ESO Classics 4 Program Notes

PROGRAM NOTES Daniel Maki Siegfried Idyll Richard Wagner (1813-1883) On December 24, 1870, Cosima Wagner turned 33 years old. Because it apparently was her custom to defer to a Higher Power and celebrate her birthday on the 25th, on Christmas morning her husband presented her with an extraordinary birthday/Christmas present. Frau Wagner described the event in her diary: “As I awoke, my ear caught a sound, which swelled fuller and fuller; no longer could I imagine myself to be dreaming; music was sounding and such music! When it died away Richard came into my room with the children and offered me the score of the symphonic birthday poem. I was in tears but so was all the rest of the household.

Richard had arranged his orchestra on the staircase, and thus was our Triebschen [the Wagners’ new villa on Lake Lucerne] consecrated forever.” It should be said that the serenely beautiful new work was also a belated wedding gift as well as a celebration of the couple’s infant son Siegfried.

Not to disillusion anyone about this charming scene of domestic bliss, but the Wagners were not exactly Ozzie and Harriet Nelson. Cosima was of exotic parentage, being the second illegitimate child of Franz Liszt and his mistress, the Countess Marie d’Agoult. As is well known, Richard was never one to be unduly burdened by such quaint bourgeois notions as marital fidelity and had begun an affair with Cosima some years earlier, while she was still married to Hans von Bülow, the distinguished pianist and conductor, and, incidentally, one of the leading exponents of Wagner’s music. The affair produced no fewer than three illegitimate children for the couple including the aforementioned Siegfried, as well as a spectacular scandal that damaged the reputations and careers of all involved. Although the trio had lived for a time as a ménage à trois, after Wagner’s wife had obligingly died, Cosima moved in with Wagner at Triebschen. Siegfried was born there in 1869 and when von Bülow finally granted Cosima a divorce, the couple married in August of 1870.

All that is admittedly spicier than the usual stuff of program notes but casts considerable light on Wagner’s character and work. The importance to Wagner’s emotional life of his marriage to Cosima can hardly be overstated. At the age of 57 he had finally found domestic satisfaction and a measure of stability in what had been to that point a spectacularly stormy, difficult, and, one might say, operatic sort of life. Until he reached his fifties, hardly a year had passed that he had not contemplated suicide, despairing that his gargantuan ambitions could ever be fulfilled. Certainly no ordinary woman could have met his emotional needs—his narcissism was boundless and his ego a prodigy of nature. In his beloved Cosima he had finally found a woman who would accept him as he was and devote herself entirely to him.

Siegfried Idyll is not only an exquisitely beautiful piece of orchestral writing, but a unique personal document as well. Filled with private allusions, it was never intended for the public, and was not published until some years later when, much to the Wagners’ chagrin, a personal financial crisis forced them to do so. The subject of the work is, of course, Siegfried, the couple’s first male child, on whom the composer doted endlessly and who was born about the time that he was finishing his opera Siegfried. Much of the thematic material is taken from the opera, most importantly the serene first theme that dominates the entire work. This melody is Brünnhilde’s theme (“Immortal was I”), which, in Wagner’s own words, represents “the purity

and holiness of the child’s soul.” The second theme, representing the mother’s singing to the child, is appropriately a German lullaby called “Sleep, little Child, Sleep”, which is stated simply by the oboe and contrasts with the lush string texture heard up to that point.

