Serenade for Strings after Swedish Folk Melodies
Max Bruch (1838-1920)
By the time of the completion of the Serenade for Strings, some half a century after beginning his famous Violin Concerto in G Minor, he had already reached the advanced age of 78. Beset by illness, far from free of financial woes and frustrated by the realization that the course of music had overtaken him within his own lifetime, consigning him more or less to the sidelines, Bruch observed the world around him not only critically, but also with an element of bitterness. In an interview he conceded that when in a few years’ time the discussion came to great composers, Brahms’ name would justifiably be mentioned, but not his own.
Yet Bruch was by no means ready to retire from composition. Even in his last years, he still produced multiple works, and perhaps even more than the number which have been handed down to us, since some manuscripts were lost or still await rediscovery in the archives. In the late works that have survived, however, Bruch tends to draw on older musical material, so that some represent more of a re-arrangement than new creation. This is the case with the Serenade for Strings.
Bruch’s fondness for simple, unpretentious melodies was echoed in his use of folk songs, which he eagerly studied and adapted for his works. A prime example of this is the 1903 collection of nine songs and dances after Russian and Swedish melodies for violin and piano (op. 79) which was published by Simrock Verlag in the same year. Simrock had already published Bruch’s 16 Swedish Dances (op.63) some years before for the same instrumentation. Healthy sales allowed Bruch to immediately write an orchestration for the Swedish Dances, and, based on op. 79, he decided to compose two orchestral suites of five movements for large scale orchestra. Yet this time it was not just a case of simple instrumentation, but a more comprehensive revision, which also included new musical material. While the first suite adopted elements of Russian songs, the second suite was based on Swedish. Bruch completed the two suites between 1904 and 1906, however only the first suite was published, appearing with Simrock as op. 79b under the title Suite after Russian Folk Melodies. The second suite was first performed on 10 March 1906 in Barmen, yet trace of it is lost soon after. Its manuscript was entrusted by Bruch’s descendants to the publisher Rudolf Eichmann at the beginning of the Second World War and appeared with Eichmann for the first time in 1956 in an edition entitled Nordland Suite, which is probably based on this manuscript score. The original manuscript has not reappeared to this day.
Nevertheless, as late as 1916 Bruch must still have been in possession of the manuscript for the suite, since it was this work that clearly served as a model for the Serenade for Strings. The manuscript for the Serenade is also now lost; it too was probably among those which were given by Bruch’s descendants to Eichmann. Fortunately, a copyist’s version of the work and string parts partially written by Bruch himself were found at it his final workplace before retirement, the Berlin Hochschule für Musik. Sadly, nothing is known of the occasion for which the Serenade for Strings was written. However, by comparing the copyist’s version with the published edition of the Nordland Suite, we can see how Bruch went about his reworking. The last four movements of the Suite were carried over into the Serenade. The March, originally only at the end of the piece, also appears in a lightly modified form as the first movement of the Serenade, fully in keeping with the serenade tradition of processional and recessional music. It is inspired by the Coronation March for Charles XII (c. 1700). The other movements were given tighter form by the exclusion of repeats and introductory sections. The second and fourth movements take two love songs as their theme while the third movement draws on a Dalecarlian dance (Dalecarlia/Dalarna, a historical province in central Sweden). In addition, the instrumentation had of course to be modified, with the large scale orchestra replaced by a small string ensemble.
Even if Bruch may not have possessed the same imaginativeness seen in his earlier years, we can still recognize the seasoned composer at work in this arrangement. He transforms the rich sound of the full orchestra into the more intimate one of the string ensemble with great subtlety, almost as if the work had never been conceived for a different setting. The Serenade for Strings was first published in this form in 1997 (Edition Kunzelmann). While no recordings of the earlier compositions from which the Serenade originated are currently available, the Serenade itself has since been recorded several times. Let us hope that this edition may help focus future interest in Bruch’s music beyond solely his first violin concerto. Wolfgang Eggerking, 2015
Overture to La Forza del Destino
Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901)
The nineteenth century was an opera-mad time. With most composers giving it a shot, simply because, as Willie Sutton famously said, “That’s where the money is.” And fame, too. However many were composed, the operatic field was dominated by two artists who still are at the top of the repertoire: Wagner and Verdi. But that’s about all that these two luminaries had in common. Their differences are legion. It suffices to say that Wagner was not exactly a loyal, solid family man, whereas Verdi stuck with his wife and simple country home to the end of his long life. Wagner was a cosmopolitan man of the world, and Verdi was the only major composer who was a dedicated farmer. There’s more, but the important differences lay in the nature of their operas.
