Aria della battaglia
Andrea Gabrieli
b. Venice, Italy / c. 1532-3
d. Venice / August 30, 1585
Arranged by Mark Scatterday
Venice’s devotion to the arts made it one of the crown jewels of Renaissance Italy. Its cathedrals and public squares regularly witnessed elaborate festivals, rituals, and ceremonies. Two of the most important composers who spiced these activities with appropriately majestic music were relatives: Andrea Gabrieli and his nephew, Giovanni. Each served as principal organist at Venice’s primary cathedral, St. Mark’s, and both wrote pieces to be played within its imposing, gilded walls.
Andrea Gabrieli composed in all the major musical forms of the day, including masses, motets, madrigals, theater music, and keyboard works. The stirring Aria della battaglia (Battle Aria, published in 1590) is one of only two surviving pieces that he designed for large instrumental ensembles. In this case, he asked for wind instruments, but did not specify exact scoring. The arrangement to be heard at this concert involves the modern orchestral brass section.
The Aria follows a tradition of music – evoking or describing warfare – that enjoyed widespread popularity throughout the sixteenth century. Unlike most later pieces of this kind, it does not relate to a particular battle. It includes not only the expected fanfares and imitations of conflict, but also passages of remarkable beauty and subtlety.
Violin Concerto in D Major, Op. 61
Ludwig van Beethoven
b. Bonn, Germany / December 15, 1770
d. Vienna, Austria / March 26, 1827
Beethoven’s Violin Concerto is widely held to be the greatest piece of its kind, not simply because it is a fine concerto, but because it is a masterly composition, period. It was commissioned by 26 year old Franz Clement. This child prodigy had risen to the status of acclaimed soloist, and also served as Concertmaster and conductor of the pit orchestra in Vienna’s prestigious Theatre an der Wien for a decade. Beethoven reflected Clement’s refined, aristocratic style in the concerto he wrote for him. Although by no means an easy piece technically, its principal challenges lie in expressiveness, spirituality, and because of its broad dimensions, in sheer physical stamina.
Clement set a specific date for the premiere: December 23, 1806. Due to the foot-dragging casualness with which Beethoven regularly completed commissioned works, the first performance turned out to be virtually a read-through at sight. Clement’s playing drew raves from the press, but the piece itself received at best a lukewarm reception. It was only in 1844, when 13-year-old soloist Joseph Joachim demonstrated the concerto’s manifold excellences through his performances in London under Felix Mendelssohn’s direction, that it began to establish itself.
The expansive first movement bears a relaxed, leisurely expression. From time to time, moments of drama and unease provide contrast. The slow section, a set of variations on a lyrical theme, glows with Olympian warmth. The gracefully dancing final rondo, which follows on without a break, brings the concerto firmly and joyfully back to earth.
“From Bohemia’s Fields and Groves,” No. 4 from Má vlast (My Homeland)
Bedřich Smetana
b. Litomyšl, Bohemia / March 2, 1824
d. Prague, Bohemia / May 12, 1884
Smetana established the Czech branch of the folk-flavored Nationalist movement that sprang up during the mid-nineteenth century. His most important orchestral work is Má Vlast (My Homeland), a cycle of six thematically interrelated symphonic poems. He wrote that the fourth piece, From Bohemia’s Fields and Groves, “is a painting of the feelings that fill one when gazing at the Bohemian landscape. On all sides singing, both gay and melancholic, resounds from fields and woods: the forest regions, depicted on the solo horn; the gay, fertile lowlands of the Elbe valley are the subject of rejoicing. Everyone may draw his own picture according to his own imagination; for the poet has an open path before him, even though he must follow the individual parts of the work.”
Sinfonietta
Leoš Janáček
b. Hukvaldy, Moravia / July 3, 1854
d. Moravska Ostrava, Czechoslovakia / August 12, 1928
Janáček’s music is very much his own: quirky, mercurial, bursting with inventiveness and sharp contrasts. His most important compositions are his nine operas, compelling works marked by powerful emotions and melodies patterned on the rhythms of speech. Other major scores include two string quartets, choral works, and the spectacular Glagolitic Mass (1926) for chorus and orchestra. His most significant orchestral works are the rhapsody, Taras Bulba, and the Sinfonietta.
For a dedicated patriot such as Janáček, the declaration of an independent Czech state in the aftermath of the First World War fulfilled a lifelong dream. Eight years after the fact, he was still giving voice to his joy through the Sinfonietta. He declared that its purpose was “to express the free Czech citizen of today, in his beauty and joy, his strength and courage to advance through battle to victory.”
The initial inspiration came from fanfares he heard in 1925, at an open-air military band concert. Early the next year he received a commission to compose a fanfare for the Sokol Gymnastic Festival, to be held in Prague that summer. After deciding to make it the opening movement of a larger work, he sketched four further movements in just a few weeks. The title Sinfonietta aptly describes this work, which consists of five brief movements bearing little trace of traditional symphonic development.
By the time of the premiere, he adapted his conception into a tribute to his adopted city, Brno, and an embodiment of his happiness at its being freed from German occupation.
For the premiere, he supplied titles for the movements. They refer to locations in Brno: I: Fanfares; II: The Castle; III: The Queen’s Convent; IV: The Street; V: The Town Hall. He supplied further details in an essay entitled My Town: “One day I suddenly saw a miraculous change in this town…Over the town the light of freedom blazed, the rebirth of October 28, 1918! The blare of victorious trumpets, the holy quiet of the Queen’s Convent, night shadows and the gentle breezes from Green Hill. The beginning of upsurge and greatness in our town gave birth to my Sinfonietta which carries this understanding of my town – Brno.”
The Sinfonietta is an astonishingly bold and inventive creation, especially for a composer past 70. The sound-world alone is immensely impressive, as are its spontaneity and its satisfying cyclical structure. Janáček establishes a sense of awe from the very first bar, as the ensemble he created for the opening fanfare – nine trumpets, two bass trumpets, two tenor tubas and timpani – strikes up this majestic music. The fanfare promises an event of epic vision, of dynamic, barbaric splendor, and Janáček does not disappoint.
The ensuing movements include two scherzo-like, dance-influenced segments as the second and fourth portions. They frame a more moderately paced central movement which itself encloses an exhilarating, almost war-like central panel. An epic Finale crowns the score. Tension grows from the conflict between innocent and disruptive elements, but all is resolved by the spectacular return of the opening fanfare in augmented scoring, including strings, winds, and a further three trumpets.
© 2008 Don Anderson. All rights reserved.
