PROGRAM NOTES
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Hector BERLIOZ
(1803-1869)
Hungarian March from "The Damnation of Faust", opus 24
Hector Berlioz, the passionate, ardent, irrepressible genius of French Romanticism, left a rich and original oeuvre which exerted a profound influence on nineteenth century music. His father, a physician, assumed that his son would follow in the same profession. Therefore, his son’s musical inclination was largely ignored. As a result, the younger Berlioz never learned to play more than a few chords on the piano, and his practical abilities on flute and guitar were far short of virtuosic. Although he developed a profound affinity toward music and literature as a child, he was sent to Paris at age 17 to study medicine. However, he was so enchanted by the operas of Christoph Willibald Ritter von Gluck (1714–1787) that he decided to become a composer. With his father's reluctant consent, Berlioz entered the Paris Conservatoire in 1826 and won the Prix de Rome in 1830. Berlioz settled into a career path which he maintained for more than a decade, writing reviews, organizing concerts, and composing a series of visionary masterpieces. A difficult time followed as his marriage failed to bring him the happiness he desired. Concert tours to Brussels, many German cities, Vienna, Pest, Prague, and London occupied him through most of the 1840s. He was elected to the Institut de Francais in 1855, the stipend from which provided him with a modicum of financial security. Though frail and ailing, Berlioz conducted his works in Vienna and Cologne in 1866, traveling to St. Petersburg and Moscow in the winter of 1867-1868. Travelling to Nice to recuperate in the Mediterranean climate, he fell on rocks by the shore, possibly because of a stroke, and had to return to Paris, where he convalesced for several months. In August 1868, he felt able to travel briefly to Grenoble to judge a choral festival. After arriving back in Paris, was but a walking shadow of his former self as paralysis slowly overcame him and he died at home, at the age of 65.
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At the beginning of 1846, Berlioz was in Vienna. Following a farewell concert on January 11, Count Ráday suggested to Berlioz that, “if you want the Hungarians to like you, write a piece on one of their national tunes.” Berlioz did want the Hungarians to like him, so he chose a song composed in 1809 by János Bihari (1764–1827), written in honor of Ferenc Rákóczi, a Hungarian military leader and politician who was at the heart of Hungary’s quest for independence from Austria. It is not known if the tune by Bihari was based on a Hungarian folk melody of the time or if he composed it himself without use of pre-existing material. He sketched a march based upon the tune the evening before leaving Vienna and completed it upon his arrival in Pest. It was included in his first concert there, on February 15, along with the Roman Carnival Overture, the Symphonie Fantastique, and Harold in Italy. Wisely, Berlioz reserved it until the end of the program. It was so successful that it had to be repeated . . . and was met with even greater excitement on second hearing. During this central European tour, Berlioz had begun the composition of his choral-orchestral work La Damnation de Faust. With his arrangement of the Rákóczy March such a superbly accomplished fact, he did not hesitate to relocate the opening scene to the plains of Hungary so that he could utilize this popular work yet again. The stirring music inspired George Bernard Shaw to write that he would “charge out and capture Trafalgar Square single-handed” if the piece lasted but another minute.
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The “Hungarian March” received such a reception in Pest that the coda was completely drowned out by the throngs of cheering. This burning desire for independence would finally and violently manifest itself two years later in the Hungarian Revolution of 1848. An interesting aside to the discovery of the march is that the musician who had suggested Berlioz use something nationalistic later contacted the composer to request his name never be revealed for fear of retribution.
JOHANNES BRAHMS
(1833-1897)
Concerto for Violin & Cello in a minor, opus 102
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The son of a double bassist in the Hamburg Philharmonic Society, Brahms demonstrated great promise from the beginning. He began his musical career as a pianist, contributing to the family coffers as a teenager by playing in restaurants, taverns, and even brothels. By his early twenties, he enjoyed associations with prominent musicians. In every genre in which he composed, Brahms produced works that have become staples of the repertoire. The friend and mentor who was the most instrumental in advancing his career was Robert Schumann (1810-1856), who all but adopted him and became his most ardent partisan. Following Schumann's death, Brahms became the closest confidant and lifelong friend of the composer's widow, pianist and composer Clara Wieck Schumann. After a life of spectacular musical triumphs and failed loves (the composer was involved in several romantic entanglements but never wed), Brahms died of liver cancer on April 3, 1897.
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Brahms and the violinist and conductor Joseph Joachim had been inseparable since they first met in 1853. Joachim, at age twenty-two, was already a man of the world who had almost single-handedly established the Beethoven Violin Concerto in the repertoire when, at age twelve, he played it with Felix Mendelssohn conducting. Brahms quickly established himself as one of Europe’s foremost composers, a position he would never relinquish. His career had been set in motion by Joachim’s letter of introduction to Robert Schumann, who used not only his prestige as an artist but his position as editor of Europe’s most widely read music journal to announce that the young Brahms was someone whose work would change the world. The Brahms-Joachim friendship was personal and professional. Then, in 1883, it ended. Joachim was a jealous man and suspected that his wife, Amalie, was romantically involved with the publisher Fritz Simrock. The ever-chivalrous Brahms, convinced of Amalie’s faithfulness, supported her and wrote her a letter to that effect. Several years later, when Joachim sued Amalie for divorce, the letter was used at the trial as a character reference and helped the court decide in her favor. Joachim, until then unaware of the letter, was devastated and immediately severed relations with Brahms.
