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La Musique Sublime
We journey to Sister City Saint-Etienne, France, the birth place of Massenet, where Concertmaster Lillian Scheirich's interpretation of Massenet's famous "Méditation" from Thaïs is accompanied by Fauré's masterful Requiem.
Calixa Lavallée
O Canada
J. C. Rouget de Lisle
La Marseillaise
Gabriel Fauré
Pavane, op. 50
W. A. Mozart
Symphony no. 31, K.297 in D major “Paris”
Jules Massenet
"Méditation" from Thaïs
Gabriel Fauré
Requiem, op.48
Saturday, March 27, 2010 at 8:00 p.m.
Chrysler Theatre
Instrumentally Speaking – pre-concert talk at 7:00 p.m. inside the Chrysler Theatre
Tickets from $13!
John Morris Russell, Conductor
WSO Chorus, Jeffrey Walker, Chorusmaster
Lillian Scheirich, Violin
Pavane, op. 50
B. May 12, 1845, Pamiers, Ariège, Midi-Pyrénées,
D . Nov. 4,1924, Paris, France
The orchestral version was first performed at a Concert Lamoureux under the baton of Charles Lamoureux on November 25, 1888. Three days later, the choral version was premiered at a concert of the Société Nationale de Musique.
In a letter to his wife, the composer alludes to the creative process involved in the genesis of his Pavane, op. 50, "While I was thinking about a thousand different things of no importance whatsoever, a kind of rhythmical theme in the style of a Spanish dance took form in my brain.... This theme developed by itself, became harmonized in different ways, changed and modulated; in effect, it germinated by itself."
Written during the summer of 1887, the Pavane received its first performance in Paris in November, 1888 with the choral version making its premiere three days later. Scored for orchestra with chorus ad libitum, the piece is sometimes performed with chorus, as a part of a dramatic entertainment (so popular in 19th century France) and as a ballet, but most commonly as we hear it tonight, an orchestral piece.
With the Pavane, a stately processional dance of the Renaissance, Fauré joins many of his peers in paying homage to music of the past. The piece has served as a model for some of his younger contemporaries; Debussy in the Passepied from Suite bergamasque and Ravel in Pavane pour une infante defunte, which was written while he was a student of Fauré at the Paris Conservatoire. Scored for winds in pairs and strings, the Pavane is built on one basic melody, first announced on solo flute against pizzicato strings, with other instruments taking it up in turn. ❧
Symphony no. 31, K. 297, in D minor, "Paris"
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
B. January 27, 1756, Salzburg, Austria
D. December 5, 1791,
Vienna, Austria
Mozart completed this work in Paris on June 12, 1778, and it was premiered there on 12 June 1778 in a private performance in the home of Count Karl Heinrich Joseph von Sickingen, the ambassador of the Palatinate. The public premiere took place six days later in a performance by the Concert Spirituel.
Having turned his attention temporarily to operas, concertos and piano music, during the years 1775-1777 Mozart wrote no symphonies at all. But then he received a commission for a new symphony from Joseph Le Gros, a singer and composer who had recently taken over the directorship of the Concerts Spirituel, one of Paris’s first and best-known performance series. Mozart was in Paris with his mother Anna Maria from March to September 1778, during a concert tour in which they were also seeking a post for the twenty-two year old composer. In his previous visit, in 1762, the six-year old prodigy had been feted like few musicians of his day. But Mozart found the Paris of the late 1770s--and most of its aristocracy, musicians and audiences--cynical, dishonest, and decidedly unpleasant. Despite this, he knew that success in Paris could lead to big things.
Mozart’s visit took a disastrous turn in July when his mother suddenly died of an unknown illness. Mozart couldn’t break the news of her death to his father Leopold, who was back in their hometown of Salzburg, directly, so he began with a long letter in which he described her illness in the midst of other details on their trip. The subsequent letters in which he actually wrote of her death are some of the most touching in their correspondence.
In the midst of all this, Mozart was preparing his new Symphony No. 31. Going out of his way to appeal to the Parisian audience, Mozart employed the largest orchestra he had yet called on for a symphony, including pairs of all the woodwinds (including clarinets, marking the first time he had used them in a symphony) as well as French horns, trumpets, timpani, and strings. He also chose to employ the old three movement French symphonic form, omitting the usual minuet movement.
Mozart had been warned that Parisian audiences expected every symphony to begin with what was called “le premier coup d’archet” (“the first stroke of the bow”), an energetic simultaneous downbow on all the stringed instruments. Just before arriving in Paris, Mozart and his mother had spent four months in Mannheim, where he had heard their “orchestra of generals”--one of the finest ensembles then in existence--and the famous “Mannheim Rocket.” Mozart ingeniously combines these two trademark musical gestures in the opening of the “Paris” Symphony: the orchestra holds a loud chord for four long beats, followed by two chords, each lasting two beats. Then comes the “Mannheim Rocket,” a set of ever-louder ascending notes that seems to fly up to the next chord. Less traditionally, Mozart makes reference to the “coup d’archet” throughout the first movement, giving it a primary structural role. The movement’s second main theme is much lighter in tone, but it retreats for the central development section, largely devoted to the opening theme.
The main themes of the lovely second movement are both rather solemn and courtly, but there are also some light-hearted interludes as the music progresses. An alternate slow movement for this symphony exists – Mozart wrote it when the original second movement supposedly “had failed to please” – but is not often played (the Symphony receives a new Köchel catalog number, K. 300a, when it is played with this alternate movement).