Wagner’s operas and music dramas reflected his consuming interest in Nordic myth, a personal pursuit of unique poetic styles and techniques, and sophisticated operatic theories concerning the relationships in opera between all of its contributory arts. Magic, myth, redemption through love, important orchestral participation, chromatic harmony, elaborate symbolic systems—it’s difficult, indeed, to posit a more personal, unique, and totally different approach to opera in all of its history. Verdi, on the other hand, was a child of his Italian operatic tradition—to mention only his immediate predecessors: Rossini, Bellini, and Donizetti. The music was simpler—carried by memorable melody–the structure straightforward, and the use of the orchestra was masterful, but strictly accompanimental. The plots focused upon real human beings of the real world entwined in deep conflict over the eternal themes of love, jealousy, hate, and power.
By the 1860s Verdi had conquered the world of Italian opera and was rapidly gaining influence in opera houses all over Europe, even including the formidable Parisian opera establishment. His rousing successes in the 1850s include works still central in the international operatic repertoire: Rigoletto, Il trovatore, La traviata, and Un ballo in maschera. After these masterpieces his rate of composition fell off somewhat, ending with the great works of his later years: Aïda, Othello, and Falstaff. In between there falls Don Carlos (1867) and La forza del destino (1862).
La forza del destino (The Force of Destiny) was first performed in St. Petersburg, Russia, with several important productions following soon thereafter, including one in New York City in 1865. Verdi often made revisions to his operas, for a variety of reasons, including censorship, specific demands based upon venue (notably Paris), specific singers’ abilities and preferences—all common during those times. The 1869 revision of the opera included a new overture, which stands almost alone among overtures to Verdi operas as a concert favorite. Its popularity stems from the powerful drama imbued in the music from the very first imposing notes in the brass. There is a case to be made that the three chords are a rare example of a musical symbol in Verdi, in this instance, depicting the inevitable power of “fate,”—hence the title of the opera. The plot of the opera is not untypical of the composer, being a thicket of doomed love, vicious wars, hidden identities, duels, vows to enter a monastery, and ethnic hatred, and, of course, tragic death at the end.
The afore-mentioned octaves in the brass open the work with a steely powerful effect, followed by the famous, uneasy and ominous main theme in the basses: four little ascending notes that tell us much. What follows is a well-wrought compendium of several of the main tunes from the opera, woven together somewhat like the tedious, complicated—almost risible plot. But, the musical logic of Verdi’s best-known overture is superb, and a truer reflection of the dramatic power and melodic riches of one of Italy’s greatest composers could not be essayed. Musical dark and light alternate, as the melodies from the opera intertwine, leading to the thundering conclusion that never fails to rouse. © 2015 William E. Runyan
Piano Concerto “Wanderer Fantasy”
Franz Schubert (1797-1828)
Große Fantasie, bearbeitet für piano und orchester von Franz Liszt
The story of Schubert, version 1: In 1828, grubby yet adorable little Franz Schubert dies a penniless, wretched failure, his compositions unwanted and unperformed, his genius unrecognized. The poet Grillparzer writes his epitaph, suggesting that the composer’s greatest work was unrealized: “The Art of Music entombed here a rich possession, but even fairer hopes.” His music goes unperformed for decades, and his genius is not fully recognized until the 20th century.
The story of Schubert, version 2: In 1828, Franz Schubert dies one of the most prominent composers in Vienna. Entire concerts are devoted to his music, and his publications span wide swathes of genres, from dance music and songs to symphonies and string quartets. He is paid well by publishers, more than other composers for similar work, and his music is known throughout Viennese society. Significant young musicians such as Franz Liszt and Robert Schumann recognize the merit of his work, and soon after his death, begin to promote it vigorously via performance, criticism, and publication.
