Strauss’ Theatre Music

Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall

Carlos Kalmar, conductor
David Ogden Stiers, actor
  Vivienne Elborne, script writer

FREDERICK DELIUS
Irmelin Prelude

Vital Stats

Composer: Born Jan. 29, 1862, Bradford, England; died June 10, 1934, Grez-sur-Loing, France

Work composed: 1931; dedicated to Delius’ friend and amanuensis, Eric Fenby

World premiere: Sir Thomas Beecham led the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in the Irmelin Prelude, which was performed as an interlude during a performance of Delius’ opera Koanga at Covent Garden on Sept. 23, 1935. The complete opera Irmelin, from which themes from the prelude were taken, was not staged until May 1953, almost 20 years after Delius’ death.

Oregon Symphony premiere: At these concerts

Instrumentation: 2 flutes, oboe, English horn, 2 clarinets, bass clarinet, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, harp and strings

Estimated duration
6 minutes

The cosmopolitan nature of music can summed up in the life and work of Frederick Delius. He is considered an English composer, although he spent much of his life in France and first established himself as a composer in Germany and Norway.

Born in Bradford, Yorkshire, to German parents who christened him Fritz Theodore Albert Delius, he later anglicized and shortened his name to Frederick Delius. In 1884 he moved to Solano Grove, Florida, near Jacksonville, to manage an orange plantation. There Delius studied composition with Thomas F. Ward, of whom he said: “[He] showed wonderful insight in helping me to find out just how much in the way of traditional technique would be useful to me … and there wasn’t much. A sense of flow is the main thing, and it doesn’t matter how you do it as long as you master it.” Aside from Ward’s tutelage, and time spent studying in Leipzig, Delius was essentially self-taught. While in Leipzig, Delius met the Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg, whose music and friendship Delius described as “a breath of mountain air.”

While visiting Grieg in Scandinavia, Delius became acquainted with the legend of Princess Irmelin, who spurns 100 suitors while awaiting her “perfect” husband, along with Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale, The Princess and the Swineherd. These two narratives formed the basis for Delius’ first opera, Irmelin, which he began composing in 1890. Although Delius completed Irmelin two years later, he was unable to mount a production or even interest a publisher in it, and it was not staged until almost 20 years after his death.
         In 1931, paralyzed and blind, Delius revisited the music of Irmelin and created an orchestral prelude based on some of its themes, which he dictated to his friend and amanuensis, Eric Fenby. The dreamy magical quality of the Irmelin Prelude is captured in the sensuous flow of music Delius learned from his youthful studies with Ward.

RALPH VAUGHAN WILLIAMS
Symphony No. 6 in E minor (revised version)

Vital Stats

Composer: Born Oct. 12, 1872, Down Ampney, Gloucester; died Aug. 26, 1958, London

Work composed: 1944-7, revised 1950; dedicated to pianist Michael Mullinar

World premiere: Sir Adrian Boult led the BBC Symphony Orchestra at the Royal Albert Hall in London on Apr. 21, 1948.

Oregon Symphony premiere: At these concerts

Instrumentation: 3 flutes (one doubling piccolo), 2 oboes, English horn, 2 clarinets, bass clarinet, tenor saxophone, 2 bassoons, contrabassoon, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, bass drum, cymbals, snare drum, triangle, xylophone, 2 harps and strings

Estimated duration:  30 minutes

“It never seems to occur to people that a man might just want to write a piece of music”

- Ralph Vaughan Williams

Ralph Vaughan Williams’ pique at the public’s insistence on a programmatic narrative for his Symphony in E minor is surprising, given that he named his early symphonies A London Symphony, A Sea Symphony and A Pastoral Symphony.

Ultimately, however, Vaughan Williams’ insistence on his Sixth Symphony’s lack of program is irrelevant; once a work of art is created and sent out into the world, it takes on a life and meaning of its own, often different from what its creator intended. Moreover, composers, like all creative artists, are shaped by the times in which they live. Vaughan Williams may not have consciously written a musical description of war and the aftermath of atomic destruction, but those events affected him nonetheless. And for audiences listening to this music at its 1948 premiere, the violence of World War II and the annihilation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki three years earlier clearly resonated.

If Vaughan Williams was concerned that his Sixth Symphony wouldn’t be taken seriously because it was perceived as expressing extra-musical elements, he needn’t have worried. Both the audiences and critical responses were overwhelmingly positive, and the Sixth Symphony was performed more than 100 times in its first two years. Today it is considered by many Vaughan Williams’ crowning achievement in the symphonic genre. As a critic for the Daily Telegraph wrote: “The sixth symphony in E minor takes a new direction. It will challenge every hearer. The adventurous energy is terrific; and, whatever words may be resorted to as a clue, the sheer musical means are compelling and engrossing. The music says that the soul of man can endure pain and face the thought of a remoteness beyond the outermost of the planets.”

