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JoAnn Falletta Plays Vivaldi
April 16, 17 & 18, 2008
Click on the  to hear the musical examples.
Maurice Ravel
1875-1937
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Pavane pour un infante défunte, Op.64
(Pavane for a dead Infanta)
Maurice Ravel
Of Basque origin but raised in Paris, Maurice Ravel came from a musical family who encouraged his abilities from a young age. He gained admission to the Paris Conservatoire at age 14, but he never got along with his teachers, his free spirit and unconventional musical ideas running counter to the school’s conservatism. By the time he graduated in 1903, he was already a well-established composer, but five attempts to win the coveted Prix de Rome – the obligatory passport to success with the French musical establishment – came to naught, creating a scandal when it was revealed during his last attempt that all the finalists were composition students of a single professor.
Composed for piano in 1899 and premiered by his close colleague Ricardo Viñes in 1902, Pavane pour une infante défunte was Ravel’s first success with the general public, especially in the salons of Paris. The title mystified his colleagues and listeners, who could think of no instance of a royal Spanish funeral dance. Ravel himself, however, explained it clearly: “I let myself be led into writing that title because of the pleasure I got from the sound of the words.” Ravel transcribed the work in 1910 for full orchestra, and there have since been numerous transcriptions for various instrumental combinations.
Starting with the Menuet antique of 1895, Ravel frequently liked to pattern the framework of his music after courtly dance forms from the Renaissance, the Baroque or the Classical eras. The pavane, thought by some to originate from the Spanish “pavón” (peacock) because of the stately movements of the dancers, probably originated in early sixteenth-century Venice, from the Italian “pavano” or “paduano,” both referring to the neighboring city of Padua. The dance, however, became especially popular in Spain. According to pianist Vlado Perlemuter, a friend of Ravel, the composer was often annoyed at the excessively slow tempi of some artless pianists. After a particularly dragging performance Ravel pointed out that it was the infanta that was supposed to be dead, not the pavane.
The Pavane is in ABA form and consists of three themes that are similar in nature, except for the fact that the first two themes can easily represent a dance,  while the second theme is halting, almost a recitative.
Antonio Vivaldi
1678-1741
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Concerto for Guitar and 2 Violins in D Major, RV 93
Concerto for Guitar and Viola in d minor, RV 540
Antonio Vivaldi 1678-1741
It is well known that beginning in 1703 and intermittently for many decades, Antonio Vivaldi served as music factotum at the Pio Ospedale della Pietá in Venice, an institution devoted to the care and education of abandoned, orphaned and indigent children. In addition to his duties as virtuoso violinist, violin teacher, orchestra director and instrument purchaser, Vivaldi served as resident composer, producing hundreds of works for various instruments and ensembles, including about 500 concerti, often at a rate of more than two per month. The resident girls were trained in both string and wind instruments, including the organ; as part of their training Vivaldi composed concertos for every instrument and instrument combination. Many of them were apparently written with specific girl soloists in mind.
What is often overlooked, however, is that Ospidale also housed boys, teaching carpentry, blacksmithing and other trades. We have no idea whether the boys’ program was as successful as the girls’ since the names of the artisans who worked in Venice’s palaces and churches are generally unknown.
Vivaldi saw to it that his music reached far beyond the boundaries of Venice. Around 1711 an Amsterdam firm issued his first published concertos as Opus 3, entitled L’estro armonico (The Harmonic Fancy), a set of 12 concertos, four each for one, two or four violins, four of them with added cello. They are at the boundary between the old tradition of the Sonata da chiesa (church sonata) with its stately slow-fast-slow-fast movements, and the newer three- movement concerto form (fast-slow-fast). L’estro armonico was a sensation, becoming the most influential music publication of the first half of the eighteenth century. J.S. Bach admired these works and transcribed some of them as harpsichord concerti.
One thing is certain: Vivaldi did not write these two concertos for the guitar, but rather for the lute. A round-bellied plucked string instrument, available in a range of sizes, with a long neck and as many as 24 strings, the lute’s origin is probably the Arab oud brought to Spain by the Moors during the Middle Ages when much of Spain still lived in multicultural harmony. The lute took Europe by storm during the Renaissance, remaining popular until the mid-eighteenth century. For a good summary on the lute’s history, go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lute. Nor did Vivaldi write for the viola, but rather the viola d’amore, a member of the viol family of bowed string instruments, but without frets. Of the same size as the viola, it has a flat back and usually seven playing strings, as well as some sympathetic strings. In modern times, Paul Hindemith played the viola d’amore and also composed for it a Kleine Sonata (Little Sonata) and the Kammermusik No.6. One of the biggest problems with these two instruments is that performers spent most of their time tuning the many strings. In modern performances they are routinely substituted by guitar and viola.
There are many guitar transcriptions of Vivaldi’s lute music, particularly of RV 93, and as many heated arguments over the composition of the orchestra and the realization of the harpsichord part of the figured bass.
