Soul Journey
Saturday, October 14, 2017, 7pm, Broadmoor Community Church
Sunday, October 15, 2017 2:30pm First Christian Church
Wagner Forest Murmurs, from Siegfried Vitali Chaconne for Violin, Strings & Organ Elisa Wicks, violin Ingrid Stölzel Soul Journey: Three Whitman Songs (newly commissioned by the Chamber Orchestra) Jennifer DeDominici, mezzo-soprano Berwald Symphony No. 1 in G Minor “Sinfonie sérieuse” |
"Music expresses that which cannot be put into words and that which cannot remain silent." -Victor Hugo.
Our Soul Journey follows four of the most diverse composers at their most introspective. The Chamber Orchestra gives the world premiere of the orchestral version of Ingrid Stölzel’s Three Whitman Songs, bringing America’s most celebrated poet’s words to life through the incomparable voice and stage presence of Jennifer DeDominici. Stunning works by Wagner, Vitali and Berwald cap off a weekend of the most fulfilling music with passionate performances by our amazing orchestra. Pre-concert talk 45 minutes prior to each concert with composer, Ingrid Stölzel.
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Soul Journey is made possible by a generous grant from the Women's Philharmonic Advocacy
www.wophil.org |
PROGRAM NOTES by MARK ARNEST
Concert Overview:
Today’s program is extraordinarily eclectic, with its four works spanning some 300 years. Chronologically, it begins with Tomaso Vitali’s famous Chaconne, a work that takes the listener on a journey full of unexpected turns. Next is Franz Berwald’s Sinfonie sérieuse, showing a composer straddling the line between Classicism and Romanticism. Richard Wagner’s Forest Murmurs displays Romanticism in full bloom. And finally we reach Ingrid Stölzel’s Soul Journey, a radiant new work in a new orchestration.
Overview: Richard Wagner
Born May 22, 1813, Leipzig, Germany; died February 13, 1883, Venice, Italy
Work Composed: 1857
Why It Matters: Although conceived for the stage, Wagner’s music
It didn’t take Richard Wagner long to realize that he needed a dramatic situation to draw his best music from him. There are numerous early instrumental works, including a symphony that earned the young composer his first recognition and a piano sonata that he deemed worthy of designating Opus One, but once Wagner settled on opera he rarely returned to instrumental music. Of his mature instrumental works, the Siegfried Idyll – an overflowing of inspiration from the opera Siegfried – is a masterpiece; but the Kaisermarsch, composed to celebrate the founding of the German Empire following the Franco-Prussian War, is decidedly not, despite the overwhelming technique underlying it.
But when composed in response to a dramatic situation, Wagner’s instrumental music is consistently inspired. The instrumental passages from the operas and music-dramas are some of the best-known pieces Wagner composed, from the stormy opening of Die Walküre to the erotic rapture of the prelude to Tristan und Isolde.
Many of the best-loved instrumental pieces come from Der Ring des Niebelungen, Wagner’s epic fifteen-hour opera cycle. A few are organic, such as the above-mentioned Walküre prelude and “Siegfried’s Funeral March” from Götterdämmerung. Others are semi-organic, such as the famous “Ride of the Valkyries,” which is heard in concert halls with the voices simply omitted, and “Siegfried’s Rhine Journey” from the Götterdämmerung prologue, which is abridged in addition to having the voices omitted. And a few are cobbled together, such as the “Forest Murmurs” from Siegfried. Besides having the voices removed, it does not exist as a continuous stretch of music, and has been pieced together from several passages in the opera. (There are several different versions, of which Zumpe’s is the earliest and still best known.)
There’s no doubt that the removal of words and dramatic context from this music alters its meaning. Wagner was one of the most philosophical of composers, and his dense motivic structures lose their philosophical significance when removed from the dramatic situation. For instance, Wagner places the forest among the creations of nature by making the deep and sonorous opening, with oscillating strings rising through a minor triad, a transformation of the Nature motive with which Der Ring des Niebelungen begins. But Wagner quickly switches his attention from the original rising Nature motive to the oscillation itself, creating a shimmer of sound that has influenced composers ever since. Later on other motives dominate, such as a version of the Love motive, the Magic Fire, the Sleeping Brünhilde, and Siegfried himself. The striking birdsong-like motive will return later in the opera with voices, as the birds advise Siegfried on what to do next; but it’s heard initially without words, as Siegfried cannot yet understand birdsong.
