Manchester Medical Orchestra 29 April 2013
Johannes Brahms (1833-1897): Academic Festival Overture, Op. 80 (1880)
Background
Though far from being an academic himself, Brahms spent a summer in his youth with the composer-violinist Joseph Joachim around the university at Göttingen. Under the pretext of reading some light philosophy, Brahms spent much time studying in various beer halls. Here he learnt the various student drinking songs which form his delightful Academic Festival Overture.
Brahms wrote two diametrically opposed concert overtures in the summer of 1880, the Academic, Opus 80, and the Tragic, Opus 81, later remarking that “One laughs while the other cries”. The laughing Academic was written as a musical thank-you note to the University of Breslau, who had awarded the now successful composer an honorary doctorate of music the previous year. Three years before that he had turned down the same award from Cambridge, nauseated by the thought of the sea crossing and the fussing Brits on the other side. By the time Breslau called, though, Brahms had completed his Requiem, first piano concerto and two symphonies, and both his mature style and good humour are audible in the overture.
The music
The Overture, according to the composer, is ‘A very boisterous potpourri of student drinking songs’. The songs themselves are as follows:
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Wir hatten gebauet ein stattliches Haus - Lamenting the authorities’ banning of the revolutionary Students’ Union at Jena University post-Napoleon
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Fuchslied – To be sung during the fox hunt, a student initiation involving freshers ‘riding’ chairs while senior students attempt to set fire to their hair momentarily before extinguishing with beer
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Der Landesvater – For use during a ritual involving running swords through hats
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Gaudeamus Igitur – The definitive academic hymn, taken from the Roman text De Brevitate Vitae
The various themes are presented in entertaining scoring. After a quiet, skittish introduction and radiant account of Wir hatten, the music erupts with a vigorous tutti. The Fuchslied is then taken up, firstly by the great chieftain of the woodwind race, the bassoon. His comic parp quickly descends into a chaotic mêlée. The three songs then compete with each other in turn, passing through a furious development in which all three are combined. From a quiet Landesvater a large crescendo ascends to another brassy foxhunt, and, finally, the magnificent Gaudeamus appears in luxuriously full scoring.
Brahms would remain an enthusiastic purveyor of beers for the rest of his life. The image on the cover of this manual shows him pleasingly full-bellied in his middle age, accompanied by a red hedgehog, a cartoon inspired by the thirsty composer’s fondness for the Red Hedgehog tavern in Vienna.
Antonín Dvořák (1841-1904): Symphony No. 5 in F major, Opus 76 (1875)
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Allegro ma non troppo
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Andante con moto
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Andante con moto – Allegro scherzando
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Finale: Allegro molto
Background
Few composers’ symphonies can match Dvořák’s for being quite so split in popularity. Numbers 6-9 enjoy prominent positions in concert seasons and television adverts, whereas numbers 1-4 are best known to those in possession of a PhD and an anorak. Number 5 sits in the middle: unjustly neglected, but somewhat easier to get to know than its elder siblings. It was written in the wake of what must have seemed a turning point in the young composer’s career: Dvořák went from relative poverty to financial security almost overnight when Brahms took up his cause. Both an annual stipend from the Austrian government and a favourable relationship with the publisher Simrock were won thanks to Brahms’ influence. As a result, the fifth symphony was written within about five weeks.
The ease with which the notes flowed from the pen seems apparent throughout the symphony, as does a sense of youthful freedom. Czech-flavoured themes with touches of exotic chromaticism abound, but full resolution is repeatedly denied until the very last pages of the piece. More than any other Dvořák symphony, though, the fifth can claim to be his Pastoral, with nature springing from the pages throughout.
The music
The first movement is built around very simple, almost childish themes. The first, given by clarinets in the very first bar, is based around a broken chord which seems to combine bird song with a hint of fanfare. The latter is emphasised by a crescendo to a pompous tutti, but Dvořák denies the possibility of this settling in, undermining it with a descending chromatic figure. The next theme, a somewhat slithering and unsteady idea, appears in the violins and paves the way for a stormy development in which the first theme is passed through a number of different keys. The recapitulation
reasserts the brashly cheerful atmosphere briefly, before the music shies away and the movement fades to a close as soft as its beginning.
The second, third and fourth movements are all begun by cellos. The slow second has a soft, wintry quality in its principal theme, lightly melancholic with occasional glimpses of light and one or two momentary hints of darkness. As with the first movement, no particular atmosphere is allowed to settle for long before being usurped, leaving an ambivalent impression. After a small pause, the same mood continues into the third movement, which begins at the same tempo as the second as the cellos search for more enduring light. This is found in a rambunctious folk dance, delightfully scored for the woodwinds. The trio contains a succession of gorgeous tunes amid bouncy dotted rhythms, bringing to mind Beethoven’s ‘Happy gathering of country folk’ dance in his own Pastoral symphony (interestingly in the same F-major key as this symphony).
The finale begins with a furious statement in the cellos and basses, and a tempestuous, minor-key chase begins. The resolution into F-major seems to be hiding just beneath the surface, but we are denied it until surprisingly late. When it does appear, it is essentially the same as the original, merely shifted up a semitone . Once again, though, Dvořák repeatedly refuses to allow the resolution to settle, as the melody loses itself in chromatic untidiness. After a few attempts to get around this, the music tries another avenue: a beautifully romantic theme for the clarinets, topped by soft violins. The storm reappears with a rude gesture from the horns, and the furious chase recommences. Further cat-and-mouse battle ensues between turmoil and gentleness. Eventually, the music slows for the final woodwind broken chords (recalling the very first bars of the whole work), and it seems that the symphony is setting itself for a quiet finish as the storm subsides, again not unlike Beethoven’s Pastoral.
But just as it begins to sound like the last note of the hushed ending is approaching, Dvořák plays his trump card. A quick tempo returns, with the strings taking up the theme from earlier in the movement. The stroke of genius is in repeating only the first bar of that theme, leaving its destination ambiguous for a few moments: are we heading for catastrophe or triumph? The answer, based on the same early theme, is given by the horns in the most joyous of conclusions. The arrival of spring, figuratively and perhaps also in Dvořák’s career, is stated emphatically.