Inside Aurora
Sam Hollister
Sam Hollister is the founder and artistic director of Aurora Collaborative. Read his program notes ahead of the Brahms series on April 26th.
Although Johannes Brahms (1833-1897) is indeed a ubiquitous name and has always been a universally respected composer, joining the ranks of figures such as Bach and Beethoven—his story is somewhat more obscure. Several legends of his life do make their way into music lore, such as his rise to popularity at the young age of 20 after having been discovered by Robert Schumann; or his subsequent life-long obsession and relationship with the latter’s wife, composer Clara Schumann; or his uncompromising self-enforced standards on composition that led him to destroy or leave unpublished many of his works. But what we hear less about is the end of his life.
In 1890, having completed four already-immortal symphonies, two overtures, four concerti, a few dozen pieces for chamber ensembles, dozens more works for piano and organ, and hundreds for voices or choir, Brahms told a friend that he “had achieved enough.” In that year, he declared his String Quintet in G Major to be his final work. But this inclination to retire from composition seems to have been disturbed by one singular event: a March 1891 performance of the Meiningen Court Orchestra featuring Weber’s Clarinet Concerto No. 1 in F Minor. Richard Mühlfeld was the clarinetist, and in his instrument and virtuosity was Brahms’s defunct compositional muse instantly reincarnated. That summer, Brahms travelled to his summer cottage in Bad Ischl and began to frantically compose music featuring the rich sound of his new friend Mühlfeld’s instrument.
This period of writing produced, first, the Clarinet Trio, for clarinet, cello, and piano, which ends our program. Then followed his Clarinet Quintet, a work for string quartet and clarinet. Feeling as though he had exhausted his ability to blend clarinet with strings, he followed this with his Clarinet Sonata No. 1 in F Minor, for clarinet and piano, which opens our program, and then a second sonata in Eb Major.
If the notion of reneging on such a determined retirement is surprising, then the unparalleled richness and depth of these late pieces serves as a clear justification. Brahms had discovered a sound through his Mühlfeld-muse that he had theretofore explored only cursorily. In the words of Brahms’s friend Eusebius Mandyczewski regarding Brahms’s treatment of the clarinet, “it is as though the instruments were in love with each other.” •
Makayla Lane singing Lascia ch’io pianga
Sam Hollister is the artistic director of Aurora. Read his program notes for the latest concert below. You can also watch the videos from the concert at this link!
Lascia ch’io pianga (George Frideric Handel)
Handel’s famous aria from the opera Rinaldo is, perhaps, more storied than practically any other aria from the operatic repertoire. The ubiquitous melody wound its way into no fewer than three of his vocal works: Almira (1705), an opera featuring the melody as a sarabande; Il trionfo del Tempo e della Verità (1707-1737), an oratorio featuring the melody in aria form, but slightly more optimistic; and, most famously, Rinaldo (1711), in which the melody is formulated into a full and lamenting aria. This version is what we will perform today.
The present arrangement, for flute, violin, clarinet, piano, and voice, is not too distant from what might have been imagined in the original, unspecified instrumentation. Handel’s original scoring was for voice and figured-bass accompaniment, enabling the aria to be easily embedded in a variety of musical contexts (as it ultimately was).
Cinq Petits Duos for flute, violin, and piano (César Cui)
It might not be obvious from the sound of this suite, but César Cui dedicated this suite of parlor trinkets to Grand Duke Mikhail Alexandrovich and Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna of Russia in 1897. Despite his French-styled name and suite title, César Cui was actually Цезарь Антонович Кюи, member of Russia’s “Mighty Handful,” also known as “The Five.” These five Russian composers, also including Balakirev, Mussorgsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, and Borodin, were a composer’s alliance operating from 1856 to 1870. Their mission was to create a distinctly Russian sound in the classical repertoire, with condescension thrown to the traditional formalists, such as Mozart and Bach, and praise granted to the brooders, Glinka and Berlioz. It is all the more surprising that, in light of this lifelong mission, Cui would return to this very relaxed parlor style in the later year of 1897. It seems as though here, in the chamber setting, he found respite from the exhausting labor of reinventing a musical culture, which he attempted in his massive and mighty operas.
Suite for Violin, Clarinet, and Piano (Darius Milhaud)
Whereas Cui was a member of “The Five,” Milhaud, funnily enough, was a member of “Les Six,” the Russians’ French counterpart. The latter group even took their inspiration from the Russian group. In Milhaud’s account of the group’s origination, he comments that the collection of composers was not entirely logical. He remarks that “Auric and Poulenc followed ideas of Cocteau, Honegger followed German Romanticism, and myself, Mediterranean lyricism!”
Mediterranean influence, indeed—but much more. Several years prior to composing this sprightly suite, Milhaud served as secretary to Paul Claudel, the French ambassador to Brazil. During this period in South America (1917-1919), Milhaud was immersed in Brazilian musical styles. Ultimately, he brought these styles to his compositional voice in works such as Le boeuf sur le toit (1920), and, further down the road, the present suite. In particular, listen for the Latin-inspired rhythms in the first movement, the incessant dance rhythm of the third movement, and the delightfully simple, parlor-tune folk song that closes the suite.
