MASTERWORKS 4
Academic Festival Overture, Op. 80 JOHANNES BRAHMS BORN: May 7, 1833, in Hamburg, Germany DIED: April 3, 1897, in Vienna, Austria WORK COMPOSED: 1880 WORLD PREMIERE: January 4, 1881, in Breslau, Brahms conducting PERFORMANCE HISTORY: There have been seven previous DSSO Masterworks Series performances of this work: in 1934, 1947 (the first piece of the three-season tenure of Joseph Wagner, the Orchestra’s third Music Director), 1962, 1967, 1977 (Robert Walton Cole, guest conductor), 1987, and on September 27, 2003. INSTRUMENTATION: Two flutes and piccolo, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons and contrabassoon, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion (bass drum, cymbals, triangle) and strings. DURATION: 10 minutes. Although Johannes Brahms never attended college, at the age of 20 he was introduced to violinist-composer Joseph Joachim who invited Brahms to join him at Göttingen where he would be taking summer courses in philosophy and history at the local university. Brahms hung out with Joachim for two months that summer enjoying reading, debates, beer-drinking sessions and general student camaraderie. As I read this I realized that not much has changed in university life over the past 150-plus years. This reminded me of a band trip when I was stationed with the United States Air Force in Germany in the early 1980s. We went to Groningen in the north of the Netherlands to play at the University of Groningen (founded in 1614!) in the student union. That might sound like a normal performance, except that we didn’t start playing until about 10:00pm and we did three sets, ending around 1:00am! The place was packed with screaming students and beer was flowing generously. After we finished playing I thought that would be the end of the night. Foolish me - I quickly learned that the student union would stay open as long as there were at least two customers still buying drinks. I made it until 4:30 or so before I gave up the night (morning?). I was a little older than Brahms at that time, but I can certainly imagine his life over those two months! In 1879 Brahms was informed that he was to be given an honorary Doctorate of Philosophy by the Univer28 D U L U T H S U P E R I O R S Y M P H O N Y O R C H E S T R A
JOHANNES BRAHMS sity of Breslau (now Wrocław, Poland). This wasn’t the first such honor offered to Brahms; in 1876 Cambridge University offered him an honorary Doctorate of Music, which required his presence at the ceremony. Brahms was paralyzed at the thought of sea travel and then he learned that Londoners were planning lavish celebrations to honor him. Brahms also had a deep fear of public attention. It was too much for him and he chose to relinquish the honor and stayed home. He was flattered by the honor proposed by the University of Breslau and sent a postcard thanking the faculty. However, he couldn’t get away with it a second time; his friend Bernhard Scholz, Director of Music in Breslau, sent him a letter making it clear that the university was expecting gratitude in musical form. During the summer of 1880, while vacationing in Bad Ischl, Brahms composed his musical Danke schön, the Academic Festival Overture. Instead of a solemn work that might be expected on such an auspicious occasion, Brahms produced what he called “a very boisterous potpourri of student drinking songs a lá Suppé.” (Franz von Suppé (1819-1895) was one of the best known writers of light music of the period, particularly known for his operettas and comic operas.) The result was an enjoyable and delightful spoof on academia and its gravitas. Brahms employed his largest orchestral forces ever and the work sparkles with some of the finest virtues of his orchestral technique. Harkening back to his adventures in Göttingen, Brahms included some of the drinking songs he may have heard (and probably sang) during his evenings with Joachim and his fellow students. The first song is
