Vivaldi: The Four Seasons
PROGRAM NOTES
An accomplished violinist, Antonio Vivaldi left an indelible impression on his audiences. A witness at one of his performances remarked, “He added a cadenza that really frightened me, for such playing has not been heard before and can never be equaled: he brought his fingers no more than a straw's breadth from the bridge, leaving no room for the bow—and that on all four strings with imitations and incredible speed.” Not surprisingly, Vivaldi was one of the central figures in the development of the concerto, a musical genre that perfectly complemented his era’s fascination with virtuoso playing. Pitting solo performer against an orchestra, the concerto thrusts the soloist onto center stage, showcasing the prowess of the player while stretching the capacity of the instrument to its limits.
While Vivaldi penned hundreds of concertos, he is most famous for the set of four grouped under the title Le Quattro Stagioni, or The Four Seasons. Written around 1717, the concertos were published in 1725 in a collection entitled Il Cimento dell’armonia e dell’inventione (The Trial Between Harmony and Invention), Op. 8. The work was popular in Europe throughout Vivaldi’s lifetime; as one critic wrote in 1740, “Who does not know the Four Seasons of Antonio Vivaldi?” Ironically, modern audiences didn’t— until the work was revived during the 1960s. As the title of Op. 8 suggests, The Four Seasons presents an interesting tension between standard musical structure and compositional creativity. Although the concertos fulfill the basic requirements of the genre, consisting of three movements (fast—slow—fast) containing both ritornello sections for the orchestra and flashy solo passages, the majority of the musical content corresponds to sonnets that were published with each concerto. Whether Vivaldi wrote the sonnets before the music or vice versa is not known.
La primavera (Spring), Op. 8, No. 1, RV 269
The opening Allegro announces the arrival of spring, depicting twittering birds and murmuring streams. A thunderstorm briefly interrupts the tranquility, but peace is soon restored. A goatherd sleeps with his faithful dog beside him in the Largo, while rustic bagpipes, nymphs, and shepherds dance in the concluding Allegro.
L’estate (Summer), Op. 8, No. 2, RV 315
An oppressive heat opens the Allegro non molto; a few birds still manage to sing, cautiously, in the blazing sun. Their calls seem to foretell a violent storm, which fills the shepherd with dread. The second movement, Adagio e piano - Presto e forte, depicts his growing awareness of the approaching tempest. In the concluding Presto, the stormarrives with thunder, lightning, and violent hailstorms that flatten the ripened corn.
L’autunno (Autumn), Op. 8, No. 3, RV 293
A celebration of the harvest is the subject of the first movement, in which the peasant sings and dances, Bacchus’s flowing bowl intoxicates, and “many a reveler sinks in Morpheus’s arms.” Celebration yields to complete relaxation in the Adagio molto, while the Allegro represents the exhilaration of hunters on a chase—and their quarry’s terror.
L’inverno (Winter), Op. 8, No. 4, RV 297
The final concerto depicts the unique features of the coldest season of the year. The opening Allegro illustrates the chill of being outside in unrelenting winds and frosty snow, while the pleasure of sitting next to the warm hearth is the subject of the Largo. Contentment is quickly replaced with the ironies of the season: slipping on the ice in spite of having exercised extreme caution, feeling the draft of a cold wind inside despite having closed all the windows and doors. As the sonnet wryly concludes, “this is the winter, such are its delights.”
Rebel: Les Elémens
The son of Jean Rebel, a court musician, Jean-Féry Rebel astonished the composer Lully and Louis XIV with his violin playing at an extremely early age. In 1705, he joined Les Vingt-quatre Violons du Roi, and remained extremely active at Versailles throughout his career. Not surprisingly, his compositions for the violin are among his lasting legacies: Rebel was the first French composer to use double-stops. A contemporary description of his playing provided by Le Cerf de la Vievielle shows both the level of his virtuosity and the extent to which nationalistic fervor propelled discussions about music at the time: “Rebel truly has a part of the Italian genius and fire, but he has the taste and the sense to temper them by the French wisdom and tenderness, and he has abstained from the frightening and monstrous cadenzas which are the delight of the Italians.”
