SEASONS
Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons” is some of the most popular music ever, but it has a cousin in the New World--Mark O’Connor’s “The American Seasons.” The Chamber Orchestra’s resident Baroque expert, Elisa Wicks, is the perfect choice to give us a fresh and enlightening take on the Vivaldi, while Concertmaster Jacob Klock fuses his amazing musical depth with his playful-but-formidable fiddle skills to bring a uniquely American flavor to a timeless idea. O’Connor’s “American Seasons” will be a great surprise if you have never heard it before.
Vivaldi The Four Seasons
Elisa Wicks, violin
Mark O’Connor The American Seasons
Jacob Klock, violin
Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons” is some of the most popular music ever, but it has a cousin in the New World--Mark O’Connor’s “The American Seasons.” The Chamber Orchestra’s resident Baroque expert, Elisa Wicks, is the perfect choice to give us a fresh and enlightening take on the Vivaldi, while Concertmaster Jacob Klock fuses his amazing musical depth with his playful-but-formidable fiddle skills to bring a uniquely American flavor to a timeless idea. O’Connor’s “American Seasons” will be a great surprise if you have never heard it before.
Vivaldi The Four Seasons
Elisa Wicks, violin
Mark O’Connor The American Seasons
Jacob Klock, violin
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Available digitally to subscribers and single ticket buyers November 22, 2020
How will the video concerts work?
Our musicians will be recording on each originally-announced concert date in a private, physically-distanced session at First Christian Church. The final recording will include information about the repertoire, reflections on what it is like to perform in this time of Covid-19, and more! The concert videos will be made available to our subscribers via private link on Sunday, September 27; Sunday, October 25; and Sunday, November 22; and you will be able to watch them at your convenience in the comfort of your own home. We hope you’ll sit and relax, grab something to eat and drink, and enjoy these performances, made just for you! In addition to the online video, each concert will be rebroadcast on KCME 88.7 FM. Tune in at 3 p.m. on the Sunday following each video release.
Our musicians will be recording on each originally-announced concert date in a private, physically-distanced session at First Christian Church. The final recording will include information about the repertoire, reflections on what it is like to perform in this time of Covid-19, and more! The concert videos will be made available to our subscribers via private link on Sunday, September 27; Sunday, October 25; and Sunday, November 22; and you will be able to watch them at your convenience in the comfort of your own home. We hope you’ll sit and relax, grab something to eat and drink, and enjoy these performances, made just for you! In addition to the online video, each concert will be rebroadcast on KCME 88.7 FM. Tune in at 3 p.m. on the Sunday following each video release.
SEASONS Program Notes by Mark Arnest
Overview: Antonio Vivaldi
Born March 4, 1678, Venice, Italy; died July 28, 1741, Vienna, Austria
Work Composed: ca. 1716-1717
The history of Antonio Vivaldi is almost palindromic, with his death in the middle: early glory–later neglect–death–continuing neglect–and now, renewed glory. From 1703 until 1740 – nearly his entire creative life – Vivaldi was employed as master of violin at Venice’s Pio Ospedale della Pietà (Devout Hospital of Mercy), a refuge for poor and orphaned girls. Here, in addition to gaining renown as a violinist, he composed prolifically: over 500 concertos, some 46 operas, and many other works. (He allegedly claimed that he could compose a piece of music faster than a copyist could copy it.) The 12 concertos of L'estro Armonico, published in 1711, made Vivaldi famous across Europe, influencing, among others, J. S. Bach, who transcribed 6 of them. But music was rapidly changing during this period, and by 1740 he was all but forgotten. He moved to Vienna to work for Charles VI, an old friend who’d become Emperor of Austria. But Charles died that year, nobody else wanted to hire Vivaldi, and he died, stranded in Vienna, the next year. For the next 200 years, Vivaldi would be little more than a name in music history books.
Obviously that is no longer the case. Today, Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons is ubiquitous, so that few of us can even recall the first time we heard it; but it’s a relatively late entry into the canon. Although it may have been broadcast as early as 1939, it was virtually unknown before the release of a recording made in late 1947 by violinist Louis Kaufman. A trickle of recordings and performances in the 1950s became the deluge that continues today.
A set of sonnets accompanies the concertos. (The unknown author may have been Vivaldi.) They are key to a full understanding of the concertos, because, in addition to being fully comprehensible simply as absolute music, these concertos are also program music, illustrating the sonnets’ imagery. For instance, in the first movement of Spring, the cheerful opening represents the poem’s opening line, “spring has come and with it gaiety”; the trills heard beginning in bar 13 illustrate the second line, “the birds salute it with joyous song”; the slurred 16th notes at bar 31 illustrate the third line, “and the brooks, caressed by Zephyr's breath, flow meanwhile with sweet murmurings”; the repeated notes at bar 44 illustrate the lines, “The sky is covered with dark clouds, announced by lightning and thunder.”; and the more subdued passage beginning bar 59, with its hopeful chromatic rise, illustrates the lines, “But when they are silenced, the little birds return to fill the air with their song.” All four concertos illustrate their respective sonnets in this way.
