Program Notes

Debussy: A Children’s Corner

1905 marked a special time in the life of French composer Claude Debussy. In October of that year, he was blessed with a beautiful baby daughter. He and newly-divorced wife Emma Bardac bestowed upon her their own names in the form of Claude-Emma, but adoringly called the little girl Chouchou. Not too long afterward, the composer began writing a series of piano pieces that would become his Children’s Corner, completed in 1908. He dedicated the collection of six short movements to “my dear little Chouchou, with her father’s tender apologies for what is to follow.” While beauty often emanates from Debussy’s music, the composer himself could be gruff and gloomy. Children’s Corner portrays a side of Debussy not often revealed, that of affection and tenderness for the daughter he so deeply loved. As a result of the dedication, some have surmised that perhaps Debussy was writing music Chouchou might one day play herself, but it seems more likely that Debussy wrote the vignettes to play as the toddler sat near him at the piano. In 1910, Debussy’s Parisian colleague André Caplet orchestrated the piano work, conducting the symphonic premiere that same year in New York.

The set opens with “Doctor Gradus ad Parnassum,” referencing Clementi’s book of piano exercises and the tedium of scale practice. What begins as a regular set of scalar patterns gradually transforms, as the fictional player’s thoughts drift away and return. “Jimbo’s Lullaby” lovingly brings to life a child’s stuffed elephant, presumably named after P. T. Barnum’s magnificent creature Jumbo, who in the 1860s was housed in Paris’s Jardin des Plantes. The opening melody can only be described as lumbering. “Serenade for the Doll” was the first movement composed, evoking visions of imaginary interactions between Chouchou’s toys. “The Snow is Dancing” presents slow metamorphoses of ostinati patterns, envisioning a young girl watching the snow fall from her nursery window, or perhaps through a snow globe purchased for her by her father. “The Little Shepherd” is one of a number of pieces in which Debussy explores the pastoral world. Not unusually for the composer, the movement opens with a single melodic line, evoking a shepherd’s pipe. In Debussy’s orchestral compositions, most notably Prelude to the Afternoon of Faun, a pipe sound is often played by a solo flute, but Caplet chose to represent this shepherd with the oboe. The pipe-song returns twice again, transporting listeners to a countryside long ago. The final movement, “Golliwog’s Cakewalk,” fits in well with French society’s enthrallment at the turn of the century with the music of the United States, heard in many types of public entertainment establishments including cabarets, concert halls, supper clubs, and even at the circus. Black rag dolls were also in vogue, and Chouchou may have owned one in her collection, perhaps even one inspired by Florence Upton’s book character, Golliwog. “Golliwog’s Cakewalk” is an example of Debussy’s nod to jazz, with a syncopated dance section that bookends a satirical reference to Wagner’s Prelude to Tristan und Isolde, barely masking the composer’s contempt for the German master. 

Claude-Emma died in 1919 at only 13 years old, just a year after her father.

Schubert: Mass in G Major, D. 167

There are times in the history of western music where we mark the parameters of a musical period or style by the death of a composer or the premiere of a landmark composition that marks a shift in thinking. These are often placed against similar trends and developments across the arts, as well as national or international movements or events. In music history, when we consider a composer’s life alongside their outputs some dates come to the fore. With the Viennese composer Franz Schubert (1797–1828) there are two periods in his life when the compositional outputs appear absolutely remarkable—one is associated with the year 1815 and the other includes the final months of his short life. In 1815, while working full-time as a school teacher, the eighteen-year-old composer completed his second and third symphonies, two Masses, a string quartet, two piano sonatas, four Singspiele, and 145 songs (including the Erlkönig), among other works.
 
Throughout his life, Schubert composed a considerable amount of liturgical music. There are numerous single-movement works as well as settings of prayers and the six masses.
 
