March 28, 2004

Resonances
The theme this afternoon is America and its influence on great musicians. It is easy to be glib and rhapsodic when examining the effect the still “new” world had on composers, but the nineteenth century was close enough to the founding of the nation to merit that feeling. DeToqueville’s writings still resonated, though Anthony Trollope’s mother Fanny skewered the frontier crudity in “Domestic Manners of the Americans”.

Christopher Columbus landed in the Bahamas in 1492. The United States was born in 1776. From the Spanish priests and mercenaries to the English colonists and now modern America is a long step.

The wealthy Mrs Jeannette Thurber used the Columbian quater-centenary of 1892 as a peg for her cherished ideas of a national school of music. It is a measure of how far Dvorak had advanced on the international scene that she should have chosen him as her standard bearer. He accepted her invitation to be the head of the National Conservatory of Music from 1892 to 1895.

It had taken a lot of time and work. Born into a very poor family of butchers, Dvorak was not equipped to tangle with the great and powerful figures of the musical establishment. Even his hobbies were unpretentious. He raised pigeons and was an avid trainspotter.

As a young man Dvorak played the viola and earned his living in theater and opera orchestras. He began to compose very early. One of his first works was a piano quintet, also in A major, but not the one we shall hear today. He did not throw it away but used it as the springboard for the new work.

His style evolved gradually. At first he was overwhelmed by the music of Liszt and Wagner. For a while he hewed to the Classical line but eventually broke loose with his own distinctive voice, Romantic but firmly supported by the Classical structure and with folk music references.

Johannes Brahms’ support was crucial to Dvorkl’s development as a composer. As long as the latter seemed to be paddling in shallow musical water, eg the “Slavonic Dances”, Brahms beamed on him. Once he emerged as a very serious contender, Brahms was a little less enthusiastic. A Czech from a remote village should have the decency to keep his place. Brahms’ sponsoring of Dvorak, while genuine and sincere, had a patronizing tinge to it. Dvorak was always intuitive in his dealings with Brahms, and considered him to be a great friend and patron.

By the time Dvorak arrived in New York, democratic egalitarianism was past. New York was rapidly switching to the post-industrial, sophisticated city we know, alarming to a rather provincial musician from Prague, so he was heartened to find a crowd of Czechs awaiting him at the harbor and soon found his niche. The retreats to Spillville, Iowa, with its Czech farmers and familiar community were another safety valve for him. Within this framework, he absorbed Americana. It was profoundly stimulating.

Native American dances and music in Iowa delighted him. Negro spirituals were a revelation, filtered as they were through the highly trained operatic voice of Harry Burleigh. Dvorak, though unworldy, was not foolishly naïve. He saw the prejudices of the time and encouraged Burleigh, an African-American. Burleigh made it possible for a man like Paul Robeson to advance in the serious music world a few years later. Mrs Thurber also deserves credit for giving Burleigh a scholarship to her school.

The spirituals and other indigenous American tunes set Dvorak on the path of the “New World ” symphony. Even the chirping of a cardinal played its part. Dvorak incorporated the bird’s song in one of his compositions and an “Indian” melody in the slow movement of the E flat major string quintet. The landscape itself provided inspiration. The Larghetto of the violin sonatina reflects his feelings on seeing the Minnehaha Falls.

Tracing Dvorak’s precise influence on American music is controversial, almost a “growth industry” for some musicologists. Beside fostering black musicians’ talents, Dvorak also taught several white composers. One of the better known was Rubin Goldmark. Aaron Copland studied composition with Goldmark before going to Paris.

Antonin Dvorak died suddenly in May 1904, a hundred years ago this year. He had never lost his simplicity of manner nor his concern for the “little people”. These are some of the hallmarks of a democratic society. It is fitting that America should take note of his centennial.

Aaron Copland was born in Brooklyn, in 1900, four years before Dvorak died in Prague. The child knew nothing of the great Czech master who ten years earlier had lived in New York, taught and inspired many young Americans and written music of surpassing beauty during his brief stay. Even if he had, the musical world was undergoing such fundamental changes that Dvorak would soon become passé among the cognoscenti.

In true immigrant fashion, the Coplands had changed their name from Kaplan and lived above their store. Brooklyn was a shade more prosperous than the Lower East Side and the Copland children were given music lessons. Despite the universal contempt of bourgeois fathers for music as a profession, Aaron decided in his teens that this was what he wanted to do.

Copland absorbed the sounds of New York, particularly jazz, and then pursued his composition studies with Nadia Boulanger in Paris. This completely urban person later clothed his musical America in the semi-barbarous melodies of the plains and wilderness, folk dances and the work songs of roustabouts and cowboys. What was that all about?

The wide open West, antithesis of crowded cities, and the healthy young men on horseback who were to become the heroes of the nascent film industry may have tugged at him. A proud and heroic view of a great continent was still possible. The trans-continental railroad was only about forty years old in his childhood. Cynicism and disenchantment were not rampant.

There was a lot more to Copland’s music than “Rodeo” but the popular view remains. Partly this because he deliberately chose to work in an accessible style after a period of rather austere works. Political ideology might not have been central to his work but it would have been hard to escape it completely in the 1930s.

Aaron Copland 1900 - 1990 Appalachian Spring
Martha Graham wanted two new ballets in the early 1940s. She asked the Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge Foundation to commission music by Aaron Copland and another composer. Mrs Coolidge specified that Copland’s piece should be thirty minutes long and for twelve instruments.

