PROGRAM NOTES
WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART
(1756 - 1791)
Overture to The Impresario, K. 486
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756 - 1791) was the last of seven children, of whom five did not survive early childhood. By the age of three he was playing the clavichord, and at four he began writing short compositions. The young Mozart gave his first public performance at the age of five at Salzburg University, and in January 1762, he performed on harpsichord for the Elector of Bavaria. At age 13, he entered the employment of the Archbishop of Salzburg as court organist and Konzertmeister of the orchestra. From 1763 - 1766, Mozart toured London, Paris, and other parts of Europe, giving many successful concerts and performing before royalty. The frequency of Mozart’s requests to tour angered the Archbishop so much that Mozart was finally dismissed, in 1781, with the now-famous kick in the backside from the Archbishop’s secretary. Mozart left Salzburg happily, hoping to find his fortune in Vienna. No longer a child prodigy, he was still in demand as a performer and was very active as a composer. Mozart's years in Vienna, from age twenty-five to his death at thirty-five, cover one of the greatest developments in a short span in the history of music. Of particular note is his remarkable development as an opera composer between 1781 and his death. He produced works in both German and Italian, including Die Entführung aus dem Serail (Abduction from the Seraglio), Le nozze di Figaro, Don Giovanni, Cosi fan tutte, and Die Zauberflöte. After Die Zauberflöte, Mozart turned to work on what was to be his last project: a Requiem. Ill and exhausted, he managed to finish the first two movements as well as sketches for several more before his death on December 5, 1791.
It is easy to forget that Mozart was not only a performer and composer but also a man with a family who was constantly concerned with earning a living. After he settled in Vienna in 1782, his music enjoyed a popularity that made him the third most published composer of his day (Pleyel and Haydn being first and second, respectively). This notoriety allowed him to earn phenomenal amounts of money. Mozart took advantage of his earning power by accepting commissions at a rate that taxed even his prodigious creative powers. His entire comic Singspiel opera, Der Schauspieldirektor (The Impresario) was composed between January 18 and February 3 of 1786, with the first performance occurring on February 7, 1786 at the Schönbrunn Palace in Vienna. Concurrently, he was writing three piano concertos for a Lenten concert series and was hard at work on The Marriage of Figaro.
Mozart was commissioned to compose Der Schauspieldirektor for a festival sponsored Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II and honoring the Governor General of the Netherlands. The competition was to pit a German singspiel against an Italian opera. The competing Italian entry was the opera buffa Prima la musica, poi le parole (First the Music, then the Words) by Antonio Salieri. He set Der Schauspieldirektor to a German libretto by Gottlieb Stephanie and there are only four vocal numbers in the score, and the musical content (about 30 minutes, including the overture) is surrounded by much spoken dialogue which was topical in its day. In modern times, the text is typically completely rewritten. The plot concerns the woes of an impresario who must put together a company of actors and singers while dealing with their whims, rivalries, and pretensions. In the end, the singers and actors determine that art can thrive only through the peaceable cooperation of all their strengths.
Although the opera itself is not one of Mozart’s most famous works in that genre, the Overture is frequently performed in the orchestral literature. It is a short and vivacious work in the key of C Major featuring two distinct thematic elements – a rhythmic first theme and a beautiful, lyrical second.
Ludwig van BEETHOVEN
(1770 – 1827)
Piano Concerto No. 3 in c minor, opus 37
Born in the German city of Bonn on or around December 16, 1770, Ludwig van Beethoven received his early musical training from his father, Johan. As a teenager, the Electorate of Cologne granted him half of his father's salary as court musician in order to care for his two younger brothers after their father succumbed 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 and meet members of the nobility, one of whom, Count Ferdinand Waldstein, would become a great friend and patron. Beethoven moved from Bonn 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. Around 1800, Beethoven began to notice his gradually encroaching deafness, and his growing despondency only intensified his antisocial tendencies. In later years, Beethoven was plagued by personal difficulties, including a series of failed romances and a nasty custody battle over his nephew, Karl. Beethoven died in Vienna on March 26, 1827.
Ideas for what would become the Piano Concerto in c minor began appearing in Beethoven’s sketchbooks as early as 1796, but he didn’t begin composing the work until the autumn of 1799 with the first movement essentially completed by April 2, 1800. Then, for reasons unknown, Beethoven set the project aside, returning to it only in 1802. That effort, too, was aborted and Beethoven did not return to working on it until a year later, in 1803, completing it in the same year. The score bears a dedication to Prince Louis Ferdinand of Prussia and the concerto was premiered at Vienna’s Theater an der Wien on April 5, 1803.
The concerto was introduced at a massive all-Beethoven benefit concert where Beethoven was the beneficiary. The program consisted of three premieres (the Piano Concerto No. 3, the Symphony No. 2, and the oratorio Christ on the Mount of Olives) and a reprise of the Symphony No. 1 from a previous benefit concert. According to Beethoven’s pupil Ferdinand Ries, the only rehearsal for the concert began at 8 a.m. and was disorganized and chaotic. The orchestra was comprised of second-rate musicians as the best players had been hired by a competing presenter for a performance of Haydn’s The Creation that same evening. Ries recalled that, “it was frightful … At half past two everyone was exhausted and dissatisfied. Prince Karl Lichnowsky [one of Beethoven’s patrons], who was at the rehearsal from its beginning, sent out for large baskets of buttered bread, cold meats, and wine. He invited all the musicians to help themselves, and a collegial atmosphere was restored.”