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When Robert Hausmann, the Joachim Quartet’s cellist, asked Brahms to write a cello concerto for him, the composer saw an opportunity to try to restore his friendship with Joachim. On July 19, 1887, Brahms mailed Joachim a postcard from Thun, Switzerland, reading “I should like to send you some news of an artistic nature which I heartily hope might more or less interest you.” Joachim replied immediately, “I hope that you are going to tell me about a new work, for I have read and played your latest works with real delight.” Encouraged, Brahms sent his news, “I have been unable to resist the ideas that have been occurring to me for a concerto for violin and cello, much as I have tried to talk myself out of it. Now, the only thing that really interests me about this is the question of what your attitude toward it may be. Would you consider trying the work over somewhere with Hausmann and me at the piano?” Joachim agreed to Brahms’ proposal and, although they would never again be as close as they were before the divorce proceedings, they quickly fell back into their roles as musical partners. Writing in her journal, Clara Schumann described the Double Concerto as “a work of reconciliation.” After the public premiere in Cologne on October 18, 1887, Brahms told a friend, "Now I know what it is that's been missing in my life for the past few years … it was the sound of Joachim's violin."
OF NOTE: Ever self-critical, Brahms wrote to Clara Schumann, confessing, “I ought to have handed on the idea to someone who knows the violin better than I do.” Likewise, even Brahms' long-time champion, the music critic Eduard Hanslick wrote, "I do not know of a less important work of our good friend."
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LUDIG VAN BEETHOVEN
(1770-1827)
Symphony No. 5 in c minor, opus 67
Born in the small German city of Bonn on or around December 16, 1770, Ludwig van Beethoven received his early training from his father and other local musicians. As a teenager, he was granted half of his father's salary as court musician from the Electorate of Cologne in order to care for his two younger brothers after his father gave in to alcoholism. Beethoven played viola in various orchestras, becoming friends with other players such as Anton Reicha, Nikolaus Simrock, and Franz Ries, and began taking on composition commissions. As a member of the court chapel orchestra, he was able to travel some and meet members of the nobility, one of whom, Count Ferdinand Waldstein, would become a great friend and patron. Beethoven moved to Vienna in 1792 to study with Franz Josef Haydn and, despite the prickliness of their relationship, Haydn's concise humor helped form Beethoven's style. His subsequent teachers in composition were Johann Georg Albrechtsberger and Antonio Salieri. In 1794, he began his career as a pianist and composer, taking advantage whenever he could of the patronage of others. In the fall of 1801, at the age of 30, Beethoven revealed his ever-increasing hearing loss and stated in a letter that he would "seize Fate by the throat; it shall not bend or crush me completely." Beginning in 1803, Beethoven was good to his word as he embarked on a sustained period of groundbreaking creativity. In later years, he was plagued by personal difficulties, including a series of failed romances and a nasty custody battle over his nephew, Karl. He died in Vienna on March 26, 1827.
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Beethoven worked on the Fifth Symphony for more than four years, completing it in 1808, and introducing it at Vienna's Theater an der Wien on December 22 of that year at what must have been one of the most extraordinary concerts in history. The marathon program included the Fifth and Sixth Symphonies, the Choral Fantasy, the Fourth Piano Concerto, parts of the Mass in C Major, and miscellaneous shorter works. To make matters worse, Vienna was in the grip of exceptionally cold weather and the hall was unheated. Additionally, the musicians were woefully under-prepared and the concert was, simply, a musical test of endurance for the audience with many leaving in droves as it wore on-and-on.
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The Fifth Symphony is a prime example of Beethoven's musical style with an "organicism" about it with the four movements growing from, and unified by, the distinctive rhythmic figuration of the opening measures. Such an original symphonic structure did not come easily, especially to a composer who lacked the ever-ready melodic genius of W.A. Mozart, J.S. Bach, or Franz Josef Haydn, who all produced copiously on demand. Beethoven was further hampered in his work on the Fifth Symphony by his acceptance of a series of commissions from Count Franz von Oppersdorff. The Count eventually paid 500 florins for the Fourth Symphony and agreed upon another symphony, allowing Beethoven to resume work on his Fifth Symphony, with a down payment of 200 florins. Beethoven notified the Count in March of 1808 that the Fifth Symphony was ready and that he should send the remaining 300 florins. However, the Count sent only another installment of 150 florins and, by November, Beethoven felt justified in selling the score to the publisher Gottfried Härtel. Upon finally receiving paying in full, Count Oppersdorff received a copy of the score from the composer.