Hamburg Symphony Orchestra - State Theatre

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A Closer Look : The Romanc Era 6 JMW Turner, “Chichester Canal” (1828) ROMANTIC 1. displaying or expressing love or strong affection. 2. ardent; passionate; fervent. 3. imbued with or dominated by idealism, a desire for adventure, chivalry, etc. 4. (usually initial capital letter) pertaining to or characteristic of a style of literature and art that subordinates form to content, encourages freedom of treatment, emphasizes imagination, emotion, and introspection, and often celebrates nature, the ordinary person, and freedom of the spirit (contrasted with classical). 5. of or pertaining to a musical style characteristic chiefly of the 19th century and marked by the free expression of imagination and emotion, virtuosic display, experimentation with form, and the adventurous development of orchestral and piano music and opera. 6. fanciful; impractical; unrealistic. 7. imaginary, fictitious, or fabulous. Johanne Brahms’, whose work you will hear at the concert is a product of music’s Romantic Era (roughly 1800-1910). The Romantic movement encompassed not only music, but architecture, visual art, literature, dance, theater, and philosophy as well. The roots of Romanticism in music were in the preceding Classical Era, where 18th-century composers such as Mozart and Haydn perfected the musical expression of the Age of Reason. Their works emphasized clarity and proportion in both structural and harmonic language. In their orchestral works (as opposed to their operas), the music stood on its own, unconnected to ideas, images, drama, “People often complain that or other non-musical elements. music is ambiguous, that their During the Romantic Era, music moved ideas on the subject always seem from the abstract into the realm of the so vague, whereas everyone representational. Now it might tell a story, understands words. With me it is conjure an image, stir emotions. The genre exactly the reverse—not merely became known as “program music”— with regard to entire sentences, music that has an underlying narrative or but also as to individual words. non-musical meaning. The emotional These, too, seem to me so content was typically intense. This was the ambiguous, so vague, so era that gave us the operatic mad scene, unintelligible when compared the symphonic shipwreck, and the with genuine music, which fills revolutionary étude. Besides love, popular subjects in Romantic music included the soul with a thousand things nature, introspection, imagination, and the better than words.” supernatural. Political revolutions in Europe —composer Felix Mendelssohn during the 19th century created a wave of nationalism that was reflected in the music of the Romantic Era. Composers proudly integrated traditional music of their homeland into their works. Looking for a broader palette with which to paint their musical pictures, Romantic composers loosened and expanded the formal conventions of the Classical Period, as applied to form, melody, harmony, tonal relationships, and instrumentation. They still wrote symphonies, concertos, sonatas, and the like, but they also created symphonic poems, program symphonies, fantasies, nocturnes, impromptus, mazurkas, song cycles and other new genres that expressed their aesthetic ideas.
Vaughan Williams: 7 The Wasps Overture Wasps are not loveable insects. In the summer and fall, they swarm around visitors at street cafes, landing on whatever is sweet on the table and often enough in drinks. It is impossible to get rid of them without attracting even more of the creatures. This appears to have been the case in antique times as well, for the Greek dramatist Aristophanes, in his comedy The Wasps from 422 BC, used wasps as a metaphor for litigious citizens who took every opportunity to engage in legal battles. The historical background for this was an increase in the remuneration for citizens who served as trial judges. In ancient Athens, with its specific early form of democracy, being a judge was not an institutionalized profession, but rather one of the responsibilities required of full citizens. Following the laws of the city, judges arrived at their decisions after both parties in a case – the accuser and defendant or their representatives – had presented their positions. For this, the judge received a kind of expense allowance, which was increased by a third under the rule of Cleon. As a result, the willingness of the Athenians to go to court grew dramatically, which Aristophanes used as the point of departure for his comedy. He dealt with this situation in a highly satirical manner by making the chorus of amateur judges into wasps and the stylus with which the decision was written a wasp’s stinger. Ralph Vaughan Williams composed his incidental music in 1909 for a performance of The Wasps at Trinity College in Cambridge. He wrote not only the usual overture and interludes between scenes, but also set a number of complete scenes to music, so that the entire incidental music for the play lasts almost two hours. The music is rarely performed in its entirety, but Vaughan Williams himself arranged a suite consisting of five instrumental pieces. The suite begins with an overture that is in itself a splendid concert piece. The wasps can be heard immediately; the instruments as they enter conjure up a swarm of insects that buzz aggressively around the ears of the listeners. This introduction is followed by the spirited presentation of three themes sung by the chorus in the course of the play. This lively music exudes energy and high spirits. It was particularly important to Jeffrey Tate to bring music by an English composer to audiences on the Hamburg Symphony Orchestra’s American tour. Vaughan Williams’s setting of music for the ancient comedy is modern and delightful, full of striking instrumental effects without literally invoking antique musical conventions. © 1994 Columbia Artists Management Inc. Ralph Vaughan Williams was born in 1872 in the Cotswold village of Down Ampney. He attended the Charterhouse School followed by Trinity College in Cambridge. Later he was trained by Hubert Parry and Charles Stanford at the Royal College of Music. Until he was 32-years-old Vaughan Williams showed no desire to be anything other than an industrious and efficient church musician. Fortunately after a few years at his first professional post as organist at the St. Barnabas Church in London he was introduced to English folk music and his former interest in church music was overtaken by his passion for folk songs. This gave Vaughan Williams the materials he needed to build new musical works. Between 1905 and 1907 he wrote three Norfolk rhapsodies for orchestra and produced a major choral work, “Toward the Unknown Region” in the English style, however inspired by American poet Walt Whitman. He completed his first important piece of work just two years later—Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis. After the war he joined the faculty of the Royal College of Music teaching composition. He also became the conductor of the Bach Choir in London from 1920-1926. Premieres of his works became events of national significance. In the decade following World War I he composed numerous masterpieces still heard today. In 1935 he received one of the highest awards a composer can receive – the Order of Merit. He died on August 26, 1958.
Page 1 and 2: Hamburg Symphony Orchestra
Page 3 and 4: Meet the Orchestra 3 Founded in 195
Page 5: Guy Braunstein, Soloist 5 Violinist
Page 9 and 10: Meet the Composers 9 Born in 1833 i
Page 11 and 12: Decoding the Program Page 11 The pr

Hamburg Symphony Orchestra - State Theatre

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