Vaughan Williams violates both symphonic convention and our expectations of a Vaughan Williams symphony with this dark, often brutal, music. Its four movements are linked by a common note that connects each one to the next without a break. Of particular interest is the Scherzo, in which Vaughan Williams features the tenor saxophone; its sound in this movement has been variously described by critics as “nasty” and “sleazy.” The use of the saxophone may be an homage to the bandleader Ken “Snakehips” Johnson and his West Indian Orchestra, who died in the bombing of the Café de Paris in London’s West End in 1941.

“With regard to the last movement of my No. 6,” said Vaughan Williams, “I do not believe in meanings and mottoes … but I think we can get in words nearest to the substance of my last movement in ‘We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded by a sleep.’” This quote from Prospero’s speech from Shakespeare’s The Tempest effectively captures the ghostlike quality of the final movement, which Vaughan Williams, tellingly, referred to as an “epilogue.”

RICHARD STRAUSS
Suite from Le bourgeois gentilhomme, Op. 60

Vital Stats

Composer: Born June 11, 1864, Munich; died Sept. 8, 1949, Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany

Work composed: 1912; revised in 1916, 1917 and 1920

World premiere: The first version premiered on Oct. 12, 1912 in Stuttgart. The orchestral suite heard in tonight’s performance was first conducted by Strauss on Jan. 31, 1920, in Vienna.

Oregon Symphony premiere: At these concerts

Instrumentation: solo male actor, 2 flutes (both doubling piccolo), 2 oboes (one doubling English horn), 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons (one doubling contrabassoon), 2 horns, trumpet, trombone, timpani, cymbal, snare drum, bass drum, glockenspiel, tambourine, triangle, keyboard, harp and strings

Estimated duration: 60 minutes

Richard Strauss’ collaboration with librettist Hugo von Hofmannsthal yielded several successes, most notably Der Rosenkavalier. But one hit does not guarantee another, as the two men discovered when they tried (and failed, more than once) to produce a new version of Le bourgeois gentilhomme.

This comedy, by 17th-century French playwright and actor Molière, centers on the hapless Monsieur Jourdain, an ordinary man who unexpectedly comes into wealth. Despite his attempts to acquire all the trappings and mannerisms of a gentleman, Jourdain’s essential Philistine nature remains. Le bourgeois gentilhomme was a huge hit at its premiere on Oct. 14, 1670 (Molière played the title role himself), with incidental music by French Baroque composer Jean-Baptiste Lully.

Strauss and Hofmannsthal tried no less than three times to mount a theatrical version of Le bourgeois gentilhomme. The first attempt, in 1912, featured the play (with incidental music by Strauss) as a prelude to their opera Ariadne auf Naxos. The combination of a satirical play about the nouveau riche followed by a wholly serious (and lengthy) opera proved unworkable, for both artistic and logistical reasons. Four years later, Strauss and Hofmannsthal tried to combine the two works again in a different format, replacing Molière’s play with a new prologue that featured characters from Ariadne.

Dissatisfied with this version, Hofmannsthal persuaded Strauss to rework the 1912 play into a musical comedy. The drama was refashioned into three acts, removing all references to Ariadne. Strauss added to his 1912 incidental music. Unfortunately, this version, too, was unsuccessful. Finally, in 1920, Strauss created an orchestral suite from his original incidental music. This purely musical version premiered to enthusiastic audiences in Vienna, and was subsequently used to stage several ballet productions.

Le bourgeois gentilhomme brims with humor, wit and references to other musical works. The Arrival and Dance of the Tailors, Lully’s Minuet and the Courante pay homage to Lully and French Baroque style. In the final movement, The Dinner, Strauss pokes fun by quoting from Wagner’s “Rhine” music during the fish course, while the mutton is accompanied by a self-quote from the sheep music in Don Quixote and the fowl is served up with bird music from Der Rosenkavalier and a fleeting reference to Verdi’s “La donna è mobile.” The final scene, in which the kitchen boy leads the guests in a dance, concludes with, of course, a Strauss waltz.

© 2010 Elizabeth Schwartz

Program Notes by Elizabeth Schwartz

Elizabeth Schwartz is a Portland-based free-lance writer, researcher and musician. In addition annotating programs for the Oregon Symphony and other ensembles, she has also contributed to NPR’s Performance Today (now heard on American Public Media). Schwartz also co-hosts The Portland Yiddish Hour, heard at 10 a.m. Sundays on KBOO 90.7 FM. Email: schwartzelizabeth@yahoo.com.

Recommended Recordings by Michael Parsons

Delius: Prelude to Irmelin
Sir John Barbirolli-London Symphony Orchestra
EMI Classics 643122

Vaughan Williams: Symphony No. 6
Richard Hickox-London Symphony Orchestra
Chandos 10103 
OR
Paavo Berglund-Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra
EMI Classics 216146

Richard Strauss: Suite from Le bourgeois gentilhomme
Simon Rattle-Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra
EMI Classics 39399 
OR
Paavo Jarvi-German Chamber Philharmonic Orchestra, Bremen
Pentatone 5186060

These selected recordings are available at Classical Millennium, located at 3144 E. Burnside in Portland.