Robert Schumann: Fantasie,
Op. 17 I. Durchaus phantastisch und liedenschaftlich vorzutragen
Robert Schumann’s
Fantasy in C major, Op. 17, written in 1836, was
originally entitled Obolen auf
Beethovens Monument: Ruinen, Trophäen,
Palmen: grosse Sonate für
das Pianoforte für
Beethovens Denkmal, von Florestan und Eusebius,
Op. 12 (Small Contribution to Beethoven’s Monument:
Ruins, Trophies, Palms: Grand Sonata for the Pianoforte
for Beethoven’s Memorial, by Florestan and Eusebius).
This project of erecting a statue, with monetary help
from Franz Liszt, the dedicatee of this piece, came to
fruition in 1845. The work, in addition to being a
tribute to Beethoven’s life, was also a passionate
declaration of love to Schumann’s
fiancée,
Clara Wieck. He was forbidden to see Clara at this time
by her father, and the work fittingly uses a quote from
Beethoven’s An die ferne
Geliebte (To the Distant
Beloved), revealed at the end of this first movement.
Schumann wrote to Clara in March
1838: “The
first movement [of the Fantasie] is the most passionate
I have ever composed; it is a profound lament on your
account.” In the beginning of the piece is a quote by
Friedrich Schlegel:
Through all the sounds that sound In the colorful dream of earth A soft sound comes forth For the one who listens in secret.
Schumann had written to Clara, “Are
you not the secret tone that runs through the work? I
almost think you are.” Charles Rosen writes that the
“secret tone” is Schumann’s quotation from the last song
in Beethoven’s An die ferne Geliebte. For pianist
Murray Perahia, the secret tone is the note G, the
opening pitch of the work, which remains a central tone
throughout. However one may wish to interpret the idea
of the secret tone, Schumann’s quotation at the end of
the first movement is a hymnic culmination after the
movement’s impassioned turmoil.
John Corigliano: Fantasia on an Ostinato
For generations, the second movement
of Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony,
Allegretto,
has cast a spell on listeners: composers, filmmakers,
and people from all walks of life. It had such an
immediate appeal that after the symphony’s first
performance, the second movement was repeated as an
encore. National Public Radio host Robert Siegel once
remarked that Franz Schubert became haunted for the rest
of his life upon hearing it. Unsurprisingly, eleven
years after witnessing the premiere, Schubert quoted the
symphony in his Variations in A-flat major for Four
Hands. According to Musicologist Mosco Carner, the
movement also became a model for the second movement of
Schubert’s
C-major and Mendelssohn’s
A-major Symphonies. A few decades later, Beethoven’s
Allegretto
theme would inspire Robert Schumann
to write his uncompleted Études
in Variation Form on a Theme by Beethoven, WoO 31.
In 1985, the famous American composer
John Corigliano received a commissioned from the Van
Cliburn International Piano Competition to compose a
piece for the twelve semifinalists. Corigliano decided
on a “Fantasia
on an Ostinato,” based on none other than the
Allegretto
from Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony. An
ostinato is a persistent, repeated melodic or rhythmic
motif, and in this piece, Corigliano delves into the
genre of minimalism, creating a hypnotic meditation
based on the repeated motifs found in Beethoven’s
Allegretto.
When beginning to compose this piece,
Corigliano asked himself, “What
could I write that would test something the standard
repertoire would not?” From the work’s very conception,
Corigliano knew that he wanted to compose a piece that
would challenge the imagination, creativity, and
individuality of the performer, instead of writing a
technical showpiece, so typical of competitions. The
result was a hybrid of aleatoric and set instructions,
giving freedom to the performer to decide not only the
number of repetitions of certain patterns, but also how
the character would be developed. Corigliano found it
interesting that the performances at the 1985 Cliburn
Competition spanned from seven minutes to over twenty
minutes.
Corigliano writes,
“The first
half of my Fantasia on an Ostinato develops the
obsessive rhythm of the Beethoven and the simple
harmonies implicit in the first half of his melody. Its
second part launches those interlocking repetitions and
reworks the strange major-minor descending chords of the
latter part of the Beethoven into a chain of harmonies
over which the performer-repeated patterns grow
continually more ornate. This climaxes in a return of
the original rhythm and, finally, the reappearance of
the theme itself.” Pianist Hélène
Grimaud describes the final unveiling as giving
“you the
sense of something that was already there, sort of a
memory of the future.”
Born in New York in 1938, John
Corigliano is one of the distinguished composers of his
generation. He is known best for his important symphonic
works and has been a recipient of four Grammy Awards,
the Pulitzer Prize, and an Academy Award (an Oscar). One
of his most celebrated works is the Concerto for Violin
and Orchestra, written for the film The Red Violin,
premiered by Joshua Bell.
Franz Schubert: Impromptu in B-flat Major, D. 935, No. 3
In the latter
part of 1827, Franz Schubert faced both financial and
health problems, and he began reaching out to different
publishers in an effort to sell his music. In response,
his correspondents asked that he provide smaller works
that could be monetized. It was under these
circumstances that Schubert composed eight short works
that eventually became his two sets of Four Impromptus.
Unfortunately, only two impromptus of the first set were
published during his lifetime (by the Viennese publisher
Haslinger); the second set, D. 935, was published
posthumously by Anton Diabelli in 1838. Robert Schumann
had remarked that the latter set was a sonata in
disguise, but many scholars have argued otherwise,
despite the fact that the set does contain complementary
key relationships. In many ways, these gems show that
Schubert can be seen as the first herald of the Romantic
character piece.