The first version of Schubert’s life is the more popular of the two, likely because of the Romantic nature of the tale. “Lonely genius dies unrecognized” is a much better story than “Comfortably middle-class composer dies from syphilis,” but musicians are prone to embracing fairy tale narratives, so the story of Schubert became a tale of poverty, desolation, and ultimate (posthumous) triumph, thanks to the efforts of musicians! (It is worth noting that even in the 21st century, musicians love to play the game of “discover the genius,” digging up random forgotten composers of the past, making outsized claims about the value of his or her music, emphasizing how unloved and abandoned the composer is, then finding a way to work them into every program they can. The main difference between those composers and Schubert is that he was legitimately a genius.)
In his 2017 book Schubert’s Reputation from His Time to Ours, musicologist Geoffrey Block points out that by 1821-1822, when he was ca. 24 years old, Schubert raked in 2,000 florins per year solely from the royalties and fees earned by his published compositions, specifically songs, piano variations, and vocal quartets. In comparison, he had made only 500 florins annually teaching music at a public school several years before. Schubert’s songs were performed with stunning regularity in the 1820s, with Erlkönig topping the list and Das Wanderer close behind.
The latter song was extraordinarily important to Schubert. The text of the song, a poem by Georg Philipp Schmidt originally titled “Der Fremdlings Abendlied” (“The Stranger’s Evening Song”), is both beautiful and depressing:
I came here from the mountains.
Fog rises from the valley, and the ocean roars.
I wander in silence,
And sighing, I ask myself repeatedly,
“Where are you going?”
The sun shines so coldly here:
The blossoms are faded,
And life is stale,
And what people say to me
Rings hollow.
I am a stranger everywhere I go.
Where are you, my beloved home?
Sought after, dreamed of, and never known!
Home, a place so green with Hope,
Home, where my Roses bloom.
Where my dreams wander about,
Where my dead friends are alive again,
Home, where my language is spoken,
Oh Home, where are you?
I wander in silence,
And sighing, I ask myself again and again,
“Where are you going?”
Like the haunting whisper of a Ghost, the reply comes back to me:
“There…where you are not…there is Happiness.” (1)
The text perfectly encapsulates the various hallmarks of Romanticism: a tendency towards poetic melancholy, the individual set against the world, and the purity and primacy of nature. Schubert’s setting is stark (very stark!) but musically rich. That the song meant a great deal to Schubert, who perhaps self-identified as the stranger of the poem, is seen in his compositional “self-borrowing” that can be tracked to Der Wanderer. (Self-borrowing is the act of re-using melodic, harmonic, or rhythmic material from an original piece in a later work.) The composer repeatedly mined the song for musical motifs in his later instrumental works, usings bits and pieces for the development section of the first movement of his last piano sonata, for the central section of the Impromptu D. 899/4, and most importantly, within the great Fantasia in C Major, D. 760.
The second section of Der Wanderer (“The sun shines so coldly here…”) forms the nucleus of Schubert’s Fantasia, which was composed in 1822.
The opening of the second movement directly restates this stanza, the statement serving as a theme for an ensuing set of variations. The “Wanderer” motif does not only appear in the second movement, however, but permeates the work. The long – short-short – long rhythm of the accompaniment provides the basis for the enthusiastic opening of the piece. This rhythm becomes a dotted Ländler-style rhythm in the third movement, and in the final movement, serves as the basis for an enthusiastic (and difficult) fugue. In addition to references to Der Wanderer, Schubert manages to perform some significant thematic transformation, presenting initial melodic elements in the first movement that become important, almost obsessive melodic motifs in the third and fourth movements, thus bringing together the four movements that are performed in a single flowing unit.
Soon after the Fantasia’s publication in 1823, a review appeared in the Wiener Allgemeine Musikalisches Zeitung. The review provides a useful thumbnail description of the work and indicates Schubert’s honored place in contemporary Viennese musical society. A portion of it reads:
The Phantasie is…a composition where the richness of musical inventive power is not bound in the matter of form, but is enabled to wander in the wide and charming fields of tonal art like some rushing stream freed from the compulsion of hindering dams. Such a composition is, therefore, best fitted to absorb and express the true feelings which animated the composer at the time of its creation: it may be regarded as the mirror of his deepest emotions.