The Copland ballet was to explore Peace and War using Graham’s Jungian theories, loosely grafted onto her obsessions with American colonial history, indigenous ritual, Puritanism and the rigors of the frontier.

Martha Graham wrote three versions of the script, giving the last one to Copland just as he had completed the music according to the earlier ones. In the final version there are four principal characters: the Bride, the Husbandman, the Pioneer Woman and a Revivalist with four women followers. In this version the drama is resolved as a compromise between remembrance and hope.

It has been assumed that the ballet is set in rural Pennsylvania. The title is not immediately connected to the action, but in “The Dance” from Powhattan’s Daughter in “The Bridge”, Hart Crane had written:

” O Appalachian spring! I gained the ledge;
Steep, inaccessible smile that eastward bends
And northward reaches in that violet wedge
Of Adirondacks!-wisped of azure wands”,

Martha Graham took the phrase from the poem because she liked its sound. Crane probably referred to a spring of water but Graham interpreted it to mean the season of spring.

Copland started out with the idea of writing for double string quartet and a piano, but gradually added a flute, clarinet and bassoon, taking him to thirteen instruments. Mrs Coolidge accepted this change.

To augment the uniquely American sound of his music, Copland chose a Shaker song, “Simple Gifts”, followed by a series of variations as the “Interlude”.

The complete ballet has eight episodes: “Prologue”, “Eden Valley”, “Wedding Day”, “Interlude”, “Fear in the Night”, “Day of Wrath”. “Moment of Crisis” and “The Lord’s Day”.

A year after the work had become extremely successful, Copland arranged it as a suite for orchestra. He omitted “Fear in the Night”, “Day of Wrath” and “Moment of Crisis”, attaching the end of the “Interlude” directly to “The Lord’s Day”.

The second world war was still on at the time with its emphasis on patriotic themes. He had written ” Fanfare for the Common Man”, and ” Lincoln Portrait” two years before. This new music continued his involvement with American sound.

The slow introduction or “Prologue” with its repeated-note entrance, its rising three note motif and the telescoped simple triads recall a very distant fanfare. Copland’s music symbolizes the “vastness” and “clarity” of American art.

The premiere took place in Washington in October 1944.

Antonin Dvorak 1841 - 1904 Piano Quintet in A major opus 81
Dvorak wrote this piece at the height of his powers, in 1887. A piano quintet balances the voices of the four string instruments and the piano better than in some other combinations. A piano trio constantly worries about the piano drowning out the violin and cello. Schumann may have been said to pioneer the piano quintet as a chamber genre.

Dvorak opens the work with a melting theme on the cello delicately accompanied by soft undulations on the piano. Within seconds one is jarred out of the contemplative mood it induces. The composer snatches it away and rushes into a bustling tutti. The ear longs for that theme to come again. When it does the violins have picked it up with new energy. Later the piano attacks the theme, followed by a sequel in triplets.

The second subject in C sharp minor is introduced by the viola. Dvorak also modifies the first subject’s return with subtle key changes, using A minor and F sharp minor at times.

In the slow movement a dumka (Slavic word meaning “utterance”) is used as a building block. Dumkas are always melancholy, and in free form. In this case, the subject is “narrow, pinched and inward- looking”, quite bleak.

Dvorak slowly elaborates on this with each return of the phrase. He never repeats himself as the movement develops. The movement has a well-defined formal structure which prevents it from degenerating into mere sentimentality. Some scholars consider that its structural treatment bears a very close resemblance to Schumann’s slow movement in the E flat major quintet, opus 44.

The scherzo is quite the opposite, rapid and in almost constant motion. It is described as a ” furiant”, a Czech dance which Dvorak used in the sixth symphony so effectively. On this occasion he holds off the characteristic double syncopations until the middle of the trio. The contemplative trio gives the listener a brief break from the pace before the scherzo returns.

Speed and excitement are also the hallmarks of the finale.There is considerable contrapuntal writing in this movement, even a short fugue. As it moves rapidly to its ending, Dvorak halts briefly in the coda, “reculer pour mieux sauter”. This breathing space allows him to re-build the energy and excitement even more vigorously before rushing triumphantly to the close.

Antonin Dvorak 1841 - 1904 Sonatina in G major for Violin and Piano opus 100
Dvorak wrote this delightful salon piece for his two elder children Otilie and Antonin Jr, but all his six children immediately took possession of it. All their names appear on the manuscript. It was written quickly between November and December 1893.

When he first went to New York, he and his wife decided to leave the children behind with the grandparents, as they were uncertain about what they would find in America. They missed the children badly and soon brought them over. The six healthy children were the center of their lives. They had lost their first two children a few weeks apart, while both were still very young, one in a tragic accident at home.

To celebrate the arrival of their children Dvorak decided to call this piece opus 100, when it was really only opus 98. He dedicated it “to my children to commemorate the completion of my hundredth work”.

The title “sonatina” is a little misleading. The work has four movements, a first movement in sonata form rather than the much simpler binary form associated with sonatinas, an incomparable slow movement and a richness of theme and invention which also belies that designation. In the first movement, a cheerful Moravian folk tune forms the second subject. It was one the children would certainly know and love.

The last movement moves at a very fast clip. It returns to its opening themes again and again after ranging vigorously through related keys and melodies which rise effortlessly from the one that went before. In everything except name it is a rondo in sonata form.