Manchester Medical Orchestra 29 November 2014
St Ann's Church, Manchester
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791) - Concerto in G-major for flute and orchestra, K. 313 (1778)
I. Allegro maestoso
II. Adagio ma non troppo
III. Rondo: Tempo di Menuetto
Background
The first of Mozart’s flute concertos was the product of the young composer’s time in Mannheim, whilst on an extended tour of Europe’s musical cities. This was far from a happy time for him, as work and personal affairs took a turn for the worst. He was largely snubbed by the prestigious Mannheim orchestra, and the death of his mother and martial rejection by his future wife’s sister led him to turn his energies to the flute, of which he had never been particularly fond. Famously, he wrote to his father on 14 February 1778 that “I become quite powerless whenever I am obliged to write for an instrument I cannot bear”. That said, his testy relationship with his father, and later production of an entire opera titled The Magic Flute, suggest that his dislike of the instrument was not as serious as some commentators have suggested. A very convenient commission from the Dutch surgeon and amateur flautist Willem Britten de Jong offered 200 Gulden for a number of works for flute. The eventual fee was, in fact, a miserly 96 Gulden, perhaps reflecting de Jong’s displeasure at being technically inadequate as a player of Mozart’s flute music, and also Mozart’s youthful arrogance in simply presenting his old oboe concerto as one of the ‘new’ flute concertos.
Nonetheless, the G major concerto is among the most graceful and eloquent of Mozart’s works for soloist and orchestra, and suffers from far fewer saccharine connotations than the much-loved clarinet concerto. It is scored for strings, two oboes (substituted for flutes in the second movement) and two horns in addition
The music
The concerto is in the traditional three movement layout. The first, in sonata form, opens with a full orchestral statement of the proud but singing first theme (below). This is then taken up by the soloist, along with a more subtle, sighing theme, punctuated by brief orchestral comments. The development passage leads the music through a series of new and frequently minor keys, passing around the circle of fifths whilst maintaining a constant sense of poise and charm. The movement is neatly closed by a vigorous restatement of the original themes and a virtuosic cadenza for the soloist.
The second movement is far more introspective. It is written in a very slow four beats in a bar, although frequent demisemiquaver runs in the violins give a sense of fluidity and forward movement. The relatively slow tempo affords the soloist great opportunity for articulative expressivity, and a twice-occuring descending theme gives the music a particularly wistful colour. Another theme hints at Gluck’s Orfeo et Euridice, and its Dance of the Blessed Spirits. As before, a cadenza of the soloist’s own invention reflects on the main themes of the movement and brings it to a close.
The finale, in rondo-form, opens as a stately minuet (right), before the soloist launches the music away from polite court music and in a far more dynamic direction with a syncopated idea (below). Considerable demands for finger and lip dexterity are made of the soloist throughout the movement. Mozart eschews any temptations towards a boisterous end, instead opting for a lyrical and perhaps somewhat abrupt conclusion to the concerto. In hindsight, this work surely makes for convincing proof that the composer’s famed comment on the flute was more an obstinate outburst at being put to work by his father than a reflection of his real views.
Further reading and listening:
Mozart’s Flute Concerto No 1 in G major K313 – The Mannheim School and the language of music: tiboresque.wordpress.com/2013/09/02/299/
The brilliant flautist Emmanuel Pahud directs the Haydn Ensemble of Berlin from the behind the flute: www.youtube.com/watch?v=8zPkWVqdJXI
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) - Symphony No. 3 in Eb major, Eroica, Op. 55 (1805)
I. Allegro con brio
II. Marcia funebre: Adagio assai
III. Scherzo: Allegro vivace
IV. Finale: Allegro molto – Poco Andante - Presto
Background
There are few works of art with a genesis as familiar as the Eroica. Its earliest roots are in Beethoven’s ballet The Creatures of Prometheus (1801), in which the titular hero brings to life two statues and civilises them through the arts on Mount Parnassus. The final movement of the symphony is entirely based upon the final dance of the ballet. The remainder of the symphony was sketched in the year or two following, neatly coinciding with the composer’s growing admiration of Napoleon. Beethoven was far from a political activist, but he held strong ideals of Liberté, égalité et fraternité and so Napoleon represented the perfect hero for his Heroic symphony. By 1804, Beethoven’s score was complete, in two copies. On 20 May, his pupil Ferdinand Ries burst into his house with the news that Napoleon had proclaimed himself Emperor of France. As Ries remembered:
...I saw this symphony on his table...with the word "Buonaparte" inscribed at the very top of the title-page and "Luigi van Beethoven" at the very bottom... I was the first to tell him the news that Buonaparte had declared himself Emperor, whereupon he broke into a rage and exclaimed, "So he is no more than a common mortal! Now, he too will tread under foot all the rights of man, indulge only his ambition; now he will think himself superior to all men, become a tyrant!" Beethoven went to the table, seized the top of the title-page, tore it in half and threw it on the floor.