This could easily lapse into sonic incoherence, as program music often does – earlier program music, such as Heinrich Biber’s extravagantly imaginative Battalia (1673), is often a disconnected series of aural illustrations. But Vivaldi keeps control of things through the then recently invented concerto form, a way of creating large scale structural coherence while allowing for great variety of mood and texture. Recurring themes in the entire string orchestra provide each movement with the necessary unity, while modulations to closely related keys help provide variety. The Four Seasons isn’t the first piece of program music, or even a particularly early one, but it’s the earliest piece of program music that’s widely known.
Vivaldi is sometimes criticized for the relative simplicity of his textures and ideas when measured against Bach, Handel, or even Rameau. But on his own terms, Vivaldi is a very good composer: His works feature natural and elegant melodies, clear harmonic structures, and idiomatic string writing. It’s easy to see why a composer even of Bach’s stature admired him.
Spring has come and with it gaiety,
the birds salute it with joyous song,
and the brooks, caressed by Zephyr's breath,
flow meanwhile with sweet murmurings:
The sky is covered with dark clouds,
announced by lightning and thunder.
But when they are silenced, the little birds
return to fill the air with their song:
Then does the meadow, in full flower,
ripple with its leafy plants.
The goatherd dozes, guarded by his faithful dog.
Rejoicing in the pastoral bagpipes,
Nymphs and Shepherds dance in the glade
for the radiant onset of Springtime.
Under the heavy season of a burning sun,
man languishes, his herd wilts, the pine is parched;
the cuckoo finds its voice, and chiming in with it
the turtle-dove, the goldfinch.
Zephyr breathes gently but, contested,
the North-wind appears nearby and suddenly;
the shepherd sobs because, uncertain,
he fears the wild squall and its effects.
His weary limbs have no repose, goaded by
his fear of lightning and wild thunder;
while gnats and flies in furious swarms surround him.
Alas, his fears prove all too grounded,
thunder and lightning split the Heavens, and hailstones
slice the top of the corn and other grain.
The country-folk celebrate, with dance and song,
the joy of gathering a bountiful harvest.
With Bacchus's liquor, quaffed liberally,
their joy finishes in slumber.
Each one renounces dance and song,
the mild air is pleasant,
and the season invites ever-increasingly
to savor a sweet slumber.
The hunters at dawn go to the hunt,
with horns and guns and dogs they sally forth,
the beasts flee, their trail is followed.
Already dismay'd and exhausted, from the great noise
of guns and dogs, threaten'd with wounds,
they flee, languishing, and die, cowering.
Frozen and trembling among the chilly snow,
exposed to horrid winds,
our legs tremble with cold,
our teeth chatter with the frightful cold.
We move to the fire and contented peace,
while the rain outside pours in sheets.
Now we walk on the ice, with slow steps,
attentive how we walk, for fear of falling
If we move quickly, we slip and fall to earth,
again walking heavily on the ice,
until the ice breaks and dissolves.
We hear through the closed doors
Sirocco, Boreas and all the rushing winds at war -
this winter, but such as brings joy.
Overview: Mark O’Connor
Born August 5, 1961, Seattle, Washington
Work Composed: 1999
Vivaldi’s set of concertos may have been the first musical exploration of the seasons, but it wasn’t the last. The best known are Haydn’s masterful oratorio, a set of piano pieces by Tchaikovsky, and a ballet by Alexander Glazunov; but there are many others.
One of the more recent ones is Mark O’Connor’s The American Seasons. O’Connor’s remarkable career spans several decades and several genres. Before he turned 23, he had won the National Oldtime Fiddlers' Contest four times, and he could have prospered in the world of pure bluegrass music for as long as he wanted. But O’Connor has ventured far afield, to the worlds of classical music and jazz – though his music is always nourished by his bluegrass roots. He’s been remarkably productive, averaging about an album a year since his first recording in 1974. As a composer he’s concentrated on strong writing, and two of his violin concertos – this one and his 1995 Fiddle Concerto – are among the most performed contemporary violin concertos.
The American Seasons contains sideways glances at Vivaldi’s set – as if O’Connor had some of Vivaldi’s themes in mind, but transformed them through improvisation – but it has a closer connection to Shakespeare’s famous soliloquy on the ages of man, from Act 2 of As You Like It. O’Connor likens the season of a year to the stages of a person’s life.