Although Rebel turned over his musical responsibilities at Versailles to his son in 1727, Prince de Carignon managed to coax him out of retirement in 1737 to write the descriptive symphony Les Elémens (The Elements). Although Rebel was not known as a musical maverick in his lifetime, Les Elémens—the last piece he composed—has inspired revolutionary statements from scholars and critics alike. Some writers, looking ahead to nineteenth-century works like Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique, describe it as the first example of program music. Others push ahead even further, proclaiming Les Elémens a precursor of the Wagnerian “leitmotif.” Indeed, from its opening chord, Les Elémens stands apart. Its story—the creation of the world from the four elements earth, air, fire, and water—was not new; other ballets and masques had tackled the subject. And other composers had written dramatic music: Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons, for example, was performed in Paris about ten years before Les Elémens was written. But unlike many other composers writing descriptive works, Rebel ventured outside traditional boundaries of genre to tell the story. As the composer explains in his preface to the work, all musical resources are channeled towards dramatic expression:
The introduction to this Simphonie…is Chaos itself, the confusion that reigned between
the Elements before the instant when, obeying unchanging laws, they had taken
the places assigned to them in the Natural order. In order to designate each Element in
the chaos, I resorted to the most recognized conventions. The Bass expresses the Earth
by its slurred notes to be played with a tremolo (secousses); the Flutes by their
melodic traits…imitate the course and the murmur of the Water; the Air is painted by
the sustained sounds followed by trills played on the petites flutes; finally, the Violins
by their liveliness and brilliance represent the action of Fire.
The distinct characteristics of each Element can be recognized, separated or intermingled, in all or in part, and in the diverse repetitions that I have named Chaos (Cahos) which mark the efforts of the Elements to extricate themselves one from the other…I have dared to undertake to join to the idea of the confusion of the Elements that of the confusion of the harmony. I have tried to have heard at first all the sounds mixed together, or rather, all the notes of the Octave united in a single sound. Following this, these notes climb together in unison in an altogether natural progression and, after a dissonance, one hears a perfect chord.
The cacophony with which the piece opens dramatically depicts the chaotic state Rebel describes. In the opening chords, every note of the D-minor harmonic scale is played simultaneously, producing discord that almost calls to mind the opening of the final movement of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. In contrast to this disorder, the rest of the movements are dances—ultimately taming the opening frenzy with stately, choreographed gestures.
Telemann: Wassermusik
In a city like Hamburg, located both on the sea coast and at the mouth of a major river, water provided the means for commerce. So when Hamburg commemorated the founding of its Admiralty on April 6, 1723, the celebration was a gala affair, complete with flags, cannons, and commemorative poems. A lavish feast was the highlight of the festivities—and Telemann’s Wassermusik provided the piece de resistance. The work was a triumph, and all the newspapers congratulated the composer for making “the important occasion all the more noteworthy and festive.”
In keeping with its theme, each movement of the piece centers on a different mythological figure associated with water: Thetis, sea goddess and mother of Achilles; Neptune, lord of the oceans; Naiades, or water nymphs; Neptune’s son Triton, a good-natured sea god who was not quite as important as his father; Aeolus, god of the winds; and Zephyr, the gentle god of the west wind. The last two movements focus on more concrete aspects of daily life in Hamburg: the ebb and flow of the tide, important both to the harbor and to the sanitation of the city, since it was the mechanism for cleaning the drainage canals; and a lively sailor’s dance.
Throughout the work, Telemann draws upon the starkly differing moods of each dance to characterize his subjects, heightening the effect with numerous musical devices. In the overture, “Turbulent Aeolus,” and “Ebb and Flow,” dynamic contrasts suggest tidal motion. In “Sleeping Thetis,” rocking triplet figures conjure up the image of the somnolent sea goddess, while other instruments tiptoe around her in stately dotted rhythms. In the movement that follows, Thetis awakens to a sprightly Bourrée. A languid Loure evokes the amorous Neptune. And dramatic splashes of tone color add the finishing touches: violoncello solos and emphatic bass punctuations illustrate good-natured Triton, while undulating flutes depict Zephyr, god of the west wind.
