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• Douglas Harvey, cello

• March 12-13, 2010 8:00 PM
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• where: Michael & Susan Dell Hall directions
• conductor: Peter Bay

Paul Dukas
b. 1 October 1865 in Paris; d. 17 May 1935 in Paris.

L’apprenti sorcier (The Sorcerer’s Apprentice). Premiered 18 May 1897, age 31.

Paul Dukas was highly respected during his lifetime, and not only in France, as a composer, orchestrator, teacher, and critic. It seems likely that the sensibility that made him a respected critic also made him (perhaps pathologically) self-critical as a composer and resulted in the destruction of an unknown number of compositions. The composition on this program is by any measure his most successful and best known.

Dukas’s immediate source is the great German poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832), though the earliest known version of the story is a passage in “The Lie-Fancier,” a philosophical dialogue by the second-century rhetorician Lucian of Samosata. Goethe’s ballad, Der Zauberlehrling (basically the German equivalent of “the sorcerer’s apprentice”) was composed and first published in 1798.

In the United States Walt Disney’s use of Dukas’s composition in his third animated feature Fantasia (1940, following Snow White and Pinocchio) is as well known, if not better known, than the original composition. Disney and his animators tell the tale faithfully, but there are as many as a couple dozen little excisions of music in the main central section of the piece, so that, to a listener who knows the original music, the film feels like death by a thousand musical cuts.

Like every other successful piece of program music, this work is soundly constructed. All of the essential thematic material of the work is introduced in the slow opening section. Dukas is especially skillful in elaborating these motives into a varied and rich discourse; but it is his storytelling by means of the music that sets this piece apart. For this listener, his portrayal of the apprentice’s plunge into ever deeper levels of panic is without equal.

The introduction draws us in almost instantly to a world of mystery and magic. The apprentice, weary of constantly fetching water, uses a spell (pronounced by the muted brass) to bring a broom to life and directs it to haul water in from the well. The main section of the work starts as the broom begins to move on its own and almost comically sets to work. The apprentice feels pleased with himself until he wants to stop the broom and discovers that the spell as he recites it doesn’t work. The boy grabs an axe and splits the broom in two. He breathes easy for a moment, only to see the two pieces of the broom each come to life and resume the work. Only the boss’s return saves the apprentice and the workshop from a watery demise. In the slow concluding section, the apprentice might be suffering from self-inflicted guilt, or perhaps the sorcerer gives him an angry glare from which there is no place to hide. The flourish at the end, though, suggests that it is only a matter of time before the apprentice tries the trick again.

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
b. 25 April/7 May 1840 in Kamsko-Votkinsk, Vyatka province, Russia; d. 25 October/6 November 1893, St. Petersburg, Russia.

Romeo and Juliet, Fantasy-Overture. Final version completed 29 August/10 September 1880, premiered 19 April/1 May 1886 in Tbilisi, Georgia, age 45.
[Note: In each of the double dates above, the first date is from the Russian calendar, the second from the Western.]

Tchaikovsky’s original score of Romeo and Juliet was composed in October and November 1869, putting it between his first work on his First (1866, Op. 13) and Second (1872, Op. 17) Symphonies. It precedes by several years the composition of Swan Lake (1875-76, Op. 20) and the Piano Concerto no. 1 (1874-75, Op. 23). Biographer Alexander Poznansky credits Mili Balakirev with suggesting Shakespeare’s tragedy as a musical subject to Tchaikovsky.

The first version of Romeo was performed in Moscow conducted by Nikolai Rubenstein in March 1870; Poznansky’s comment is that it went “virtually unnoticed.” Balakirev, as was his habit, gave Tchaikovsky a critical evaluation, probably detailed, after which Tchaikovsky reworked the score during the summer of 1870. This second version was performed in St. Petersburg in February 1872; even César Cui, who could be a nasty critic and who Poznansky describes as a “staunch opponent of Tchaikovsky’s music,” termed Romeo “an extraordinarily gifted work.” It appears that there were performances of the piece at intervals, but in September 1880 Tchaikovsky gave Romeo another working over. During the same period he worked on the Serenade for Strings and the “1812” Overture (Opp. 48 and 49). The third and final version of Romeo and Juliet, however, wasn’t performed until five and a half years later.

Tchaikovsky’s description of Romeo and Juliet, “Fantasy-Overture,” is a puzzle. The music suggests clear associations with the most important elements of Shakespeare’s plot, but nothing that one can link to specific acts or scenes in the play; therefore it is a “fantasy” that follows only the general outlines of the drama. The structural center of the piece is a sonata form, with the first key area portraying the feuding between the Montagues and the Capulets, the second the passion of the young lovers. The chorale-like theme heard at the very opening of the work is generally associated with Friar Laurence, though I have found no statement from the composer to support this. The point for Tchaikovsky, it appears, was a constant intensification of the fighting and of the lovers’ passion, which finally reaches a breaking point before the funeral march that starts the coda; the love theme, transfigured, concludes the work, representing the resolution of the families to abandon hostilities.