OF NOTE: Since he appeared as the soloist at the premiere, Beethoven did not need a fully-fledged copy of the piano solo from which to perform. Ignaz von Seifert, one of Beethoven’s pupils, turned pages for the composer during the concerto at its premiere and wrote the following account of the experience:
“I saw empty pages with here and there what looked like Egyptian hieroglyphs, unintelligible to me, scribbled to serve as clues for him. He played most of his part from memory, since, obviously, he had put so little on paper. So, whenever he reached the end of some invisible passage, he gave me a surreptitious nod and I turned the page. My anxiety not to miss such a nod amused him greatly and the recollection of it at our convivial dinner after the concert sent him into gales of laughter.”
Robert SCHUMANN
(1810 – 1856)
Symphony No. 3 in E-flat Major, opus 97 “Rhenish”
Robert Schumann (1810-1856) was encouraged by his bookseller father to pursue his musical and literary talents. He started studying piano at the age of 10 and enrolled at the University of Leipzig as a law student in 1828. He found music, philosophy, and Leipzig's taverns more interesting than the law and so began studies with the prominent Leipzig piano teacher Friedrich Wieck. A compulsive womanizer and heavy drinker, Schumann led a life that aggravated his ever-deepening psychological problems. His efforts to become a concert pianist failed after he developed partial paralysis of his right hand and so he settled on a career as a composer and music critic, co-founding the influential Neue Zeitschrift für Musik. Wieck's talented pianist daughter, Clara, grew up and fell in love with Schumann (to her father's horror). Despite Wieck's opposition, Clara and Robert gained the legal right to marry in 1840, a day before Clara's 21st birthday. Schumann composed feverishly during this period. Spellbound by a musical thought, he would work himself to exhaustion. In 1850, he was appointed principal conductor at Düsseldorf with the understanding that he would conduct both the standard repertoire of the time and his own new compositions. He was charmed by the city and the Rhineland, but was notably unsuccessful as a conductor, eventually being asked to give up the podium. He continued to compose with abandon, but only two years later began showing the first symptoms of schizophrenia. On February 27, 1854, he threw himself into the freezing waters of the Rhine. After his rescue, he voluntarily entered an asylum. Although he had periods of lucidity, his condition deteriorated, and he died there in 1856, unable even to speak intelligibly.
Throughout his life, Schumann explored a diversity of musical genres, including chamber, vocal, and symphonic music. He only began seriously composing for the symphonic genre in 1839 after receiving his wife’s encouragement. His Symphony No. 3 in E flat major, opus 97 “Rhenish” (1850) is so called because it was written during the composer's tenure in Düsseldorf which is nestled along the Rhine River. Schumann was inspired to write this symphony after a trip along the Rhineland with his wife. This journey was said to be a happy and peaceful trip which felt as if they were on a pilgrimage. As a result, he incorporated elements of his journey and portrayed other experiences from his life in the music. In a letter to the publisher N. Simrock in 1851, Schumann claimed that the history and spirit of that noble river and its people were running through his mind as he composed the work.
He completed the symphony, including the orchestration, in barely over a month, swept along on a surge of enthusiasm that produced his highest quality music in many years. Writing to his friend the conductor Josef von Wasielewski, he observed: “I cannot see that there is anything remarkable about composing a symphony in a month. Handel wrote a complete oratorio in that time. If one is capable of doing anything at all, one must be capable of doing it quickly—the quicker the better, in fact. The flow of one’s thoughts and ideas is more natural and more authentic than in lengthy deliberation.” Perhaps he knew how good the music he had written was. The “Rhenish” Symphony is an exuberant work, filled with rich melodies and a formal mastery that eluded Schumann too often in his later years.
The Symphony No. 3 was modeled, to an extent, after Beethoven’s Symphony No.6 “Pastorale”. Some of the more obvious modeling includes the atypical five movement format of both, the performance of the fourth and fifth movements without a pause in between, the inclusion of folk melodies (Schumann includes the Rheinweinlied), and movements inspired by extra-musical associations from the composer’s personal experiences. The "extra" movement (the fourth) was inspired by a procession Schumann and Clara had seen near the Cathedral in Cologne. The "Cathedral" movement originally bore the tempo marking "In the manner of an accompaniment to a solemn ceremony," which Schumann later changed to a simple Feierlich ("Solemnly"), preferring not to make the connection explicit in the score in any way.
OF NOTE: In 1841, Schumann completed his First Symphony and had it premiered in Leipzig with Felix Mendelssohn serving as conductor. He gained quick success as a symphonic composer following this orchestral debut. Also in 1841, he finished the work which was later to be published as his Fourth Symphony. In 1845, he composed his C Major Symphony, which was published in 1846 as No. 2, and, in 1850, his Third Symphony. Therefore, the published numbering of the symphonies is not chronological. The reason for this numbering was the poor reception that his (now) Fourth Symphony received at its Leipzig premiere in 1841. Schumann opted to withdraw the work. The revised version of the Fourth Symphony was published in 1851; one year after the “Rhenish” Symphony was published.