Tarantelle (Camille Saint-Saëns)
The standard tarantella lore says that, if you are bitten by a tarantula and begin to convulse, the best remedy is to be egged on by furious dance music in lockstep until you have danced out the demon, or poison, as it were. In reality, the story is not directly connected to the musical phenomenon. The musical genre of the tarantella originated as a means to quell “dancing mania,” a puzzling European phenomenon from the 14th through 17th centuries that was not certifiably connected to tarantula bites. Saint-Saëns’ rhythmic and incessant version of the dance leaves no confusion about the mania and frenzy that this lore suggests.
Written when Saint-Saëns was just 22 years old, the work brought the new composer a wave of recognition. At the time, the popular operatic composer Rossini introduced the work to a group of his fanatic admirers as his own work. Naturally, his supporters went nuts over the brilliance and vivacity of the composition. Casually, Rossini revealed that the composition was really Camille’s—and all were shocked and impressed by this stranger. Saint-Saëns later attributed much of his success to this “generous” gimmick by Rossini.
Sam Hollister is the artistic director of Aurora. Read his program notes for the latest concert below, and read more about the concert at this link. You can also watch the videos from the concert at this link!
Violin Sonata in E minor, movement I (Mozart)
Mozart’s only minor-key violin sonata, his twenty-first (1778), presents a starkly different character from those seen in his other instrumental works: this is his only instrumental piece in E minor. Written upon the death of Mozart’s mother, Anna Maria Mozart, the piece presents a tempestuousness and tension unseen in Mozart’s earlier works. This timeline is likely no coincidence: historian Hermann Abert writes of the mother-son relationship, “It was a pure and healthy spirit that reigned in the Mozart household… Wolfgang loved and admired [Anna Maria] to distraction.” It was in Paris, on a musical tour with her son, that she suddenly became sick and Mozart penned this unusual work.
The first movement, however, contains contrasts of a much more direct nature. As with all sonatas, this sonata centers around the relationship between two themes (termed “primary” and “secondary.”) The effect of juxtaposing these themes in any sonata is almost always the feeling of conflicting characters. Here, especially, Mozart’s characters are uncommonly defined in their opposition. First, the intense and volatile primary theme:
Then, the more standard, carefree, Mozartian secondary theme:
See if you can track these—and other—remarkably pronounced characters throughout the movement.
Emily Anthony and Sam Hollister rehearse the Mozart E minor Sonata before Contrasts
Unravel for harp and cello (Sam Hollister)
The piece is conceived with an interpretation of the word “unravel” in mind. In particular, I had in mind the idea of water: constantly unraveling from one state to another. The instrumentation is perfect for mimicking the sound of drops, so the suite opens and closes with this sound image in keeping with the cycle. Through the piece's development, we see water develop through several phases: naive, formative drops; a quaint and familiar pond; a ceaseless yet benign creek; a mighty force of nature dissolving and evaporating; and, ultimately, a reincorporation of its unraveled fibers as the cycle restarts. The water image is meant to act as an allegory, with the piece ultimately expressing the fundamental and intangible feeling behind the cycle of something weaving and unravelling over and over again, achieving almost-contradictory, contrasting states along the way.
Cellist Maia Ashley and harpists Alysa and Sarah Smith rehearse Unravel
Selections from Carousel and The King and I (Rodgers & Hammerstein)
“Text-painting” is the notion of writing music to accompany lyrics in such a way that the sounds mimic the meaning and imagery of the words. But what happens when a composer seems to intentionally disregard the text-based cues in a set of lyrics, composing music that evokes something contrasting? In the world of golden-age theater, Rodgers & Hammerstein mastered this technique as a tool for providing another level of character depth and nuance. Listen to what Makayla, our theater expert, says about the composer duo’s habits with this device of “intentional contrast” between words and music.
Soprano Makayla Lane sings during Contrasts
“Romance” from The Gadfly (Shostakovich, arr. Hollister)
Five Pieces for two violins and piano (Shostakovich, arr. Atovmyan)
Emily Anthony introduces our final pieces with a brief lecture on the life of Shostakovich.
Our two works by Shostakovich are what initially inspired the theme “contrasts.” The Five Pieces are delightful parlor tunes in the context of this collection. As you can hear violinist Emily Anthony discuss above, such a light and carefree character is antithetical to the typical idea of Shostakovich’s sound. In this relaxed context, the first movement—Prelude—seems to have a dark and brooding tone, much more serious and somber than the naïve dances and songs that constitute movements two through five.
But it turns out that this first movement originally was part of a soundtrack that Shostakovich wrote for the film The Gadfly. And this film has nothing in common with the sweet, young, pastoral sounds of the Five Pieces. The result is this: the brooding Prelude—a point of deep contemplation for the suite—takes on an opposite function in the soundtrack. By comparison to its dark and stormy neighbors in the soundtrack, the Prelude seems almost clichéd and young: a different identity indeed. To help illustrate this contrast, we begin with one of those potently emotional and moving excerpts from the film: the now-famous “Romance.” The subsequent movement you will hear is the Prelude, opening the Five Pieces. Notice how the movement, when compared to the “Romance,” feels relaxed but, when compared to the movements that follow, feels intensely grave.
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Clarinetist Sarah Dennewitz prior to the Contrasts concert