Of the cheerful first movement, Spring, he writes that it “introduces the ideas of birth and infancy.” A violin cadenza moves through all the major keys, and its 13/8 time signature represents the Golden Ratio beloved by the Greeks. “These elements recall birth with all the possibilities a new life offers. Ending the movement, the principal theme is repeated with more complexity, as if posing life’s questions.”
He writes of Summer that it “represents the excitement and bravado of youthful adolescence and young adulthood.” The “happy-go-lucky Blues voice” moves into swing, which O’Connor calls “a common thread that runs through Ragtime through Rock and Roll on to Rap. Swing means testing the waters and pushing the envelope.”
The brief slow movement, Fall, owes less to bluegrass than the other movements. O’Connor says it symbolizes “the wisdom of maturity. It is a peaceful theme with nostalgic strokes. It is a time for sincere reflection and enjoying one’s accomplishments in life.”
Winter is the concerto’s largest and most ambitious movement. It “embodies the complexities and knowledge of an older person and that of a dying person,” writes O’Connor. “The movement begins with the principal theme from Spring, but with a dissonance that emanates from a lifetime full of emotions and responsibilities.”
The middle section is inspired by O’Connor’s Irish ancestry, as it weaves several themes together to create “a unique insight to life’s consequences from a historical perspective.” The textures here get quite dense, but are always lucid. A violin cadenza represents the soul’s departure, after which life continues in a new form – “Life’s four seasons in perpetuity.”
Born March 4, 1678, Venice, Italy; died July 28, 1741, Vienna, Austria
Work Composed: ca. 1716-1717
The history of Antonio Vivaldi is almost palindromic, with his death in the middle: early glory–later neglect–death–continuing neglect–and now, renewed glory. From 1703 until 1740 – nearly his entire creative life – Vivaldi was employed as master of violin at Venice’s Pio Ospedale della Pietà (Devout Hospital of Mercy), a refuge for poor and orphaned girls. Here, in addition to gaining renown as a violinist, he composed prolifically: over 500 concertos, some 46 operas, and many other works. (He allegedly claimed that he could compose a piece of music faster than a copyist could copy it.) The 12 concertos of L'estro Armonico, published in 1711, made Vivaldi famous across Europe, influencing, among others, J. S. Bach, who transcribed 6 of them. But music was rapidly changing during this period, and by 1740 he was all but forgotten. He moved to Vienna to work for Charles VI, an old friend who’d become Emperor of Austria. But Charles died that year, nobody else wanted to hire Vivaldi, and he died, stranded in Vienna, the next year. For the next 200 years, Vivaldi would be little more than a name in music history books.
Obviously that is no longer the case. Today, Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons is ubiquitous, so that few of us can even recall the first time we heard it; but it’s a relatively late entry into the canon. Although it may have been broadcast as early as 1939, it was virtually unknown before the release of a recording made in late 1947 by violinist Louis Kaufman. A trickle of recordings and performances in the 1950s became the deluge that continues today.
A set of sonnets accompanies the concertos. (The unknown author may have been Vivaldi.) They are key to a full understanding of the concertos, because, in addition to being fully comprehensible simply as absolute music, these concertos are also program music, illustrating the sonnets’ imagery. For instance, in the first movement of Spring, the cheerful opening represents the poem’s opening line, “spring has come and with it gaiety”; the trills heard beginning in bar 13 illustrate the second line, “the birds salute it with joyous song”; the slurred 16th notes at bar 31 illustrate the third line, “and the brooks, caressed by Zephyr's breath, flow meanwhile with sweet murmurings”; the repeated notes at bar 44 illustrate the lines, “The sky is covered with dark clouds, announced by lightning and thunder.”; and the more subdued passage beginning bar 59, with its hopeful chromatic rise, illustrates the lines, “But when they are silenced, the little birds return to fill the air with their song.” All four concertos illustrate their respective sonnets in this way.
This could easily lapse into sonic incoherence, as program music often does – earlier program music, such as Heinrich Biber’s extravagantly imaginative Battalia (1673), is often a disconnected series of aural illustrations. But Vivaldi keeps control of things through the then recently invented concerto form, a way of creating large scale structural coherence while allowing for great variety of mood and texture. Recurring themes in the entire string orchestra provide each movement with the necessary unity, while modulations to closely related keys help provide variety. The Four Seasons isn’t the first piece of program music, or even a particularly early one, but it’s the earliest piece of program music that’s widely known.
Vivaldi is sometimes criticized for the relative simplicity of his textures and ideas when measured against Bach, Handel, or even Rameau. But on his own terms, Vivaldi is a very good composer: His works feature natural and elegant melodies, clear harmonic structures, and idiomatic string writing. It’s easy to see why a composer even of Bach’s stature admired him.
Spring has come and with it gaiety,
the birds salute it with joyous song,
and the brooks, caressed by Zephyr's breath,
flow meanwhile with sweet murmurings:
The sky is covered with dark clouds,
announced by lightning and thunder.