The other edition of the score still survives, and is famed for its title page, on which the enraged Beethoven deleted the name ‘Buonaparte’ so ferociously as to tear through the paper. Instead it bore the title Sinfonia Eroica / per festeggiare il souvenire di on grand Uomo (to celebrate the memory of a great man).
The other crucial context of this symphony is as the light at the end of the tunnel of despair he found himself in around October 1802, when he wrote his famous ‘Heiligenstadt Testament’. It is in this letter to his brothers that he notes his suicidal ideations due to encroaching deafness, but resolves to live for the sake of his art.
The symphony itself represents a hugely important strophe in the history of music, and indeed art, in its role as a ‘monument for posterity’. It is longer, more complex and more significant than anything which went before. Barry Cooper suggests that the first movement describes ‘the lifelong struggle and ultimate triumph’ of the hero, the second his death, his resurrection in the third, and taking his place among the immortals in the finale.
The music
The groundbreaking first movement begins with two ringing chords of E-flat major, a key richly associated with heroism (as is the prominent use of a large horn section throughout the piece). Then begins a remarkably simple theme in the cellos (below), which forms the spine of much of the movement. It is an unmistakeably romantic, heroic theme, but is quickly followed by more lyrical subthemes. As well as on the macro scale, Beethoven’s uninhibited genius is evident in his diversions to remote keys (E minor is a long way from E-flat major). After a repeat of the exposition, the development section is unusually long, with an F-minor fugato marking the start of a long and dramatic uphill struggle. The recapitulation of the first theme is so longed for that the second horn famously enters four bars prematurely – Ries spotted this at the first rehearsal and admonished the horn player, to which an infuriated Beethoven growled that it was supposed to sound like that. After further development material, we eventually reach the coda, one of the most joyous moments in the symphony. The strings, and then the woodwind, play a skipping, optimistically rising and falling scale above the chief theme in a passage of sublime beauty.
Much has been written about hearing the memorial to the fallen hero in the funeral march second movement. It opens with a bleak violin theme (below) above gravelly double bass tread. A rising triad on the oboe, invoking memories of the first movement, offers a brief glimmer of optimism before even gloomier development. This is dark, distraught music, eventually choking on itself much like the slow movement of Dvořák’s New World symphony.
The third movement abruptly breathes new life into the symphony, with spritely, fresh woodwind themes rising out of skittish string figures. A pack of hunting horns appear in the trio, ringing out boisterous hunt calls from the bottom of the section upwards.
The finale follows the Prometheus narrative quite closely. It begins with a stormy outburst, before statuesque string pizzicato introduces the accompaniment to the Prometheus theme. A set of variations on this follow, before the woodwind breathe life into the statues with the theme itself (right). Increasingly animated variations ensue until the music works itself to a breathless frenzy. The woodwind then recap a particularly lyrical, tender account of the Prometheus theme. Here, perhaps, is a reflection on the sorrow of the slow movement, for it is from this wistful, slower passage, with violins daring to offer optimistic fragments, that the most heroic of the symphony arises. The same theme appears once again this time stated with stirring dignity and grandeur in the horns. A brief passage of dreaminess, and then a moment of restless self doubt, are swept aside most emphatically by the triumphant coda, which is all blazing drums and brass at a breathtaking speed.
From the Heiligenstadt Testament
‘...For six years I have been a hopeless case, aggravated by senseless physicians, cheated year after year in the hope of improvement, finally compelled to face the prospect of a lasting malady (whose cure will take years or, perhaps, be impossible)...
‘I was compelled early to isolate myself, to live in loneliness... and yet it was impossible for me to say to men speak louder, shout, for I am deaf. Ah how could I possibly admit such an infirmity in the one sense which should have been more perfect in me than in others, a sense which I once possessed in highest perfection... what a humiliation when one stood beside me and heard a flute in the distance... but little more and I would have put an end to my life - only art it was that withheld me, ah it seemed impossible to leave the world until I had produced all that I felt called upon me to produce, and so I endured this wretched existence - truly wretched... perhaps I shall get better, perhaps not, I am prepared...
‘As soon as I am dead if Dr. Schmid is still alive ask him in my name to describe my malady and attach this document to the history of my illness so that so far as possible at least the world may become reconciled with me after my death...
‘I speak from experience, it was virtue that upheld me in misery, to it next to my art I owe the fact that I did not end my life with suicide...
Further reading and listening:
Barry Cooper: Beethoven – After Heiligenstadt (1802-03)
The Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra’s superb Editions app has an excellent ‘Beethoven and the Revolution’ eMagazine for iPad
Claudio Abbado conducts the Berliner Philharmoniker: www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dhde5I6NOM
Forthcoming performances of the Eroica: http://bachtrack.com/4001/find-events/work=56=1