Other borrowings from the opera include allusions to the well- known Forest Murmurs from Act II, including the song of the Forest Bird, and, of course, the famous horn call signifying the hero Siegfried in all his macho glory as a young man. The Idyll ends peacefully, as, again in Wagner’s own words, the child “sleeps quietly with a happy smile…After a final loving kiss from the mother, the hero rests in the care of God.” * * * Piano Concerto No. 5 in E-flat major, op. 73, “Emperor” Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) Of the many nicknames that have been given to musical works, some have value as mnemonic devices, some have a certain charm (e.g., Haydn’s “Bear” Symphony or Bach’s “Wedge” Fugue), and some (e.g., Beethoven’s “Moonlight” Sonata) are simply fatuous. Like most such monikers, that of the “Emperor” concerto is of unknown origin and certainly not invented by the composer. If the term was meant to describe the majestic and obviously martial nature of the music, it can be said to have some validity. On the other hand, it would be an ironic mistake to ascribe any political significance to it, for Beethoven’s politics tended to the left of center and certainly would not have led him to celebrate imperial authority. Thus it is that the great English musicologist D.F. Tovey said that the term had been applied to Beethoven’s “profound if posthumous disgust.”

The concerto was completed in 1809 and serves as one of the capstones of what biographer Maynard Solomon calls the composer’s “heroic decade.” Along with such other grand works as the Third (“Eroica”) and Fifth Symphonies, the Fifth Concerto represents the Beethoven most familiar to the general public—the monumental, fist-shaking Beethoven who speaks with a musical language of enormous emotional intensity. The extent to which this heroic style came from his inner artistic and emotional needs and how much was influenced by the enormous political turmoil caused by the Napoleonic wars is a question that continues to fascinate.

If it is true, as scholar Alfred Einstein has said, that the Fifth Concerto represents “the apotheosis of the military concept” in Beethoven’s music, it certainly is worth noting that 1809 was a particularly militaristic year in Vienna. Napoleon occupied the city accompanied by artillery fire loud enough to cause Beethoven at one point to flee to his brother’s cellar and cover his ears with pillows to protect what hearing he had left. Beethoven was once seen shaking his fist at a French soldier while muttering that if he knew as much about soldiering as he did about counterpoint he would show the blankety-blank French a thing or two. Despite these distractions, Beethoven succeeded in completing the Fifth Concerto in the year of the occupation, and it is certainly plausible that the militaristic tone of the work was to some extent a direct emotional response to his situation.

For various reasons, the concerto was not performed until 1811 in Leipzig, with the Viennese premiere taking place in 1812. Beethoven attended the latter performance, but because he was already too deaf to perform, the solo part was taken by his pupil Carl Czerny (the same Czerny, by the way, whose exercises have tortured piano students for generations). Although the

Leipzig performance was well received, the reaction of the Viennese audience was cool, presumably because the concerto was unlike any concerto written up to that time.

Unlike the traditional practice of beginning a concerto with an extended orchestral introduction, we are immediately greeted with an opening piano cadenza which makes apparent that the traditional classical concerto form is being, if not broken, then certainly reshaped. In its complexity and breadth, the first movement has almost the effect of a symphony with piano accompaniment rather than a traditional concerto. The noble slow movement, which is in the distant key of B major, leads without pause into the wonderfully rhythmic finale. Connecting movements was still an unusual practice for which Beethoven had set a precedent in his Fifth Symphony.

Beethoven never again returned to the concerto form, perhaps, as some have said, because his deafness had ended his career as a solo performer. It is also possible that this spectacularly public form of music making no longer met his own inner artistic needs as a composer. In any case, the “Emperor” Concerto served as a fitting farewell to the genre and remains one of the richest expressions of the possibilities of the concerto in the entire literature. * * * Symphony No. 3 in E-flat major, op. 97, “Rhenish” Robert Schumann (1810-1856) In 1850 Robert Schumann moved from Dresden, where he had lived for some six years, to Düsseldorf, on the Rhine River. Düsseldorf offered what should have been an important advance in Schumann’s career—for the first time in his life he had an important conducting position with major responsibilities. He was following two illustrious predecessors, Felix Mendelssohn and Ferdinand Hiller, who had developed a thriving musical culture with high standards. Unfortunately, the new position would prove to be beyond Schumann’s abilities, as the emotional and physical symptoms of the disease which would lead to his tragic early death became increasingly apparent.

