notesby Dr. Richard E. Rodda October 27/28 ON THE TOWN 30 SECOND NOTES: The Des Moines Symphony s celebration of the Leonard Bernstein Centenary continues with Three Dance Episodes from the 1944 Broadway hit On the Town, about three sailors on leave and on the prowl in wartime New York City, and Prelude, Fugue and Riffs, written in 1949 for the legendary American jazz clarinetist Benny Goodman. Mozart s ingratiating Concerto for Flute and Harp, composed during a job hunt in Paris in 1778, features Des Moines Symphony principals Kayla Burggraf and Erin Brooker-Miller. Jean Sibelius s Symphony No. 1, one of the last great works of the Romantic century, closes the program. LEONARD BERNSTEIN Born August 25, 1918 in Lawrence, Massachusetts; died October 14, 1990 in New York City. THREE DANCES FROM ON THE TOWN (1944) On the Town first performed at the Adelphi Theater in New York City on December 28, 1944. Three Dances premiered by the San Francisco Symphony in February 1946, conducted by the composer. (Duration: ca. 10 minutes) In April 1944, Bernstein s ballet Fancy Free was introduced to great acclaim at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York. The plot, according to the composer, concerned three sailors on leave [in New York City] and on the prowl for girls. The tale tells of how they meet first one, then a second girl, and how they fight over them, lose them, and in the end take off with still a third. The ballet s setting and characters were the inspiration for him to try a new piece in a form that he had not then broached musical comedy. Soon after Fancy Free had been launched, he enlisted two old friends, the singer-dancer-lyricist Adolph Green ( old is relative Bernstein was not yet 26, but had known Green since they were teenagers) and Green s creative collaborator, Betty Comden, to write the book and words for the show, which they titled On the Town. They devised a story, perfectly suited to those war years, about three sailors in New York determined to see everything in the city during their 24-hour leave. On the subway, one of the sailors falls in love with the poster picture of Miss Turnstiles, and the boys set out to find her. Their efforts take them all over the city until they finally discover Miss
Turnstiles in Coney Island, where they learn that she is not the glamorous girl they expected from the poster, but a belly dancer. On the Town had a two-week tryout in Boston before opening at New York s Adelphi Theater on December 28, 1944 with Comden and Green in leading roles. It was a hit, running for 463 performances on Broadway; director Arthur Freed made it into a superb movie starring Frank Sinatra, Gene Kelly and Jules Munshin five years later. The show has been revived several times for Broadway, most recently in a Tony-nominated production in 2014. The Three Dances include The Great Lover, which captures the vibrant intensity of the bustling metropolis and the high spirits of the young sailors, Lonely Town (Pas de Deux), based on the expressive song of its title, and Times Square 1944, a joyous fantasia on New York, New York, the show s hit tune. The score calls for piccolo, flute, oboe, three clarinets, E-flat clarinet, bass clarinet, alto saxophone, three horns, three trumpets, three trombones, timpani, bass drum, cymbals, snare drum, triangle, woodblock, xylophone, drum set, piano and the usual strings consisting of first violins, second violins, violas, violoncellos and double basses. LEONARD BERNSTEIN PRELUDE, FUGUE AND RIFFS (1955) First performed during a CBS television broadcast on October 16, 1955, conducted by the composer with Benny Goodman as soloist. (Duration: ca. 8 minutes) Jazz formed an integral part of Leonard Bernstein s musical personality. The snap and sizzle and feel of jazz echoes through many of his instrumental works and theater pieces, from the Broadway shows On the Town, Wonderful Town and, especially, West Side Story, through the opera Trouble in Tahiti and the controversial Mass, to the Divertimento for Orchestra. Jazz was also the subject of two of Bernstein s incomparable television lectures during the 1950s: What is Jazz? on October 16, 1955 and Jazz in Serious Music on January 25, 1959. The earlier program featured the premiere of Bernstein s most overtly jazz-oriented instrumental piece, the Prelude, Fugue and Riffs, with Benny Goodman as soloist. The work begins with a Prelude for brass (five trumpets and four trombones augmented by percussion and bass) in conventional three-part form: a fast, driving section in mixed meters; a central passage in slow drag tempo; and a return of the driving opening music. The loosely built Fugue for the five saxes (without percussion or bass) that follows is a musical progeny of the jazz fugue in Milhaud s La Création du monde of 1923, which was the principal focus of Bernstein s 1959 television lecture. (The lectures are available on-line and in print in The Joy of Music [1955] and The Infinite Variety of Music [1959].) The clarinet soloist is introduced in the concluding Riffs for Everyone, which recalls themes from the two earlier sections and intertwines them with riffs (short, repeated melodic figures that are stock-in-trade for both jazz arrangements and improvisations) to bring the work to a rousing close. The score calls for two alto saxophones, two tenor saxophones, baritone saxophone, five trumpets, four trombones, piano, bass, timpani, tom-toms, woodblock, xylophone, vibraphone, and drum set.
WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART Born January 27, 1756 in Salzburg; died December 5, 1791 in Vienna. CONCERTO FOR FLUTE AND HARP IN C MAJOR, K. 299/297C (1778) First performance is uncertain. It may have occurred in Paris during summer 1778 by Adrien- Louis de Bonnières, Duc de Guines (flute), and his daughter, Marie-Louise-Philippine (harp). (Duration: ca. 29 minutes) Mozart went to Paris in 1778 looking for work. Dissatisfied with the lack of opportunity in Salzburg, especially the absence of a local opera house, he thought the music lovers of the sophisticated French capital might recognize his genius and provide him with a prestigious position that would allow him to write for the stage. He left Salzburg in September 1777, with his mother as chaperone, and proceeded through the towns of Augsburg (birthplace of his father, Leopold) and Mannheim. Mannheim was one of the great centers of instrumental music at the time, and Mozart learned much about the most recent advances in the art of the symphony both in composition and in execution during his stay. He also fell in love there with Aloysia Weber, an attractive singer whom he courted seriously but was discouraged from marrying by his father. After Wolfgang had dawdled in Mannheim longer than business dictated, Leopold ordered him on to Paris in no uncertain terms. Reluctantly, he left, and mother and son arrived in Paris on March 23, 1778. Paris was expensive and the money he brought from home was quickly spent, so Mozart had to take on students to sustain himself and his mother. One especially promising client introduced to him in April 1778 by Baron Grimm was Adrien-Louis de Bonnières, Duc de Guines, a music-loving diplomat who had most recently been the French ambassador to England. Mozart reported to his father that the Duke was a talented flutist and his daughter, Marie-Louise- Philippine, who was to be his pupil in composition, played the harp magnifique and possessed an astonishing musical memory that enabled her to learn 200 pieces by heart. A course of study for the girl, with a handsome payment, was agreed upon. Mozart found her to be a quick study on technical matters but utterly devoid of creative imagination. The girl s mind, it seems, was not on minuets that summer but on marriage, which Mozart learned one August afternoon when he went to give her a scheduled lesson and collect his promised payment. The housekeeper explained that the Mademoiselle was out making preparations for her wedding and that the Duke had left the city to go hunting and that all the money she had in the house was three louis d or and would he take that even though it was only half the agreed amount and please call again later for the rest, thank you. Mozart refused the money and stormed off in an understandable huff. It is not known how much, if any, payment he eventually received from the Guines family. Soon after he met the Guines, père and fille, Mozart composed for their use and delectation a Concerto for Flute and Harp with a view toward currying their favor in his quest for a local position. The sunny opening movement follows the familiar sonata-concerto structure Mozart did so much to bring to maturity in his many concerted works, though this score largely eschews the counterpoint and wide range of emotional expression that mark his later realizations of the form in favor of a bounty of
charming melodic episodes. The Andantino, wrote Alfred Einstein in his classic study of Mozart, is like a François Boucher painting, decorative and sensuous but not lacking in deeper emotions. The closing Rondo is one of those characteristically Mozartian movements so rich in melody that they once brought the following jealous response from the Viennese composer Carl Ditters von Dittersdorf: I have never yet met with a composer who had such an amazing wealth of ideas: I could almost wish he were not so lavish in using them. He leaves his hearer out of breath; for hardly has he grasped one beautiful thought when one of greater fascination dispels the first, and this goes on throughout. The score calls for flute, harp, two oboes, two horns and the usual strings. JEAN SIBELIUS Born December 8, 1865 in Hämeenlinna, Finland; died September 20, 1957 in Järvenpää, Finland. SYMPHONY NO. 1 IN E MINOR, OP. 39 (1899) First performed on April 26, 1899 in Helsinki, conducted by the composer. First performed by the Des Moines Symphony on May 8, 1949 with Frank Noyes conducting. Three subsequent performances occurred, most recently on May 6 & 7, 1989 with Sixten Ehrling conducting. (Duration: ca. 40 minutes) By the time he was 34, when he finished his First Symphony, Sibelius was already a celebrated national hero. He came to maturity when his native Finland was searching for its national cultural and political identity after centuries of domination by Sweden and Russia, and his music gave vent to the aspirations of his countrymen at the time when the Czar s representatives forbade inflammatory, patriotic words. To invest his works with a powerful nationalistic message, he turned for inspiration to the epic compilation of Finnish legends, the Kalevala. A series of stirring works based on those old stories preceded the First Symphony En Saga and Kullervo (1892), Karelia Suite (1893) and Four Legends, which include the haunting Swan of Tuonela (1893-1895). Finlandia was born in the same year 1899 as the E Minor Symphony. As early as 1897, Sibelius was granted an annual sustenance stipend from the Finnish Senate as recognition of his contribution to the life of the nation so that he would be free to pursue his creative work. Coming, as it does, in the last year of the Romantic century, Sibelius s First Symphony looks back for its formal precedents to the orchestral works of the great masters of the German tradition, specifically Beethoven and Brahms. In melodic material, instrumentation and certain points of style, however, it turns further east, to the music of Borodin and, especially, Tchaikovsky, whose Sixth Symphony had been composed only six years before and performed in Helsinki in 1894 and 1897. Against this Russo-German background, Sibelius placed his own strong musical personality in establishing himself as a symphonist with a work given to broad emotions and dramatic gestures in an expansive, Romantic mood. The first movement is introduced by a bardic clarinet solo played above a timpani pedal point. The sonata form proper is begun with the entry of the strings proclaiming the main theme, a typically Sibelian melody begun with a sustained note intensifying to a quick rhythmic flourish. A richly lyrical theme for violins and
cellos follows. The second theme, related to the main theme in shape and rhythm, is given by the woodwinds. The development section utilizes the thematic material heard in the exposition, to which are added the stern brass chords so characteristic of Sibelius orchestral technique. The recapitulation includes most of the material from the exposition given in heightened settings. The Andante, warm and lyrical, opens with a nostalgic melody for violins and cellos. The central section is led by the horn choir playing a serene theme above the undulating accompaniment of the harp and strings. The long closing section elaborates the opening theme. The Scherzo, in traditional three-part form (A B A), comprises brassy, energetic outer sections surrounding a slow, sustained, contrasting trio. The finale begins with the solo clarinet melody that opened the Symphony. Though the movement is marked Quasi una Fantasia, it follows sonata form, with an expressive second theme for strings in slower tempo. The functions of development and recapitulation are fused. The score calls for flutes, oboes, clarinets and bassoons in pairs, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, bass drum, cymbals, triangle, harp and the usual strings.