All of this is surely a loss; but it is not entirely a defect. Despite the abundance of great vocal music in the world, the union of words and music has always been a bit of a shotgun wedding, and the removal of the words enables listeners to focus on Wagner’s ravishing sound without being distracted by the necessity of plot or character development. It’s okay simply to let yourself be carried along the intoxicating stream of sound, without wondering what it all means.
Overview: Tomaso Antonio Vitali
Born March 7, 1663, Bologna, Italy; died May 9, 1745, Modena, Italy
Work Composed: Probably between 1710 and 1730
Why It Matters: One of the most popular pre-Bach works in the violin repertoire
Tomaso Antonio Vitali was the son of Giovanni Battista Vitali, the most illustrious composer in Bologna. The younger Vitali followed in his father’s footsteps; he was also successful as a teacher.
But the younger Vitali would be all but forgotten today were it not for this remarkable Chaconne, which was not published until 1867, over a century after his death. That version, arranged by violinist Ferdinand David, contained modulations that were so unusual for music of the early 1700s – from G minor to B-flat minor and E-flat minor – that many musicians questioned its authenticity. (Hector Berlioz had touched a nerve by premiering his 1850 La fuite en Egypte as a work by an imaginary 18th Century composer named Ducré, and nobody wanted to be fooled again.) We now know that the Chaconne is authentic, based on the manuscript’s age and its handwriting; also, we now know that Vitali’s father composed chaconnes containing changes of key, though not as wide-ranging as his son’s.
There remains some question of whether Tomaso Vitali composed it, however. The manuscript ascribes the violin part to “Tomaso Vitalino,” who we assume is Vitali, partly because no other composer’s name comes closer, and the manuscript dates from a time when the spelling of names was quite fluid.
A chaconne is a piece based on a short, repeating bass line that typically descends. The most famous are Bach’s stupendous Chaconne from the D-minor Violin Partita, and Pachelbel’s ubiquitous Canon, which despite its name is both a canon and a chaconne. The chaconne’s repetitious quality means that the composer is increasingly challenged as the piece gets longer: It’s not difficult to compose six variations on a bass line, but exceedingly difficult to create sixty – as is the case here.
Vitali’s Chaconne simultaneously looks backwards and forwards. On the one hand, the form itself had its heyday in the 17th Century, when Vitali’s father was composing reams of them: In the days before composers had developed techniques to organize large stretches of time through changes of key, the chaconne’s repetition was a simple solution to the challenge of composing large, yet musically coherent, pieces. On the other hand, the boldness of Vitali’s modulations looks forward to the most audacious passages in Mozart and Beethoven. It’s not surprising that these modulations caused the piece to be viewed with suspicion, but it’s also not surprising that a composer conceived the idea of a modulating chaconne: It’s an effective antidote to the form’s inherently static quality. The modulations provide a welcome sense of departure and return.
The question of authenticity has led violinists and orchestrators to treat the piece very freely. The manuscript consists only of a violin part, a bass line, and numerals that would have told an 18th-century keyboard player how to harmonize the piece. David’s original publication took many liberties with the manuscript, and subsequent arrangers have tended to add to rather than subtract from these alterations; unlike many Baroque pieces, there has been no strong movement to strip away these glosses and return to the “true” Vitali Chaconne. This freedom has helped keep the piece a vital and living part of the repertoire. The arrangement performed today, by the Italian composer Ottorino Respighi, is one of the most glorious.
Overview: Ingrid Stölzel
Born 1971, Karlsruhe, Germany
Work Composed: 2014
Why It Matters: A recent work by a fresh voice in contemporary composition.
Ingrid Stölzel was born in Karlsruhe, Germany, in 1971. She has lived in the United States since 1991, and studied at the University of Missouri and the University of Hartford. She currently teaches composition at the University of Kansas School of Music in Lawrence, Kansas. She has written of Soul Journey:
The moment I read Whitman’s poem Grand is the Seen, I knew I had to set these beautiful words to music. A soundworld arose immediately and as I was getting deeper into the writing process, the music flowed freely, as if Whitman’s words themselves already had the music embedded in them and all I had to do was tap into the energy of it all. At times it felt truly magical and mysterious!
