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Defying Gravity
$29 – $96
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Ludwig van Beethoven was born in Bonn on December 15 or 16, 1770 (the date of his baptism was December 17) and died in Vienna on March 26, 1827. One of the pivotal figures in the history of Western music, his nine symphonies, 5 piano concertos, Violin Concerto, and several overtures remain at the heart of the symphonic repertory. The Symphony no. 8 received its first performance under Beethoven’s direction on February 27, 1814 in the Grosse Redoutensaal of Vienna’s Imperial Residence. This historic venue still exists. Beethoven’s Symphony no. 8 is scored for 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, timpani, and strings.
Beethoven’s Eighth Symphony was completed in the latter part of 1812 and received its first performance under Beethoven’s own supervision on February 27, 1814 in Vienna. Despite its negative early reception Beethoven’s Eighth Symphony is one of the master’s more congenial creations, easily approachable by all. If Beethoven had ever intended to compose a “musical joke,” to borrow from Mozart’s comedic sextet, this symphony would fit the bill. Beethoven himself called it his “little symphony in F,” although this was to avoid confusion with the “Pastoral” Symphony (no. 6), also in F Major. Still, Beethoven was hurt by the rather negative criticism with which this symphony received, especially since he considered it superior to the mighty Seventh Symphony composed in the same year. An interesting feature of both the Seventh and Eighth Symphonies is their lack of a true slow movement (the Seventh has an Allegretto; i.e., a tempo slightly slower than Allegro; while the Eighth is marked Allegretto scherzando).
As in everything that he did, Beethoven took his humor seriously. One of the reasons why the Eighth Symphony disappointed the critics was that it seemed to be a throwback to an earlier style, even so far as to include a Minuet as it third movement instead of a Beethovenian Scherzo. By the time the Eighth Symphony had its first performance in 1814 (it was composed in 1812), nobody expected Beethoven to write such a seemingly inconsequential work. Ironically, this apparent return to the style of Haydn and Mozart was precisely what many of these same critics wanted. Only Beethoven seemed to realize that the Eighth Symphony is a work of “classical” proportions (i.e., length), it contains not the slightest hint of nostalgia for the eighteenth century. It comes, in fact, rather closer to a parody of the same. The Minuet, for example, with its heavy accents, misplaced rhythms, and heaviness, pokes good-humored fun at the Classical model. The finale, too, can only be described as a raucous, even obstreperous, musical joke with its rude interruptions of the unexpected C-sharp (completely out of context in F Major). Audiences should also take note of the humorous use of the kettledrums, tuned here in octaves, rather than the common tonic-dominant pitches (F and C).
Even Beethoven’s most popular rival for Viennese attention fails to escape his humor. The Allegretto scherzando may be viewed as a parody of the style of Gioacchino Rossini’s opera buffas that were all the rage throughout Vienna. Another interesting sidelight surrounds this charming movement. One of Beethoven’s acquaintances was Ludwig Maelzel, the inventor of the modern metronome. Beethoven’s Battle Symphony (Wellington’s Victory, or the Battle of Vittoria ) had been composed for a mechanical instrument, the panharmonicon, designed by Maelzel. The composer allegedly had composed a canon (WoO 162, “Ta ta ta . . . Lieber Maelzel”) for the inventor that contains the same mechanistic “ticking” and tune used in the Allegretto scherzando of the Eighth Symphony. In this way, the second movement could be heard as a musical double entendre. The only problem with this interpretation, however, is that research has shown that the canon was not by Beethoven, but was a forgery perpetrated by Beethoven’s secretary, Anton Schindler. I guess one could say that historical truth has enjoyed the last laugh!
Program Note by David B. Levy, © 2000/2023/2025
American composer, Charles T(omlinson) Griffes was born on September 17, 1884 in Elmira, NY, and died on April 8, 1920 in New York City. His earliest musical studies were piano lessons with his sister and Mary Selena Broughton, a professor at Elmira College. He continued his studies in piano and composition in Germany, but his interest in the cultures of Asia an the Celts, as well as the growing influence of French Impressionism, steered him away from German post-Romanticism. He returned to the United States in 1907, taking up the position of music teacher at the Hackey School for boys in Tarrytown, NY. His best-known compositions were composed towards the end of his life, and include a ballet, “The White Peacock” (1919), an orchestral work inspired by Coleridge’s poem, “The Pleasure Dome of Kubla Kahn” (1917), and his “Poem” for Flute and Orchestra (1918). The latter work was the result of a commission from flutist, Georges Barrère, who gave the piece its first performance on November 16, 1919 with the New York Symphony conducted by Walter Damrosch. Poem is scored for solo flute, 2 horns, percussion, harp, and strings.
Flutists everywhere are grateful that Griffes created this ten-minute-long masterpiece for their instrument and orchestra. Not only does it offer opportunities for beautiful lyricism combined with challenging virtuosity, the unspecific narrative quality implied by the work’s title, Poem, allows for a wide range of personal expression. Its earliest performance earned high praise from critics. Richard Aldrich, writing for the New York Times described “Poem” as a “composition of real charm and individuality.” Another critic writing for the New York Tribune wrote that “if Americans can but continue to produce such works, all talk of the unrequited native composer will be speedily set at rest. Mr. Griffes is a composer who will bear watching.” The critic for the New York Herald called it “among the best works produced by a native composer.”
