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James Galway!
March 7, 8 & 9

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Gioacchino Rossini 1792-1868

Overture to La cenerentola (Cinderella)
Gioacchino Rossini

Between 1810 and 1829 Gioacchino Rossini wrote an astonishing 38 operas, sometimes at a pace of three per year. Then, at age 37, he quit. For the rest of his long life he concentrated on his avocation as a gourmet cook and grew appropriately in bulk. He composed only sporadically and, except for church music, mostly small works he tossed off for the entertainment of his friends. He published over 150 musical miniatures in a collection that he called Péchés de vieillesse (Sins of old age)

A notorious procrastinator, Rossini composed La cenerentola in a mere 24 days in early 1817. The plot is a humorous take on the sentimental “virtue triumphant” story of the long-suffering heroine. The overture, as in most – but not all – Rossini operas, sets the mood of the action, both the sentimental and the comic, without any direct musical quotes. The opening is a reminder of the composer's predilection for woodwind solos, with its lovely clarinet duet. The next bit of music suggests the potentially tragic situation of the heroine. And the next theme gradually lifts the mood, while the climax of the Overture features the famous “Rossini Rocket,” effect, a gradual crescendo and pile-up of instruments.

Rossini had his own system for overture writing: never before the evening of the first performance. In his memoirs he recalls, “I wrote the overture to La gazza ladra on the actual day of the first performance of the opera, under the guard of four stage-hands who had orders to throw my manuscript out of the window, page by page, as I wrote it, to the waiting copyist – and if I didn’t supply the manuscript, they were to throw me out myself. Nothing excites inspiration like necessity; the presence of an anxious copyist and a despairing manager tearing out handfuls of his hair is a great help. In Italy in my day all managers were bald at thirty.”

Zoltán Kodály 1882-1967

Háry János Suite
Zoltán Kodály 1882-1967

Kodály composed the opera Háry János in 1926, basing the plot and much of the music on Hungarian folk material. In doing so, he made the melodies and the story of the yarn-spinning soldier into a national treasure. Kodály even incorporated into the score the cimbalom, a Hungarian folk instrument similar to a hammer dulcimer, commonly used by the Gypsies. The highly nationalistic flavor of the opera has prevented it from establishing worldwide popularity, but the Suite is a chestnut and especially suitable for introducing elementary school children to orchestral music.

The opera consists of a series of scenes based on Háry János’s fantastic and self-promoting tales of adventure, in which he rescues the Emperor Franz Joseph’s daughter – also Napoleon’s wife Marie Louise – tames a wild horse, cures the old Emperor, leads his army against Napoleon, whom he fights single-handed and takes captive. Although Marie-Louise offers herself and half the empire as a dowry, Háry chooses to remain faithful to his girlfriend Ilka.

The Suite opens with a mighty orchestral sneeze, an Eastern European folk tradition that marks the ensuing story as a tall tale. The sneeze leads into the Prelude, based on a single mock-morose theme that becomes increasingly melodramatic. The second movement, “The Viennese Musical Clock,” uses only the upper brasses and woodwinds together with the percussion, piano, celesta and bells.

In the third movement, “Song,” a nostalgic folk melody initiated by a solo viola and taken up as a series of orchestral variations, indicates that Háry, while on foreign adventures, has not forgotten his home. This scene also prominently features the cimbalom “The Battle and Defeat of Napoleon,” recounts Háry’s single-handed rout of Napoleon’s army. It begins with a raucous march interrupted by a bizarre trumpet call. A tuba solo spoofs the Marseillaise. After Napoleon’s defeat the opening march returns, played on a whining saxophone (“Napoleon’s Lament”).

The fifth movement, “Intermezzo,” again uses an authentic folk song featuring the cimbalom with the full orchestra and a horn solo in its middle section. The dazzling Finale, “The Entrance of the Emperor and His Court,” is set in the rhythm of the verbunkos, the preeminent indigenous Hungarian dance music of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, used also by the Austro-Hungarian army as military recruiting music. It brings Háry’s musical autobiography to a farcical end.

