Mozart and his Lyrical legacy



Samuel Barber
1910-1981

Samuel Barber
Adagio for Strings

For all the hoopla over Public Radio – whose affiliates are quickly converting their classical music programming to all-news-all-the-time – gone are the days when a commercial AM radio station had its own resident symphony orchestra, much less with the world’s foremost maestro to conduct a weekly broadcast. But in 1937, NBC inaugurated its live orchestral series under the baton of Arturo Toscanini. Musically conservative in taste, Toscanini, nevertheless, was eager to include suitably lyrical works by American composers on the series. Samuel Barber submittedfor the maestro’s consideration both the First Essay for Orchestra and the Adagio for Strings, an orchestral transcription of the Adagio from his String Quartet in b minor.

Not always a paragon of tact, Toscanini sent back both scores without comment, infuriating the composer. Barber profoundly revered the conductor and had endeavored to compose something worthy of him only to receive a snub. In actuality, Toscanini had kept the scores just long enough to commit them to memory and intended, as he told the composer’s friend Gian Carlo Menotti, to perform both works on the air. He premiered both on November 5, 1938.

The neo-romantic Adagio was an instant success and has remained Barber’s most popular work by far. Its emotional power lies in the imperceptible gradual buildup of tension by the repetition and elaboration of the stepwise theme in different registers and instrument combinations.

At the powerful climax there is a short pause after which the theme is restated in its original form and then winds down peacefully.



Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
1756-1791

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Eine kleine Nachtmusik, K. 525 (Serenade in G major)

During the last four years of Mozart’s life, he was continually short of money. In spite of years of effort, he was unable to obtain a court appointment to the kind of prestigious musical position he considered appropriate for his talents. He was forced, therefore, to become one of the first of music history’s great freelancers. His operas, so revered after his death, saw indifferent success, and there was a steady decline in commissions, in part the result of a general economic downturn in Vienna, in part reflecting changing musical tastes.

The musical form known as the serenade underwent many transformations between the end of the sixteenth century and Mozart's time. The term was first applied to nocturnal “musical greetings” and certain Italian madrigals but evolved by the mid-eighteenth century into a multi-movement instrumental composition. The term was used interchangeably with “divertimento” and sometimes even as the title of a single movement. Usually performed outdoors as background music, serenades were often scored for winds – in Mozart’s Vienna, particularly the wind octet (or Harmoniemusik). The structure of the movements, however, was similar to that of other multi-movement chamber and orchestral pieces (the string quartet and the symphony), although generally lighter in mood and complexity. That being said, in one instance, Mozart transcribed note-for-note his Serenade in C minor for wind octet, K. 388 as the String Quintet, K. 406. This serenade and the Serenade in B-flat, K. 361 “Gran Partita” for thirteen wind instruments, are major works of great musical depth.

With his serenade Eine kleine Nachtmusik, Mozart brought the form back indoors, since it was scored for two violins, a viola, a cello and a double bass – or multiples thereof – and would be hard put to compete with outdoor noise. According to the autograph, Mozart composed it in Vienna in August 1787, at the same time that he was working on his opera Don Giovanni. In the personal catalogue of his compositions, Mozart listed it as Eine Kleine Nacht-Musick (although the surviving manuscript has no title). Originally it was a five-movement work, but the second movement, a minuet and trio, was either removed by the composer or was lost sometime before 1800. The occasion or commission for which he composed it is unknown, but one theory states that it was for one of his closest friends at the time, Gottfried von Jacquin, for whom he had already composed a number of other works. The four-movement version was first printed in 1826/27 with the title "Serenade."

Eine kleine Nachtmusik represents a marked contrast in mood and musical complexity in comparison to Mozart's other works written around this period such as the G minor Quintet, K. 516 or Don Giovanni. It harks back to the simpler style of the divertimenti and serenades of his Salzburg period.

The first movement is in paradigmatic sonata allegro form and is frequently used as a model for music appreciation classes. Starting off with a fanfare-like motive, the first theme is a composite of four distinct melodies, a common Mozart practice.

Mozart uses the supporting second theme,

however, for the most of the development.

The Romance is a song without words beginning with a refrain

that separates two verses. The refrain itself, however, is constructed like a da capo aria with a contrasting middle section

Each verse of the Romance is set to completely new music

The Minuet

and Trio contrast detached and legato articulation.

In the final Rondo, Mozart tinkers with the form so that a piece of the refrain

forms a part of the two episodes

and the coda that concludes the piece.



William Schuman
1910-1992

William Schuman
Symphony for Strings (Symphony No. 5)

In addition to being one of the most productive American composers of the twentieth century, composing works in every genre, New York born William Schuman was also one of America’s most influential music educators and administrators. As President of the Juilliard School of Music from 1945 to 1962 he completely revamped and modernized music education, fusing music history and theory into a single coherent four-year course with the music itself as the basis for study and performance. He also founded the Juilliard String Quartet, which became the model for many quartets-in-residence at American colleges.

From 1962 to 1969 Schuman served as president of the Lincoln Center, a position that gave him great power to mold the direction of the new institution, which he used with imagination and flair. He subsequently retired to devote himself solely to composition. Think of what American music would have lost had Schuman followed his initial dream to become a major league baseball player!

Schuman’s compositions until 1934 were mostly popular songs, including some to lyrics by Edward B. Marks and Frank Loesser. But in 1930 he heard a concert conducted by Arturo Toscanini that made him abandon his studies in the School of Commerce of New York University and pursue the serious study of music. In the early 1930s he underwent intensive training in composition and conducting here and abroad. In 1938 Aaron Copland showed Schuman’s Second Symphony to Serge Koussevitzky, who went on to become his champion.

Schuman belonged to a generation of American composers known as “traditionalists” or “Neo-Romantics,” which included Aaron Copland, Roy Harris, Howard Hanson and Samuel Barber. The progenitor of this group was, of course, Charles Ives, who initiated the incorporation of popular and strictly American elements into his idiosyncratic and distinctive mode of musical expression. But this next generation, many educated in Europe, tried to create American music that was also universal. “We wanted… to write music with a largeness of utterance, wholly representative of the country [Walt] Whitman had envisaged,” said Copland, but at the same time they never forgot or ignored their roots in the European tradition. They produced large symphonic works in classical forms, but with an expanded melodic and harmonic vocabulary.

Composed in 1943, Commissioned by the Koussevitzky Foundation and dedicated to the memory of Mme. Natalie Koussevitzky, the Symphony for Strings quickly became Schuman’s most frequently performed work. Only after the composer had written three more symphonies did the work acquire a number.

The two most striking characteristics of all three movements of the Symphony are its consistently contrapuntal texture and its sharply syncopated rhythms. Canons and fugues abound, recalling the contrapuntal tradition of the Baroque. Schuman favors lengthy themes that build up considerable tension by delaying the cadence. The first movement opens with a long fugue subject consisting of jagged intervallic leaps and choppy syncopation; the reiteration of the little “Scottish snap” figure gives a sense of unity to the otherwise meandering melody.

Schuman’s second theme is another fugue that offers a mild contrast (primarily in rhythm) according to the sonata allegro tradition.

The second movement, marked Larghissimo, begins with an introduction leading into a melody of almost a full minute in length accompanied by a soft pizzicato ostinato in the cellos and basses.

The witty rondo finale brings back the energy, jerky rhythms and counterpoint of the first movement.

When not fulfilling its role as a main theme, the rondo tune shows up as a contrapuntal countermelody.

Schuman plays around with the open-string tuning motive and a canon (with inversion) on an Ivesian bit of Americana.