But when they are silenced, the little birds
return to fill the air with their song:
Then does the meadow, in full flower,
ripple with its leafy plants.
The goatherd dozes, guarded by his faithful dog.
Rejoicing in the pastoral bagpipes,
Nymphs and Shepherds dance in the glade
for the radiant onset of Springtime.
Under the heavy season of a burning sun,
man languishes, his herd wilts, the pine is parched;
the cuckoo finds its voice, and chiming in with it
the turtle-dove, the goldfinch.
Zephyr breathes gently but, contested,
the North-wind appears nearby and suddenly;
the shepherd sobs because, uncertain,
he fears the wild squall and its effects.
His weary limbs have no repose, goaded by
his fear of lightning and wild thunder;
while gnats and flies in furious swarms surround him.
Alas, his fears prove all too grounded,
thunder and lightning split the Heavens, and hailstones
slice the top of the corn and other grain.
The country-folk celebrate, with dance and song,
the joy of gathering a bountiful harvest.
With Bacchus's liquor, quaffed liberally,
their joy finishes in slumber.
Each one renounces dance and song,
the mild air is pleasant,
and the season invites ever-increasingly
to savor a sweet slumber.
The hunters at dawn go to the hunt,
with horns and guns and dogs they sally forth,
the beasts flee, their trail is followed.
Already dismay'd and exhausted, from the great noise
of guns and dogs, threaten'd with wounds,
they flee, languishing, and die, cowering.
Frozen and trembling among the chilly snow,
exposed to horrid winds,
our legs tremble with cold,
our teeth chatter with the frightful cold.
We move to the fire and contented peace,
while the rain outside pours in sheets.
Now we walk on the ice, with slow steps,
attentive how we walk, for fear of falling
If we move quickly, we slip and fall to earth,
again walking heavily on the ice,
until the ice breaks and dissolves.
We hear through the closed doors
Sirocco, Boreas and all the rushing winds at war -
this winter, but such as brings joy.
Overview: Mark O’Connor
Born August 5, 1961, Seattle, Washington
Work Composed: 1999
Vivaldi’s set of concertos may have been the first musical exploration of the seasons, but it wasn’t the last. The best known are Haydn’s masterful oratorio, a set of piano pieces by Tchaikovsky, and a ballet by Alexander Glazunov; but there are many others.
One of the more recent ones is Mark O’Connor’s The American Seasons. O’Connor’s remarkable career spans several decades and several genres. Before he turned 23, he had won the National Oldtime Fiddlers' Contest four times, and he could have prospered in the world of pure bluegrass music for as long as he wanted. But O’Connor has ventured far afield, to the worlds of classical music and jazz – though his music is always nourished by his bluegrass roots. He’s been remarkably productive, averaging about an album a year since his first recording in 1974. As a composer he’s concentrated on strong writing, and two of his violin concertos – this one and his 1995 Fiddle Concerto – are among the most performed contemporary violin concertos.
The American Seasons contains sideways glances at Vivaldi’s set – as if O’Connor had some of Vivaldi’s themes in mind, but transformed them through improvisation – but it has a closer connection to Shakespeare’s famous soliloquy on the ages of man, from Act 2 of As You Like It. O’Connor likens the season of a year to the stages of a person’s life.
Of the cheerful first movement, Spring, he writes that it “introduces the ideas of birth and infancy.” A violin cadenza moves through all the major keys, and its 13/8 time signature represents the Golden Ratio beloved by the Greeks. “These elements recall birth with all the possibilities a new life offers. Ending the movement, the principal theme is repeated with more complexity, as if posing life’s questions.”
He writes of Summer that it “represents the excitement and bravado of youthful adolescence and young adulthood.” The “happy-go-lucky Blues voice” moves into swing, which O’Connor calls “a common thread that runs through Ragtime through Rock and Roll on to Rap. Swing means testing the waters and pushing the envelope.”
The brief slow movement, Fall, owes less to bluegrass than the other movements. O’Connor says it symbolizes “the wisdom of maturity. It is a peaceful theme with nostalgic strokes. It is a time for sincere reflection and enjoying one’s accomplishments in life.”
Winter is the concerto’s largest and most ambitious movement. It “embodies the complexities and knowledge of an older person and that of a dying person,” writes O’Connor. “The movement begins with the principal theme from Spring, but with a dissonance that emanates from a lifetime full of emotions and responsibilities.”
The middle section is inspired by O’Connor’s Irish ancestry, as it weaves several themes together to create “a unique insight to life’s consequences from a historical perspective.” The textures here get quite dense, but are always lucid. A violin cadenza represents the soul’s departure, after which life continues in a new form – “Life’s four seasons in perpetuity.”
