Program Notes - Flavors of France - March 19

Program Notes
March 19, 2011
By Composer in Residence
Bruce Brown

Tonight’s concert by the JSO explores the musical “Flavors of France” which, like its culinary delights, are numerous and varied.

The French journalist Marcel Rouff, a contemporary of Debussy and Ravel, once wrote "light, refined, learned and noble, harmonious and orderly, clear and logical, the cooking of France is, in some strange manner, intimately linked to the genius of her greatest men.” The same words could easily be used to describe French music.

Composers like Claude Debussy can also sound very mystical about their music. “Music is the expression of the movement of the waters,” he once said, “the play of curves described by changing breezes.” Another time he said “music is the silence between the notes.”

We hope you enjoy tonight’s banquet of music from France!



Roma Symphony

The composer of Carmen, Georges Bizet (1838 – 1875), wrote two symphonies, both in the key of C major. The first came in a burst of youthful enthusiasm when he was a 17-year-old student at the Paris Conservatoire. He toiled on the second for eleven years, and he was probably still dissatisfied with it when he died tragically at the age of 36.

In 1857 Bizet got a break that transformed the careers of many composers; he won the Prix de Rome, which would allow him to study for two years in Rome and a year in Germany at no cost. After his stay in Rome, he spent some time touring Italy and mapped out the scheme for a symphony. The first movement was to be dedicated to the city of Rome, the second to Venice, the third to Florence and the finale to Naples.

By 1861, he had written the scherzo, which was performed poorly on January 11, 1863 and received a frosty reception. It fared better in a second performance on January 18th, but Bizet had lost his ebullient confidence and the revising process began. The work in its present form wasn’t performed until after his death.



Pavane

Gabriel Fauré (1845-1924), probably best known for his glorious Requiem, was born into the humble family of a village schoolmaster in the Ariège district in southern France. When his musical talent became apparent he was sent to Paris to study, and he became an excellent organist and a professor of composition at the Paris Conservatoire. He was forced to retire by increasing deafness, but continued to write excellent music until his death almost 20 years later.

In a letter to his wife, Fauré wrote an intriguing account of the inspiration for his Pavane: "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."

Fauré wrote the Pavane during the summer of 1887 as a purely orchestra piece, but he soon decided to add choral parts and dance, probably to please his patron, Elisabeth, comtesse Greffulhe. The orchestral version received its première on November 25, 1888 and the choral version was heard only three days later at a concert of the Société Nationale de Musique. The full “choreographic spectacle” was first heard at a garden party held by the comtesse in the Bois de Boulogne, a beautiful park near Paris. The piece is most often performed in its purer original form, which is much more suited to the nostalgic beauty of the music.





Gymnopédie

The eccentric pianist and composer Erik Satie (1866-1925) was fond of paradoxical titles like Flabby Preludes for a Dog and Three Pieces in the Shape of a Pear. His unconventional music was often accompanied by strange performance instructions like “as light as an egg.”

Satie wrote three piano pieces called Gymnopédies in 1888. The title might refer to the war-dance festivals of ancient Sparta, known as Gymnopaedia, but the music hardly sounds like a war dance. It might just have been an exotic sounding word that caught Satie’s fancy.

By 1896, Satie had fallen on hard times and a rising star, Claude Debussy, arranged two of the Gymnopédies for orchestra to help draw attention to his friend. Some critics have suggested that Debussy changed the music from what Satie would have intended, but other scholars insist Debussy closely followed Satie’s own tastes in his orchestration.



“March to Scaffold” from Symphonie fantastique

The Symphonie fantastique of Hector Berlioz (1803-1869) is a landmark work in almost every sense of the word. The music is famous for the way Berlioz wove a poignant theme through all its movements and for innovations like the use of four timpani to simulate thunder and the first-ever inclusion of the tuba in the orchestra.

Berioz wrote a detailed program to explain his vision of the piece, saying in part: “the author imagines that a young, vibrant musician, afflicted by the sickness of spirit which a famous writer has called the wave of passions [la vague des passions], sees for the first time a woman who unites all the charms of the ideal person his imagination was dreaming of, and falls desperately in love with her…”

In the fourth movement, the March to the Scaffold, the artist, “convinced that his love is unappreciated … dreams that he has killed his beloved, that he is condemned, led to the scaffold and is witnessing his own execution…”

Berlioz wrote the Symphonie fantastique to express his love for the Irish actress Harriet Smithson after seeing her perform the role of Ophelia in Shakespeare’s Hamlet on September 11, 1827. Smithson refused to see him despite his numerous love letters, but when she heard the symphony, two years after its premiere on December 5, 1830, she was deeply flattered to be the object of such grandiose affection. The two were married on October 3, 1833, but their marriage was short and bitter. Be careful what you wish for!



Nocturnes

Music changed forever when Claude Debussy (1862-1918) appeared on the scene. “There is no theory,” he said famously, “you only have to listen,” and he proceeded to write music that his professors hated and audiences loved.

Debussy wrote his three Nocturnes within days of the dawn of the twentieth century, completing them on December 15, 1899. The movements we will hear tonight, Nuages and Fêtes, were first performed in Paris on December 9 of the following year.

In an introductory note to the music, Debussy said "The title Nocturnes is to be interpreted here in a general and, more particularly, in a decorative sense. Therefore, it is not meant to designate the usual form of the Nocturne, but rather all the various impressions and the special effects of light that the word suggests.”

Nuages, he said, “renders the immutable aspect of the sky and the slow, solemn motion of the clouds, fading away in grey tones lightly tinged with white. Fêtes, he continued, “gives us the vibrating, dancing rhythm of the atmosphere with sudden flashes of light. There is also the episode of the procession (a dazzling fantastic vision), which passes through the festive scene and becomes merged in it. But the background remains resistantly the same: the festival with its blending of music and luminous dust participating in the cosmic rhythm.”



La Valse

The music of Maurice Ravel (1875-1937) is often associated with dancing, and La Valse (“The Waltz”) was written in 1919 both as a dance and as a work about dance. Ravel said he hoped to create “a sort of apotheosis of the Viennese waltz,” but Serge Diaghilev, who had commissioned the music for his famous Ballets Russes, rejected the work saying it was not suited for the stage. Ravel was deeply hurt, and the music was not performed as a ballet until many years later.

Ravel himself said the music was inspired by the waltzes of Johann Strauss, and La Valse does capture echoes of glorious old Vienna, but it also carries a sense of despair that brings it into his own time in war-torn Europe.

Ravel also described his music with a program note inscribed on the score: "Through whirling clouds, waltzing couples may be faintly distinguished.” He wrote, “The clouds gradually scatter: one sees … an immense hall peopled with a whirling crowd. The scene is gradually illuminated. The light of the chandeliers bursts forth at the fortissimo .... Set in an imperial court, about 1855."

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