When a composer like Herr Schubert, who has already displayed in his generally esteemed songs the possession of real emotional depth, presents such a soul-picture, the musical world can only rejoice.
The above-mentioned Phantasie (in C Major) begins Allegro con fuoco. A simple, short introductory subject serves as the basis of the entire work and almost playfully disappears, then unexpectedly and always surprisingly comes to light again. It yields to an Adagio in which the composer presents charming melodies, and in addition gives the player, as he does later in the Presto, ¾ time, opportunity to prove his skill in the most brilliant fashion. (2)
The throwaway comment “gives the player…opportunity to prove his skill in the most brilliant fashion” is an understatement. The Fantasia’s movements are off-limits to all but professional pianists, possessing batteries of arpeggios, octaves, trills, passagework, and every other imaginable technical hurdle. Schubert himself famously could not play the Fantasia, at one point slamming the keyboard lid down during a soirée and telling his friends something along the lines of “Let the devil play it, I can’t!” Schubert was likely not the only one to throw down the lid in exasperation when attempting this work. For many years, amateur pianists stuck to the easier Impromptus and Moments Musicaux, and even professional pianists avoided the Fantasia until Franz Liszt took it up in the 1840s.
It is difficult to overstate how important the Hungarian pianist Franz Liszt (1811-1886) was to the development of piano technique and the enlarging of the piano repertoire. He was the 19th century equivalent of a rock star, a canny virtuoso performer with matinée idol looks who set almost all the trends in his field. If Liszt took up a piece of music, it was certain that other pianists would follow suit. Many of the significant works of the classical period received their first public exposure at his hands, and as a result, entered the common repertoire. Liszt performed the Fantasia many times in its solo incarnation on his recitals in the years before his early “retirement” (he stopped playing the piano in public for financial gain in 1845, but until his death in 1886, he occasionally played in public for benefit performances). In the years following his public performances of the piece, the Wanderer Fantasia became common currency with other pianists, and it has never left the repertoire since that time.
It was likely in the 1840s that Liszt began to toy with the idea of the Fantasia as a transcription for piano and orchestra. In music, the act of transcribing is simply transferring a work from one medium to another, maintaining the majority of its musical traits while changing the instrument or instruments performing the work. A song might become a piano piece; an organ work becomes a piece for cello and piano. As a virtuoso pianist, Liszt’s primary focus was taking works for voice or orchestra and transmuting them into difficult piano works.
There were generally two reasons for Liszt to create a transcription: either to increase the accessibility of the original piece of music, or to respond to the public’s preexisting love for a specific aria or symphonic work. The many operatic transcriptions he wrote during his short public performance career were mostly in response to a demand to the operatic obsessions of the concert-attending public of the period. His song transcriptions, on the other hand, were geared much more towards sharing esoteric compositions with a public that was much more interested in the vocal fireworks of the operatic stage.
In Liszt’s opinion, Schubert fell into that “esoteric” category. In that Romantic vein mentioned above, Liszt believed that Schubert had been unjustly neglected by a cold and unfeeling musical establishment. He appointed himself the little Austrian’s champion and poured a great deal of energy into promoting Schubert’s music via transcriptions. Although he transcribed popular lieder such as Erlkönig, Der Wanderer and the “Ständchen” from Schwanengesang, he also turned to more unlikely songs such as Des Mädchens Klage and Das Sterbeglöcklein, ultimately creating a total of 56 song transcriptions for solo piano. He also reworked reams of dances and various symphonic works into solo piano transcriptions, many of which became very popular with other pianists.
A significant component in his campaign to promote poor, neglected Schubert was his creation of performance editions of Schubert’s piano sonatas, Impromptus, Moments Musicaux, and other various piano works, sharing with the public his own approach to the playing of these pieces. These editions contain his fingerings and changes to dynamics, chordal textures, octave placements, and in one famously extreme case, the key of the piece. (He decided that the lovely G-flat Major Impromptu op. 90 no. 3 sounded better in the key of G Major, so he bumped it up and published it with no indication in the score as to the piece’s original key.)