John Corigliano b. 1938

Pied Piper Fantasy
John Corigliano b.1938

A native of New York, John Corigliano came by his music talents honestly. His father, John Sr., was for 23 years concertmaster of the New York Philharmonic and his mother was an accomplished pianist. John, Jr. studied at Columbia University and the Manhattan School of Music; he subsequently worked at New York’s WQXR radio station and as an assistant director at CBS-TV.
Corigliano first came to prominence as a composer after winning the chamber music prize at the 1964 Spoleto Festival for his Sonata for Violin and Piano. Since the 1970s he has emerged as a successful and popular classical composer whose works are frequently and widely performed. From 1987 to 1990 Corigliano was composer-in-residence with the Chicago Symphony, a tenure that culminated in his powerful Symphony No.1, his personal response to the AIDS crisis. Currently he holds the position of Distinguished Professor of Music at Lehman College, City University of New York and, in 1991, was named to the faculty of The Juilliard School. In 2001 his Symphony No.2 for string orchestra, an expanded version of his 1995 String Quartet, won the Pulitzer Prize for music.

Corigliano composed the Pied Piper Fantasy on commission from flutist James Galway, who premiered it in 1982. Galway’s love of the penny whistle gave Corigliano the idea of composing a piece based on Robert Browning’s poem on the medieval legend of the Pied Piper of Hamelin. It is the story of a piper who claims he can exterminate the town’s rats by causing them to follow his playing until they drown in the river. When he accomplishes the feat, however, the smug townspeople stiff him. He then begins a cheerful march, luring the town’s children to follow him out of town into a cave where they disappear forever.

For Corigliano, the idea of a programmatic fantasy-concerto based on the Pied Piper legend became a fascinating structural challenge. Finding the simple tale insufficiently nuanced to be converted into a virtuosic flute concerto, Corigliano elaborated on nearly every aspect of the story: the Piper’s initial unsubstantiated claim, the resulting difficulties in subduing the rats and the argument with the burghers. Corigliano wrote, “I had to modify the story a bit, and I included battle scenes between the Piper and the rats and other elements that could set the soloist’s fingers racing.“ The Pied Piper Fantasy takes the art of tone painting to its apex. Corigliano fashions a clearly recognizable musical rendition for each element of the tale. The seven movements include:

1. Sunrise and the Piper’s Song – The sunrise incorporates the high, skittering, rat-like sounds of the night. A loud outburst of the orchestra heralds dawn, and the soloist plays The Piper’s Song. As the day ends, the night-sounds recommence.
2. The Rats – The rats appear in response to the Pipers Song. This section is characterized by squeaks in the winds and the bows of the violins bouncing on the strings.
3. Battle with the Rats – The Piper chases the rats through the orchestra in a game of hide and seek. He tries to scatter the stragglers with sudden sforzandos, but more and more appear, with Piper (flute) and rats (orchestra) “locked in angular embrace as the soloist imitates and challenges the rodents with their own musical motives.”
4. War Cadenza – The cadenza represents the Piper’s attempt to flush the rats from their lair. First testing the air, “He charges up a scale, anticipating flurrying rat-sounds at the top but finding only silence. He savagely attacks a note, expecting the hidden rats to scatter – but once again, silence. As he begins to relax, his song becoming increasingly lyrical. But he has been over-confident, as he is suddenly beset by millions of rats until he is overwhelmed.”
5. The Piper’s Victory – In despair the Piper improvises a lament, which incorporates fragments of The Piper’s Song. The hypnotic quality of the Song in its complete form finally overcomes the rats.
6. The Burgher’s Chorale – Corigliano represents the “smug-sounding, self-satisfied, self-important townspeople” with a chorale mimicking the musical style of the thirteenth century with the winds and a bass drum. The argument between the Piper and the Burghers pits the fluid strains of the flute against the burghers’ bombastic interruptions.
7. The Children’s March – In frustration, The Piper pulls a tiny tin whistle out of his pocket and plays the cheerful and lively Children’s March. When The Piper begins to trill, young flutists positioned in the audience answer his call. The flutists join with young drummers also in the audience, who, with other children gather on stage. As a final bid for attention, the burghers try an outburst of their chorale, but it is easily swamped by the piping children who, led by the Piper, march off the stage, back into the audience and eventually out of the hall. They play a counterpoint to an orchestral restatement of The Piper’s Song. As the children disappear, the lonely “night sounds” of the Prelude return in the orchestra.

Copyright © Elizabeth and Joseph Kahn 2008

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