At the beginning of his stay in Düsseldorf, however, Schumann seems to have been optimistic as he entered into the spirit of his new work and surroundings. Possessed by one of the manic creative urges which seem to have struck him from time to time throughout his career, he produced a cello concerto in just two weeks before beginning work on a new symphony which he seems to have envisioned as a celebration of the Rhineland region and culture which had become his new home.

The Rhineland has been not only a political division of Germany, but also a cultural entity, just as the Rhine itself is not mere water but a symbol of the old Germany and its rich culture. Rhenish culture, as it has come to be called, is predominantly Catholic in religion, and rich in folk song, poetry, and legend (not to mention the product of the grape). The famous Nibelung saga and the poem Die Lorelei by Düsseldorf native Heinrich Heine are just two of the many literary works evoking the mystique of the river.

A symphony with such extra-musical associations is, of course, program music, and Schumann was very much in the thick of the Romantic movement which emphasized the capacity of music to evoke ideas outside of itself. Literary to a degree quite unusual for a musician, Schumann was quick to find literary and pictorial associations both in his own music and in the music of others. Ironically, however, like many other composers of program music he

seems to have felt that overly obvious depiction of non-musical ideas somehow cheapened the music. Thus it is that he suppressed the title “Rhenish” when the symphony was published, and hesitated to let the programmatic content of the music be known. He expressed his view in the following caveat: “We must not show our heart to the world. A general impression of a work of art is better. At least no preposterous comparisons can be made.”

The new symphony was dashed off in about five weeks near the end of 1850 and received its first performance in Düsseldorf in February of 1851 with the composer conducting. Although really the last of Schumann’s four symphonies to be conceived, it was published as No. 3. The D minor Symphony, written much earlier, was substantially revised in 1851 and eventually published as No. 4.

The symphony begins with a majestic and expansive movement filled with great rhythmic vitality. Much of this rhythmic thrust comes from the ingenious cross rhythms of the highly syncopated opening theme which dominates the movement. As has been frequently pointed out, this movement shows the influence of Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony, also in the supposedly heroic key of E-flat.

The second movement, called a scherzo, is clearly programmatic in intent. In reality, it is not at all like the typical scherzo, but is actually a peasant dance known as a Ländler. This evocation of country life was originally titled Morning on the Rhine, another title that Schumann chose to suppress in the published version.

By this time we might expect a slow movement, but Schumann gives us instead a brief intermezzo that is neither fast nor slow. The music gives the impression of simple, heartfelt song (Lied in German), and is perhaps intended as a reminder of Germany’s wonderfully rich tradition of vocal music.

The fourth movement gives us for the first time a genuine slow movement. Originally marked “In the Manner of an Accompaniment to a Solemn Ceremony”, this majestic music was apparently inspired by a ceremony in the Cologne Cathedral, some thirty miles from Düsseldorf, in which the Archbishop of Cologne was elevated to the status of cardinal. It has long been assumed that Schumann actually attended the ceremony, but a recent biography of Schumann by Eric Jensen cites evidence that Schumann could not have been in Cologne at the time and that he probably read about the ceremony in the newspaper. Schumann had seen and admired the cathedral, however, which had been left unfinished by its Gothic builders and would not be completed until 1880. In any case, the appropriate musical language for an evocation of the majestically archaic Gothic style of the cathedral was, to a musician of Schumann’s generation, the dignified and already anachronistic Baroque style. (E.T.A. Hoffmann, one of Schumann’s favorite writers, had compared the music of Bach to Gothic architecture.) The result is an impressive movement which, in the words of the English scholar D.F. Tovey is “one of the finest pieces of ecclesiastical polyphony since Bach.” The music owes much of its grandeur, incidentally, to the noble sound of a trio of trombones, an instrument long associated with church music.

The vigorous finale brings the symphony to a lively conclusion, with references along the way to both the ecclesiastical music of the fourth movement as well as the opening theme of the first movement.