, followed by a long lament based on the same triad in slow motion that returns to the scherzo, and whirls to a close. Another Dream is a series of solos by flute and strings that weave themselves slowly around the piano’s 48-measure ostinato in 9/8. Finally, Chopin is the wisp of an echo of that composer’s B-flat minor Piano Sonata…Sylvia Goldstein came up with the present title—apt, since as I grow older my music grows more optimistic.”

(From the program notes by Kathryn J Allwine Bacasmot)

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