Schubert’s
Impromptu in B-flat major is a theme and five
variations, based on a melody that he used in his
incidental music for Helmina
von Chézy’s
play Rosamunde, Princess of Cyprus and his own
String Quartet in A minor, D. 804. The charming theme is
here presented as a lied or song. The origin of
the Rosamunde
theme as
ballet music is brought forth in the second and fifth
variations, represented by the staccato bass note
followed by a syncopated quarter note. The middle
variation is the stormiest, in the parallel key of
B-flat minor. Next follows the most blissful of them
all, the serene fourth variation in G-flat major. The
concluding variation is a sparkling display of color and
delight.
Larry Weng writes, “The rhythmic motive of [this] work
is a dactylic rhythm that closely resembles the theme of
the second movement of Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony,
which is the quote that Corigliano uses in his Fantasia.
In fact, the dactylic rhythm can be heard throughout his
works, especially following the year of the Symphony’s
composition (think Death and the Maiden by Schubert). No
matter how much it was intentional, [Beethoven] cast a
long shadow on not only his contemporaries such as
Schubert, but the later Romantic composers such as
Schumann and Brahms.”
Johannes Brahms: Piano Sonata No. 3 in F minor, Op. 5
Allegro
maestoso Andante espressivo Scherzo: Allegro energico Intermezzo (Rückblick): Andante molto
Finale: Allegro moderato ma rubato
The year 1853 was a momentous one for
the twenty-year-old Johannes Brahms. Until then, he
lived a somewhat uneventful life, teaching untalented
students, playing accompanying gigs, and studying piano
and composition with his teacher, Eduard Marxsen. He did
not wish to be a virtuoso pianist, but he also had
doubts about making a livelihood only composing. It was
not until 1853 that Providence answered him and events
snowballed. In April, his violin partner, Eduard Reményi,
asked him to go on a performance tour with him. During
this tour, he visited more of Germany than he had ever
seen before and met one of Reményi’s
former classmates, twenty-two-year-old Joseph Joachim,
who was already a famous virtuoso violinist. Joachim was
so utterly impressed by Brahms’s music that he sent
introductory letters and created contacts on behalf of
the composer. Through Joachim, Brahms came into contact
with Franz Liszt, George V (king of Hanover), and
ultimately, Robert and Clara Schumann. On the fateful
day of September 30, 1853, the young Brahms rang the
doorbell of their house. Upon hearing Brahms play,
Robert and Clara Schumann were so taken by his talent
that they welcomed him with open arms and promised their
friendship to the young composer. Schumann wrote in the
Neue Zeitschrift für
Musik (New Journal for
Music): “It
seemed to me that there would and indeed must suddenly
appear one man who would be singled out to articulate
and give the ideal expression to the tendencies of our
time, one man who would show us his mastery, not through
a gradual process, but, like Athena, spring fully armed
from the head of Zeus. And he has come, a young man over
whose cradle Graces and Heroes stood guard. His name is
Johannes Brahms.”
The young composer had started his tour in April as an
unknown accompanist; by October, he had become the new
Messiah of German music.
It was during this extremely eventful
year that Brahms wrote his third and last sonata for the
piano, an epic five-movement mammoth. Brahms had learned
from Marxsen the hallowed traditions and craft of
Beethoven. This sonata demonstrates Brahms’s complete
mastery of Marxsen’s lessons on motivic development and
formal logic, balancing it with a Romantic ardor borne
of his youthful passion. All three piano sonatas are
extraordinarily orchestral—texturally, in scope, and in
concept. Robert Schumann aptly described them as
“veiled
symphonies.” As with all three piano sonatas, Op. 5
launches with a striving, heroic gesture that reaches
across the range of the piano. A somber chorale ensues,
under which a timpani-like motif is heard, borrowed from
the “fate
motif” from Beethoven’s Fifth
Symphony. The dichotomy of the lyrical and the dramatic
continues to unfold throughout the development. The next
movement, Andante espressivo,
is a song without words, based on the poem
“Junge Liebe”
(Young Love) by C. O. Sternau (pseudonym of Otto
Inkermann).
Twilight falls, the moonlight
shines, Two Hearts are united in love, And keep themselves in bliss enclosed.
It contains some of the most sublime
music ever written and makes audible the tender bliss
between the two young lovers. The central
Scherzo
movement is uninhibited Florestan writing, opening with
a quotation from the last movement of Mendelssohn’s
Piano Trio in C minor. The placid middle
Trio section contains the ominous fate motif heard in the
opening of the sonata. The unusual added movement, an
Intermezzo
titled Rückblick
(“Remembrance”),
is used to recall the music of the second movement.
However, no longer is the theme paradisiacal; rather, it
is in minor mode, embedded with an eerie, funereal
timpani that again sounds the fate motif. Musicologists
have surmised that the music may have been inspired by a
poem that Brahms entered into his notebook at that time,
also by the poet Sternau, with the words:
If ye knew how soon, How soon the trees are withered, And the wood is bare,
How soon comes the dreary day When the heart’s beat is dumb.
The
final movement unleashes a fiery rondo, which is
symphonic in its contrasting use of registration. The
first episode after the main theme contains a cryptogram
using the notes F-A-E to represent
“frei aber
einsam” (“free
but lonely”), a motto Brahms shared with his friend
Joachim. This virtuosic movement ends the F-minor work
in a triumphant and jubilant F major, not unlike the
trajectory of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony from darkness
to light.
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