Having fun with the expected loud opening of the Finale, Mozart has a joke on the Parisian audience with the beginning of the third movement – a quiet rushing figure in the violins quickly followed by a full orchestral outburst. The surprise was effective, as Mozart wrote to his father: “the audience, as I expected, said ‘hush’ at the soft beginning, and when they heard the forte, began at once to clap their hands.” Bassoons and strings then announce the first of the movement’s main themes. A second section takes the form of a contrapuntal fugato for the strings, which is also incorporated into the subsequent development section before the lively opening theme returns as a final gesture, in music that moves easily, according to Alfred Einstein, between “brilliant tumult and graceful seriousness.” ❧
Jules Massenet
B. May 12, 1842, Saint-Ètienne, France
D. August 13, 1912, Paris, France
The opera Thaïs was premiered in Paris on March 16,1894.
Thaïs (Pronounced tah-eess) is an opera in three acts by Jules Massenet to a French libretto by Louis Gallet based on the novel Thaïs by Anatole France. It was first performed at the Opéra Garnier in Paris on March 16,1894, starring the American soprano Sybil Sanderson, for whom Massenet had written the title role. The work was first performed in Italy at the Teatro Lirico Internazionale in Milan on October 17, 1903 with Lina Cavalieri in the title role and Francesco Maria Bonini as Athanaël. In 1907, the role served as Mary Garden's American debut in New York in the U.S. premiere performance.
The opera takes place in Egypt during Byzantine rule, where a Cenobite monk, Athanaël, attempts to convert Thaïs, an Alexandrian courtesan and devotée of Venus, to Christianity. After being confronted by Athanaël and spending a night in meditation, Thaïs' agrees to retire from the secular world and become a nun. Athanaël, ironically, has been smitten by Thaïs' allure and decides that he is in love with her. He arrives at the convent where Thaïs now resides and finds her on her deathbed. Athanaël proclaims his love and renounces his vows of faith, while Thaïs steadfastly holds to her new found spirituality and dies, leaving Athanaël with neither faith nor love.
In the opera, "Méditation" is played after the fall of the curtain in the second Act as Thaïs contemplates her dilemma--whether to repent of her worldly ways or continue the shallow exitense she has come to resent. ❧
Gabriel Fauré
The first version of the work, which Fauré called "un petit Requiem" with five movements (Introit and Kyrie, Sanctus, Pie Jesu, Agnus Dei and In Paradisum), was first performed January 16, 1888 under the composer’s direction in La Madeleine in Paris. A second version with two added movements, known today as the chamber orchestra version, was premièred January 21, 1893, again at the Madeleine with Fauré conducting. In 1899–1900, the score was reworked for full orchestra, this version was premiered April 6, 1900, with Eugène Ysaÿe conducting.
By John Bawden
From the age of nine Fauré studied music at the École Niedermeyer, the ‘École de musique religieuse et classique’, where Saint-Saëns was a member of staff. Saint-Saëns was regarded as a progressive teacher, introducing his pupils not only to the music of Bach and Mozart but also to controversial composers such as Wagner and Liszt. Unlike most major French composers, Fauré did not attend the Paris Conservatoire but continued his studies with Saint-Saëns, who greatly encouraged him by putting work his way and helping him to get his music published. The two became lifelong friends and Fauré later said that he owed everything to Saint-Saëns.
Fauré was a fine organist and in 1896 was appointed to the prestigious Madeleine church in Paris. He was also an excellent teacher, and perhaps because of his renowned expertise as organist and teacher only slowly gained recognition as a composer. He eventually became professor of composition at the Paris Conservatoire, and its Director from 1905 to 1920. Although he wrote several works involving a full orchestra, his particular talent lay within the more intimate musical forms – songs, piano music and chamber music. His somewhat austere style and highly individual, impressionistic harmonic language contrasts markedly with the music of the Austro-German tradition which dominated European music from the time of Beethoven until well into the twentieth century.
The subtlety of Fauré’s music, and his concentration on the small-scale, led many to criticise him for lacking depth, a judgement based on the mistaken premise that the bigger and bolder a composer’s music the more worthwhile it must be. Fauré deliberately avoided the grander kind of orchestral music that could easily have brought him fame and fortune. He preferred instead to embrace an elegant and subtle musical language that has won him increasing numbers of admirers, particularly as a composer of songs, a genre in which he is now recognised as a master.
The Requiem was composed in 1888, when Fauré was in his forties, quite probably in response to the recent death of his father. Shortly after its first performance, Faure’s mother also died, giving the work an added poignancy. In 1900, under some pressure from his publishers, he reluctantly agreed to the release of a revised version containing additional instrumental parts designed to broaden the work’s appeal. Nowadays it is such a firm favourite that it comes as a surprise to learn that it did not gain widespread popularity until the nineteen-fifties.
In its sequence of movements the Requiem departs significantly from the standard liturgical text. Fauré included two new sections, the lyrical Pie Jesu and the transcendent In Paradisum, with its soaring vocal line and murmuring harp accompaniment. He also omitted the Dies Irae and Tuba Mirum - for most composers an opportunity to exploit to the full the dramatic possibilities of all the available choral and orchestral forces. Consequently the prevailing mood is one of peacefulness and serenity, and the work has often been described, quite justly, as a Requiem without the Last Judgement.
Of the many settings of the Requiem, this is probably the most widely loved. In comparison with the large-scale masterpieces of Verdi, Brahms and Berlioz, Faure’s setting seems gentle and unassuming, yet it is this very quality of understatement which contributes so eloquently to the work’s universal appeal. Whether the Requiem is performed in one of its orchestral versions or simply with organ accompaniment, it is impossible not to be moved by the ethereal beauty of this humble masterpiece.❧
Lillian Scheirich