Having immersed himself thoroughly in Schubert’s music via these transcriptions and editions, in the mid-1850s, Liszt finally tackled an orchestral version of the Wanderer Fantasia, a piece he had already transcribed for piano four-hands (two pianists at a single keyboard). Liszt was not alone in seeing orchestral potential in the original Schubert score. Even while Schubert was still alive, critics pointed out the potent energy and overall sound of the piece. Robert Schumann wrote of the Fantasia in 1828 that:
Schubert would like, in this work, to condense the whole orchestra into two hands, and the enthusiastic beginning is a seraphic hymn to the Godhead; you see the angels pray; the Adagio is a gentle meditation on life and takes the veil from off it; then fugues thunder forth a song of endless humanity and music. (3)
From its first performance, Liszt’s orchestral version of the Fantasia became a hit, and from the 1860s until the 1920s, it was one of the most performed of all piano concerti. It was particularly popular in the United States, where the great American pianist William Mason (a student of Liszt) introduced it in his 1862 debut concert with the New York Philharmonic. Other pianists such as Ferruccio Busoni, Rafael Joseffy, Alexander Siloti, and a host of others performed the work regularly, and it was widely accepted as a concerted work in its own right.
Attitudes towards transcriptions began to change in the early 20th century; the original intent of the composer began to carry more weight, and pieces like the Wanderer Fantasia were labeled “old-fashioned,” gradually disappearing from the repertoire. (Other casualties included Busoni’s arrangement of the Liszt Spanish Rhapsody for piano and orchestra and Liszt’s own piano/orchestra arrangement of his 14th Hungarian Rhapsody.) Among great pianists, only the Cuban American virtuoso Jorge Bolet, considered by many to be a “Romantic throwback,” continued to perform the Fantasia. When he passed away in 1990, the work lost its last major champion.
You will likely not have another chance to hear this arrangement performed “live,” so we hope you enjoy it! With any luck, it will spark your further interest in Schubert’s song, the solo piano Fantasia, and this unique arrangement by Liszt.
- Richard Masters
(1) Translation by Richard Masters
(2) Quoted in Olga Samaroff, “The Piano Music of Schubert,” Musical Quarterly XIV: 4 (October 1928): 602.
(3) Robert Schumann, writing on August 13, 1828. Quoted in Maurice Brown, Schubert: A Critical Biography (New York: MacMillan & Company, 1958), 124.
Firebird Suite (1919)
Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971)
It would be difficult, indeed, to posit a composer whose artistic achievement and influence on the direction of music during the twentieth century exceeded that of Igor Stravinsky. Moving through a series of explorations of different styles of composition, his works consistently exhibited a remarkable seriousness of purpose, solid musical integrity, and benchmark imagination. What is more, his genius made its mark early—there are almost no compositions that we can label “journeyman” or “youthful apprentice works.” Born into a musical, middleclass family, he studied law and music theory and composition (on the side) simultaneously. By his mid-twenties he had begun to concentrate on music, rather than law, and had composed only a few works that were heard publicly. But that led to his historic encounter with Sergei Diaghilev.
The cutting edge of the ballet world for most of the early twentieth century was clearly the Ballets Russes of Diaghilev in Paris and Monte Carlo. Under the artistic leadership of Diaghilev, this company was responsible for the creation of artistic works whose influence continues unabated today. Diaghilev was peerless in his ability to select and recruit the crème de la crème of the European artistic community in his productions. Just a of few of the veritable who’s who of artists include dancers, Pavlova, Nijinsky, Fokine, and Balanchine; the choreographer, Petipa; conductors, Pierre Monteux and Ernest Ansermet, designers, Picasso, Bakst, Braque, Coco Chanel, Matisse, Miró, Dalí—well, you get the idea. Which makes it all the more remarkable that, for the first season of ballet (he had started out a few years earlier with art exhibitions and opera) Diaghilev chose the relatively unknown Igor Stravinsky. In 1909 Diaghilev had attended a concert in St. Petersburg, where two of the young composer’s few works were performed. Thoroughly impressed, Diaghilev commissioned Stravinsky to provide music for the 1910 ballet season in Paris.