Richard Strauss
b. 11 June 1864 in Munich; d. 8 September 1949 in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany.

Don Quixote, Opus 35. Completed 29 December 1897, premiered 8 March 1898 in Cologne, age 33.

Officially Don Quixote (subtitled by Strauss “fantastic variations on a theme of knightly character”) is an introduction, a theme, ten variations, and a finale. In truth, while Strauss marks the start of each variation in the score, he treats the form with utmost elasticity. Some variations are lengthy, a few are very short. One hesitates to call the musical subject of the work “a theme” because it is actually a collection of motives, phrases, and ideas with various associations with characters and, further, with instruments and keys. Don Quixote displays Strauss’s gift for writing inherently funny instrumental music, previously demonstrated to listeners in Till Eulenspiegel. Another trait that sets Don Quixote apart from almost all of his other compositions is the extent to which his instrumental lines represent humans in conversation.

The substantial introduction shows us the personality and the mind of Don Quixote. After the opening chivalrous phrases, the viola section, almost unaccompanied, plays a phrase that seems to lose its way, no doubt portraying Quixote’s wandering mind. This leads directly to a phrase introduced by the solo oboe, which is associated with the idealized lady Dulcinea. The texture in the introduction becomes continually more complex and more dissonant, reflecting Quixote’s deepening confusion. Suddenly the brass proclaim the phrase that the oboe introduced at the start, followed by a crunching dissonance (which will be heard again exactly once): something in the man’s mind snaps, and out of this bursts the person of the Knight of the Sad Countenance, portrayed by the solo cello in D minor. The music next introduces Sancho Panza, firmly in the key of F and represented by the principal viola with the piccolo (occasionally), also by the tenor tuba and bass clarinet.

Variation 1 (Part I chapter 8 of the novel by Miguel de Cervantes): Our heroes set out; the cello with the bass clarinet and viola can be heard conversing. Suddenly they encounter an array of windmills (their motion brilliantly portrayed by the woodwinds). Don Quixote on his steed gets a good running start and immediately destroys his lance in the nearest windmill. Variation 2 (I-18): One of the funniest variations, and especially controversial at the premiere for its “noise,” is the portrayal of the flock of sheep that our heroes encounter next. Again, Quixote takes off with a replacement lance in place, but it quickly becomes clear that the animals win. Variation 3: This is the longest of the variations, portraying one of the many conversations between the two lead characters that Cervantes records in the novel. Roughly the first half is dominated by Sancho Panza (in the key of F major), who, in the novel, is constantly applying proverbs that have no bearing on the subject at hand. Don Quixote loses patience and launches into a discourse on (we presume) Dulcinea. This is indicated by the music’s popping into F-sharp major for an extended stretch using shimmering, visionary tone colors.

In Variation 4 (I-52) the pair meets a group of penitents on the road—there was a bad drought at the time. The brass play a kind of chant, while the oboes and clarinets can be heard crossing themselves. Quixote runs into the group with his sword drawn and can be heard receiving a sharp blow. The penitents continue, while Sancho at the end seems to be laughing quietly. Variation 5: The Don writes his lady a passionate yet chivalrous letter; the solo cello is prominent throughout. Variation 6 (II-10): Quixote orders Sancho to bring Dulcinea to him for a conversation. At a loss, Sancho, just out of sight, meets three village ladies walking and tries to present them to Quixote as Dulcinea and her retinue. The ladies will have none of it, and when Quixote complains to Sancho of their rudeness Sancho says that they were “enchanted” so that their appearance and manner were unrecognizable.

Variation 7 (II-41) also drew criticism at early performances for adding a wind machine to the percussion section. A duke and duchess with whom Quixote and Sancho stay ask the knight to rescue a friend by riding a magic horse through the air; Quixote and Sancho are blindfolded and mount a wooden horse, and servants of the duke and duchess pump large billows at our friends to create the effect of flight. Variation 8 (II-29): A flowing sextuplet motion runs through this variation as the chivalrous pair ride in an enchanted boat to attack a castle—a pair of mill wheels. The millers, quite helpfully, push Quixote’s rowboat with their poles to keep it from being crushed under the millwheel, but the boat flips and our friends are dumped in the water. The amusing conclusion has the cello and viola playing pizzicato as the characters emerge, dripping, from the water. Variation 9 (I-8): Quixote meets a pair of magicians on the road—monks traveling on their mules. They are portrayed by a pair of bassoons; they are clearly discussing a complex theological question. Quixote charges them, and the music merges directly into Variation 10 (II-64). Quixote has a joust with the Knight of the White Moon, a neighbor from Quixote’s village in disguise. Quixote takes a bad fall, and the music takes on the sound of a funeral march as our knight is carried back home. The distinctly dissonant chord from the introduction appears again: Quixote’s madness falls away, and his right mind returns. Finale: The cello plays Quixote’s music with the chivalrous rhythms taken out, and we recognize in the music a flawed yet noble man. Death takes him as he lies peacefully in his bed.

©2010, David Mead

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