The Mass is the eucharistic liturgical service of many Christian churches. In setting the text of the Mass composers usually set the Ordinary (or recurring sections) comprising Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus, Benedictus, and Agnus Dei. These sections are sometimes through-composed – as in a direct setting of the text, or an elaboration and sub-division of the text. Schubert’s six Masses follow the sections of the Ordinary.
 
The G major Mass D 167 was written in six days in March 1815 but not published until 1846 – eighteen years after his death. He returned to the work later in his life when he made some revisions. Originally scored for soprano, tenor, bass, mixed chorus (soprano, alto, tenor, bass), strings and organ, Schubert later added trumpet and timpani. Harmonically the work is organised by each movement, alternating between G major and D major. The contribution of the vocal solos is modest as the overall character of the work is devotional and contemplative. The work is shaped by the composer’s interpretation of the text. Accordingly, this setting of the Mass is a personal affirmation of the prayers and written to be performed as part of the liturgy.

Mozart: Symphony No. 29 in A Major

Mozart was perhaps the most musically gifted individual western civilization has ever produced. Some say he was an angel sent from heaven to dazzle and entertain us, and to bestow upon us a divine gift of incomparable celestial beauty. Indeed his middle name, Amadeus, means one loved by God. In an attempt to transcend the limits of words, one enthusiastic scholar said, “When the angels sing for God, they sing Bach, but when the angels sing for themselves, they sing Mozart -- and God eavesdrops.”

This supernatural metaphor, although appropriate in its hyperbole, may be factually doubtful, but
there is no argument against the proposition that if one wanted to demonstrate to a newly arrived friend from another planet why we use the words simplicity, clarity, balance, grace, and symmetry in connection with the classical music of the late 18th Century, one might just introduce that person to the symphony we’ll hear tonight.

Mozart was born in Salzburg, Austria to ride the rising cultural, social, political, economic, and artistic tsunami created by the Enlightenment. The age into which he was born was highly musical, an age
in which his wide-ranging genius could find the stimuli and the support it needed to develop and to flourish. It was also an age with sufficient wealth and disposable income to remunerate those involved in live art music. Thus, Mozart was the right person in the right place at the right time. To him, music was a fourth dimension, a seamless extension of the natural world, as inevitable and necessary to him as the sea is to the dolphin, or the air to the eagle.

Mozart was the son of Leopold Mozart, himself an accomplished musician who spent most of his life promoting and living off the earnings of his talented children. When Wolfgang was just three years old, he taught himself to play the keyboard by watching his father teach his seven year-old sister, Nannerl. At four, Mozart began to write his own pieces. At six, he taught himself to play the violin. By eight, he was turning out symphonies, and at twelve, he wrote his first full-length opera, twelve!

To give you an idea of the acute quality of his musical ear, how’s this? In Rome, during Holy Week, the Papal Choir performed in the Sistine Chapel a sacred piece called the Misereri by Gregorio Allegri, a complex contrapuntal composition. A papal decree forbade its performance anywhere else, and the only existing copy of the work was kept secret and jealously guarded by the Church. Any attempt to reproduce the work in any form was punishable by excommunication, a severe consequence in the 18th Century. A fourteen-year-old Mozart attended the performance of Misereri and then went home and accurately copied down the entire score, note for note. When the Pope found out what Mozart had done, instead of excommunicating him, the Pope rewarded him with the Cross of the Order of the Golden Spur, a high honor in the Catholic Church.

By the time he wrote his twenty-ninth symphony, at the age of 18, Mozart had attained his full maturity as a composer. This symphony is an example of the perfection of style, structure, and musical expression for which he is revered. It is a diamond without a flaw, so much so that I won’t venture to defile it with words. It just seems to happen the way an orchid flowers from a bud. Every note and every phrase seems inevitable, yet musicians will tell you it is very difficult to play precisely because it demands from a musician the same degree of artistic excellence with which it was composed. I will say that the fourth movement is an example of “la chasse”, or “the hunt”, movements of which the 18th Century hunting nobility was enamored. Hence, the characteristic horn calls.