The young Stravinsky had been a protégé of the famous Rimsky-Korsakov, master teacher, composer of operas, and one of the most adroit orchestrators in musical history. The latter is key to understanding much of the musical style of Stravinsky’s three ballets, for Rimsky-Korsakov’s sparkling evocation of Russian picturesque images through challenging and imaginative scoring for the orchestra leads directly from the older composer to his student. The dazzling orchestral color of both master and student was quintessential Russian and perfect for the exotic Russian story that Diaghilev had in mind for his inaugural season.
The story, assembled by the designer, Alexandre Benois and the choreographer, Michel Fokine, was an amalgam of several different Russian folktales and themes, but the most prominent elements were the mythical Firebird and the evil magician Kashchei. The myth of the Firebird, whose feathers flow with iridescent luminosity, varies considerably in details in the various cultures in which the story occurs. It has magical powers; sometimes it serves good, other times not. The magician Kashchei, on the other hand, is irredeemably evil, can only be killed by possessing his soul, which improbably, is hidden inside a needle in an egg, which is in a duck, which is in a rabbit in an iron chest buried under a green oak tree on an island. Whew! All of these exotic elements are woven into a more or less new story for the ballet, and Stravinsky was more than prepared to provide the impressively evocative music. The première was in Paris in June of 1910 and was an instant success. The music, the choreography, the dancing, the sets, and the costumes were uniformly praised, and our hero, Igor, was on his way. Few great composers have started out with such acclaim. It did not take long for Stravinsky to extract from the score to the ballet a suite for concert performance. Later, others emerged, and they have gone on to become evergreen concert favorites.
Our story is archetypical; a beautiful princess is kidnapped by an evil villain and is rescued by a brave prince with help of the magical Firebird. The ballet opens in Kashchei the Immortal’s magical realm; Prince Ivan enters and soon spots the luminous Firebird. He observes thirteen captured princesses, who are dancing a round dance, and, of course, immediately falls in love with one of them. The evil Kashchei rebuffs the Prince’s request for his chosen one’s release, and a fracas ensues, with Kashchei’s grotesque minions in the attack on the Prince. The Firebird intervenes, casts a spell over Kashchei’s followers, and they are compelled to dance frenetically. They ultimately collapse into sleep to a lullaby, but soon Kashchei awakens, and another dance ensues. The Firebird tells the Prince how to slay Kashchei by destroying the giant egg in which his soul resides. He does so; the whole evil kingdom, Kashchei, and his magic all disappear. The sun breaks forth, and a general celebratory apotheosis triumphs.
Stravinsky, in 1911, 1919, and 1945, extracted three somewhat different suites, respectively, from the score of the whole ballet. That of 1919 is most commonly performed. There are five major excerpts, beginning with the eerie low strings that depict Kashchei’s evil, magical realm. The Firebird soon appears, after a flashy paroxysm in the strings. Virtuoso figurations in the woodwinds and harp glissandi paint the dancing Firebird and his glowing feathers, ending the first section. A solo flute leads to the round dance of the Princesses, with elegant solos in the woodwinds and strings. It’s all appropriately composed of simple melodies and harmonies, far from the chromatic complexities of Kashchei and his magic. The third section is the famous “Infernal Dance,” wherein snarling brass, with angular, jagged motifs, punctuate the whole orchestra’s pounding, insistent rhythms—which constantly confuse with their metric displacements. It all accelerates to a total, dramatic collapse. The ensorcelled evil ones then sleep to the lullaby of the “Berceuse,” opening with the famous languid bassoon solo. A lush, romantic texture gradually ends with sinking string tremolos that lead to the inevitable Finale. The solo horn dramatically intones an evocation of the arrival of the sun and the triumph of good over evil. The whole orchestra takes up its tune, accompanied by slow, rising scales, and finally pounding brass chords lead to the grand peroration. The ending is immortal, of course, and the world now was put on notice of the spectacular début and genius of the young Russian. As Debussy is reputed to have wryly remarked, “Well, you’ve got to start somewhere.” © 2016 William E. Runyan