The piece begins in a mood filled with a melancholic strain introduced in the strings, after which the solo flute expands on the idea, punctuated by splashes of color in the harp. The music becomes agitated before returning to its original character. The horns then set the stage for the next section, a faster-moving episode in the mode of a Celtic-inspired jig. Unexpectedly, the music shifts to a duple-metered dance whose spirit is underscored by the introduction of the percussion. The plaintive melancholy returns, bringing “Poem” to its poignant conclusion.
Program Note by David B. Levy, © 2025
American composer and conductor, Quinn Mason, was born in Shreveport, LA in 1996. He studied composition at Southern Methodist University Meadows School of the Arts with Dr. Lane Harder. He also studied at Richland College with Dr. Jordan Kuspa, Texas Christian University with Dr. Blaise Ferrandino and with the University of Texas at Dallas’s Dr. Winston Stone. His orchestral music has been commissioned and performed by over 220 professional, regional, community and youth orchestras in the US and Europe. Princesa de la Luna was composed in February 2017 and revised in December 2019. Its first performance was given by the River Oaks Chamber Orchestra under the direction of Brett Mitchell on April 24, 2021. It is scored for harp and strings.
Many musical compositions inspired by the moon have been composed over the millennia. One thinks immediately of Debussy’s Clair de lune or Dvorak’s “Song to the Moon” from his opera, Rusalka. Despite its nickname, “Moonlight,” the Sonata for Piano in C-Sharp Minor by Beethoven did not originate with the composer, despite the fact that popular the title persists in listeners’ imagination. Quinn Mason, on the other hand, had a specific lunar image in mind, as offered in the following program note about his Princesa de la Luna:
“‘Princesa de la Luna’ is a portrait of a fictional princess that lives in the sky
and is only visible at night during a full moon, in the form of an adagio for harp and strings. The music illustrates the delicate and graceful features of her personality, but near the middle of the piece, the vainness in the vanity that comes with such a character as indicated by some tension in the music.
The entire piece is texture focused and explores the full colors and ranges of the string instruments as well as special effects in the harp (such as harmonics and glissando) giving the music a sparkling and shimmering feeling throughout, much like watching the stars around the moon on a clear night.”
Mason’s music is an effective vehicle for expressing the his programmatic ideas, offering the audience a pleasant ten-minute reverie.
Program Note by David B. Levy/Quinn Mason, © 2025
Alexander Borodin was born in St. Petersburg on November 12, 1833 and died there on February 27, 1887. Although best known as a composer, his profession was that of a medical doctor and professor of chemistry and he distinguished himself in each of his careers. The Polovtsian Dances are derived from his most famous opera, Prince Igor (1890). The work is scored for chorus and large orchestra.
Alexander Borodin, one of the most important Russian composers of the second half of the nineteenth century, certainly led an unusual life. He was an internationally recognized scientist whose chaotic personal living habits resembled the stereotype of the mad scientist and absent-minded professor. Countless numbers of extended family (including pets) and friends populated the Borodin household constantly. A rather handsome fellow, he attracted several young women admirers, even after his marriage. One is left to wonder how Borodin ever found time for music.
Indeed, his enduring fame rests on a very small repertory of music—most notably his Symphony no. 2, his Second String Quartet, and excerpts from his opera, Prince Igor. Our recognition of his career as a chemist should not be passed over lightly. He studied and worked in Russia, Italy, and Germany, and his publications were widely published and read. His scientific credentials also included botany, zoology, anatomy, and crystallography. Music always formed an important part of his life, even though his profession lay elsewhere. Understandably, however, composition had to take a back seat to his “real” career. He was not the only Russian composer of his generation about whom this could be said. Modest Musorgsky, arguably the most important of the “Mighty Handful” (to which Borodin belonged, along with Musorgsky, Mili Balakirev, Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov, and César Cui), worked as a civil servant. Part-time composer that he was, Borodin never abandoned his interest in musical composition. His talents, which were abundantly evident even at an early age (his earliest composition, a polka for piano, was written when he was nine years old), gradually attracted attention. His first admirers were Balakirev and Cui, later to extend to Franz Liszt and Rimsky-Korsakov. Liszt’s advocacy in particular helped spread Borodin’s fame to Western Europe.
Audiences cherish Borodin’s music for its exotic, oriental lyricism, and brilliant orchestrations. All of this is on ample display in his Polovtsian Dances from Act II of Prince Igor. The opera itself is episodic in nature and offers the listener a vast panorama of picturesque scenes. The Polovtsian Dances, especially no. 17, have taken on a particular popularity in the concert hall, a notoriety that was only enhanced by their adaptation in the Broadway musical, Kismet (1953), in which one of its most lyrical tunes became known as “Stranger in Paradise.” Jazz musicians Paul Whiteman and Artie Shaw also made adaptations of Borodin’s music in the 1930s.
The translation of the choral part of Polovtsian Dance no. 17 translates as follows:
Fly away on wings of wind
To native lands, our native song,
To there, where we sang you freely,
Where we were so carefree with you.
There, under the hot sky,
With bliss the air is full,
There, to the murmur of the sea, mountains doze in the clouds.
There, the sun shines so brightly,
Bathing [our] native mountains in light.
In the meadows, roses bloom luxuriously,
And nightingales sing in the green forests;
And sweet grape grows.
There is more carefree for you, song…
And so fly away there!
Program Note by David B. Levy © 2012/2025