Most of Vivaldi’s concertos were not published in his lifetime, making it is nearly impossible to date them. It is true for RV 93 as well, but for RV 540 we have a bit more information. The Sachsische Landesbibliothek in Dresden owns a volume containing its manuscript, entitled:
“Concertos for several instruments played by the girls of the charitable asylum of the Pietà before His Royal Highness the Most Serene Frederick Christian, Royal Prince of Poland and Electoral Prince of Saxony. Music by Don Antonio Vivaldi, maestro de 'concerti at the aforesaid asylum. In Venice in the year 1740.”
Both concertos are in Vivaldi’s usual three movement, fast-slow-fast form, each movement based on a single theme, or ritornello. Note that the themes for all three movements are rearrangements of the same few pitches. The Guitar and Violin Concerto are as follows:
Movement 1:
Movement 2:
Movement 3:
For the Guitar and Viola concerto:
Movement 1:
Movement 2:
Movement 3:
Richard Strauss
1864-1949
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Suite from Le bourgeois gentilhomme, Op. 60
Richard Strauss
Max Reinhardt was one of the most celebrated producers in the early part of the twentieth century. One of his great successes was the Dresden premiere of Richard Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier. Strauss and his librettist, Hugo von Hofmannsthal wanted to thank Reinhardt for his efforts with a “little Molière affair” by creating a modern adaptation of the French dramatist’s comedy Le bourgeois gentilhomme. Molière’s comedy revolves around Monsieur Jourdain, an arriviste and a fool, whose vain attempts to acquire the trappings of the aristocracy run up against the marital goals of his daughter with Cléonte, her decent but middle-class suitor.
Hofmannsthal reworked and shortened the text and Strauss composed music, much of it in the style of Jean-Baptiste Lully (1632-1687) who had composed a comedie-ballet for the same play. The work turned out to be a little short for an evening’s entertainment and Hofmannsthal suggested adding a 30-minute opera, Ariadne auf Naxos, an unlikely mix of a typical eighteenth-century heroic-mythological figure and commedia dell’arte characters. The composite work, however, turned into a nearly six-hour-long unwieldy production that left everyone unhappy.
Strauss and Hofmannsthal then decided to separate the mismatched pair, completely revising Ariadne auf Naxos into a tragedy and harlequinade with a new commedia prologue. But the Le bourgeois gentilhomme part did not fare as well and did not find its way into the standard repertoire. It has survived mainly as the suite that Strauss adapted from it in 1918.
Although employing his own harmonic language, Strauss succeeded in capturing the mood and atmosphere of the seventeenth century by the use of traditional Baroque dances, delicate instrumentation and the use of continuo (in this case a piano, since the harpsichord revival was still in the future). The nine movements of the suite are:
1. Overture to Act I: Instead of the stately ouverture accompanying the entrance of Louis XIV at any entertainment, Strauss opens with a bustling theme associated with M. Jourdain. Strauss adds to the music satire by using this theme as a lumbering cantus firmus. There follows a lyrical oboe melody symbolizing the lovers.
2. Menuett – The Dancing Master: A true Baroque minuet with a twentieth-century flair accompanies M. Jourdain’s hilarious dancing lesson.
3. The Fencing Master: The polonaise meter, the trumpet flourishes and violin glissandi suggest posturing with an epee rather than a real fencing match.
4. Entrance and Dance of the Tailors: A gavotte suggests the pompous tailors as they attend to M. Jourdain’s outlandish attire. A solo violin plays a waltz while M. Jourdain’s theme (bassoons and trombones) bumbles around in the background.
5. The Menuett of Lully: Solo oboe, flute, violin and cello are featured in this movement.
6. Courante: A solo violin and cello start off this dance in canonic form that adds more and more instruments.
7. Entrance of Cléonte (after Lully): Strauss borrowed Lully’s music for this movement, originally accompanying dialogue in the play.
8. Prelude to Act II. Another gavotte opens the Prelude. The gallant style has a whimsical quality about it, appropriately reminiscent of Strauss’s other delusional hero, Don Quixote.
9. The Dinner (Table Music and Dance of the Kitchen Boy): The finale is Strauss’s pièce de résistance, in which he crowns the satire with some musical jokes of his own. The solemn opening is meant to accompany the scene in which Cléonte disguises himself as the son of the Turkish sultan, thereby assuring M. Joudain’s consent to the marriage. The orchestration is that of the eighteenth-century Viennese imitation of Turkish Janissary bands It continues as a pompous variation on M. Jourdain's theme. There follows a sentimental waltz for solo oboe and violin, The Rhine wine arrives to the briefest of quotes of Wagner’s “Rhine” Leitmotiv from the Ring of the Nibelungen. The next course, a rack of lamb, is heralded by the sheep passage from Don Quixote. Of course, the lovers cannot be totally ignored; for them, Strauss included a beautiful extended cello solo. He recommences the satire, however, with the next course of larks and thrushes, with another self-quote from a discussion on the topic from Act 1 of Der Rosenkavalier, plus a snatch of “La donna è mobile” from Verdi’s Rigoletto. The final exuberant waltz, danced by a kitchen boy bursting out of a cake, suggests Der Rosenkavalier but doesn’t quote it directly. And lest we forget that this is M. Jourdain’s party, his own theme rumbles throughout.
Copyright © Elizabeth and Joseph Kahn 2008
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