Program Notes, 2010-2011 Season
Spring Concert:
The “Titan” and “Jupiter” Symphonies
April 30, 2011
PROGRAM NOTES
Program Notes by Geoffrey Decker
Symphony No. 41 in C major, K. 551 ("Jupiter")
by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)
Although finished more than three years before his death, the work known as Symphony No. 41 in C Major was actually the last one written of Austrian composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's more than 50 symphonies.
The composer's autograph score dates the completion as August 10, 1788, only 16 days after completing the 40th, and only a month and a half after completing the 39th! These three symphonies, along with the three immediately preceding them, are among the towering artistic masterworks of Western civilization.
Heard two years ago in a concert by the Kishwaukee Symphony Orchestra, Beethoven's 3rd Symphony, the "Eroica", is another one of these masterworks; and musicologists claim that one of the distinguishing traits of that work, which makes it so revolutionary, is its expansiveness and length. Well, if played with all of the repeats of sections as specified by Mozart, his 41st Symphony could end up lasting almost as long as Beethoven's 3rd, that is, upwards of 40 minutes!
Scored for a single flute, two oboes, two bassoons, two horns, two trumpets, tympani, and strings, Mozart's 41st has the typical classical symphonic architecture of four movements: the first fast, the second slow, the third a dance with an alternating section called a trio, and the fourth another fast movement. What really sets the work apart from Mozart's previous works, though, and which led to the German-speaking world's descriptive reference to it, the symphony has a huge and complex fugue in the final movement, or, translated from German, "The symphony with the fugue at the end." Some of you may ask, "What is a fugue?" Well, very simply put, it is when the same melody sounds at the same time with different instruments, or voices, but each of them starting at a different point in the music. As described similarly below for the third movement of the Mahler symphony, it is a bit like singing Row, Row, Row Your Boat when each voice enters at a different point and each continues until the melody is exhausted. Mozart's fugue, and fugues in general as really revolutionized and defined by German composer Johann Sebastian Bach, are extremely difficult to write and, when done successfully, can lead to a mind-boggling but beautiful combination of sounds and voices.
Originally written for a series of performances planned in a Viennese casino but thought to have been cancelled due to lack of interest(!), it is certainly sad to think that, as far as we know, Mozart never heard the work performed. Looking at the composer's own autograph scores, though, and knowing what we do about his genius, we can be sure that he heard the work ‒ in his own expansive but young mind.
Symphony No. 1 in D Major ("Titan")
by Gustav Mahler (1860-1911)
Composed between 1884 and 1888, Austrian composer Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 1 in D Major failed dramatically at its first performance in Budapest on November 20, 1889; but today the concert-going public cannot get enough of it. That first audience considered it too new, with many elements pushing the envelope of tradition, especially because of its size and orchestration . . . and certainly its volume! Even more surprising is that, in our Internet-encased short-attention-span world, a symphony that clocks in at around 50 minutes continues to sell out concert halls and sell myriad recordings by orchestras and conductors around the world.
Mahler originally conceived the work as a giant symphonic poem in two parts with five movements, several played without pauses between them. For the work's more successful Hamburg premier a few years later, Mahler added a program, or story, loosely based on Jean Paul's novel, Titan. Although Mahler eventually dropped the program and revised the work, removing one of the five movements, the subtitle “Titan” stuck.
Although scored for an orchestra of about 100 musicians, not all of the brass and woodwind instruments play until the final movement. In the original version, Mahler asked extra horns to reinforce the seven in the last 76 measures of the final movement. He later removed this request, adding parts for a fifth trumpet and fourth trombone instead. He also asks the seven horns to stand at the symphony's end in order to obtain the sound and projection he envisioned. Additionally, you will see that there are some very interesting things happening during the louder moments. For one, in the boisterous second movement, Mahler asks the horn players to raise their instrument parallel to the floor with bells in the air and stop the notes by stuffing their right hand deep into the bell. The sound effect is something between grotesque and sassy.
The version most often played now is a symphony in four movements. The first begins very quietly with violins in the stratosphere but, as more instruments enter, quickly becomes very pastoral with chirping birds and distant trumpet and horn calls. Very tuneful and memorable, and with the incorporation of one of Mahler's own songs named I Went Over the Meadow This Morning from a set named Songs of a Wayfarer, the movement grows louder and more exciting and ends with a flourish one usually associates with the end of an entire symphony. The second movement, in a quick three-beats-per-measure tempo, sends us into a jolly jaunty dance rhythm. Sandwiched between this beginning and ending music, is a tuneful and genteel version of the Austrian folk dance, the Ländler, a precursor to the waltz.
Certainly the strange use of the solo double bass to open the third movement with a minor-key, or darker, version of the popular song, FrèreJacques, upset those first audiences. Also played at the tempo, or speed, of a funeral dirge, other instruments join in the tune and we have a canon where one or more voices sing the same tune but beginning and ending at different points like we sometimes sing Row, Row, Row Your Boat. The offense to which Mahler subjected those early audiences is not over yet, however. He incorporates another of his Songs of a Wayfarer, the haunting and maniacal The Two Blue Eyes of My Beloved,and soon has us singing and dancing to a trumpet and oboe duet sounding like a klezmer band of Jewish tradition!
The final movement begins with a flash of lightning quickly after the third movement and immediately takes off into a gigantic display of frantic nervousness, eventually ending in splashes of sound and fanfares. This movement alone is longer and larger than the previous three combined! An extremely trying and tiring work for the orchestra, we again hear one of Mahler’s Songs of a Wayfarer and other material from earlier movements. As things grow in size and dynamics with a giant percussion section, louder and stronger brass, and the return of fanfares that ended the first movement, listeners and players alike know that this long and strange journey is soon over; and the triumph and sense of accomplishment feels very satisfying and certainly overwhelming.