After finishing the first song and hearing the wonderful premiere by Mezzo Soprano Virginia Dupuy and pianist Shields-Collins Bray at the Abiquiu Chamber Music Festival in New Mexico, I realized I was not quite ready to let go of Whitman’s words. I discovered two more wonderful poems from Whitman’s Leaves of Grass that, although written at different times, seemed to belong together with Grand is the Seen to form a cycle. For me, these three poems create a beautiful journey, a journey of the soul from awakening to awareness to transcendence.
Soul Journey - Three Whitman Songs
From Leaves of Grass
I. Grand Is the Seen
Grand is the seen, the light, to me - grand are the sky and stars,
Grand is the earth, and grand are lasting time and space,
And grand their laws, so multiform, puzzling, evolutionary;
But grander far the unseen soul of me, comprehending, endowing all those,
Lighting the light, the sky and stars, delving the earth, sailing the sea,
(What were all those, indeed, without thee, unseen soul? of what amount without thee?)
More evolutionary, vast, puzzling, O my soul!
More multiform far-more lasting thou than they.
II. I swear I think (from “To Think of Time”)
I swear I think now that every thing without exception has an eternal soul!
The trees have, rooted in the ground! the weeds of the sea have! the animals!
I swear I think there is nothing but immortality!
That the exquisite scheme is for it, and the nebulous float is for it, and the cohering is for it!
And all preparation is for it—and identity is for it—and life and materials are altogether for it!
III. Darest thou now, O Soul
Darest thou now, O Soul,
Walk out with me toward the Unknown Region,
Where neither ground is for the feet, nor any path to follow?
No map, there, nor guide,
Nor voice sounding, nor touch of human hand,
Nor face with blooming flesh, nor lips, nor eyes, are in that land.
I know it not, O Soul;
Nor dost thou—all is a blank before us;
All waits, undream’d of, in that region—that inaccessible land.
Till, when the ties loosen,
All but the ties eternal, Time and Space,
Nor darkness, gravitation, sense, nor any bounds, bound us.
Then we burst forth—we float,
In Time and Space, O Soul—prepared for them;
Equal, equipt at last—(O joy! O fruit of all!) them to fulfil, O Soul.
Overview: Franz Berwald
Born July 23, 1796, Stockholm, Sweden; died April 3, 1868, Stockholm, Sweden
Work Composed: 1841
Why It Matters: A well-written symphony by a composer who has never achieved the renown he deserves
There’s no obvious explanation for Franz Berwald’s professional travails. For a composer, he was born with many advantages: His family had a musical pedigree going back several generations; he was industrious and curious, eventually acquiring a deep knowledge of theory and orchestration; he had opportunities, with his music receiving performances in several countries. And, as is abundantly clear from this first of his four symphonies, he had talent.
And yet somehow Berwald managed to achieve widespread obscurity during his lifetime, to the extent that he had to make his living outside music, first as as an orthopedist and later as the manager of a glass factory. His musical resume is a list of disappointments, rejections, and lukewarm receptions of works that rarely received a second performance. It was only toward the end of his life – and after his death – that he began to achieve recognition.
Part of Berwald’s struggles were a function of the time in which he lived. Music history is often taught as a relatively orderly progression of styles, but there are a lot of messy transitions from one period to another; and during those transitions – when there’s no well-defined style for the industrious student to master – few people are talented enough to create great music. In music, the most striking example is the period between the glories of the high Renaissance and the Baroque: There’s nearly a century in which only the titanic figure of Claudio Monteverdi stands out.
Berwald was born into one of these gaps – the period between the birth of Beethoven in 1770 and the flood of Romantic composers that begins with Mendelssohn in 1809. During the first decades of the 19th Century, as Classicism was slowly transformed into Romanticism, only a handful of composers managed to develop original voices: Rossini (b. 1792) revolutionized Italian opera through sheer talent and energy; Schubert (b. 1797) blazed his own astonishing path; and Berlioz (b. 1803) would become the most incomparable of the Romantic composers, arguably both the most revolutionary and the most conservative.
Adding yet another layer to the puzzle is the fact that Berwald was something of a late bloomer. Responding to a criticism in 1821, Berwald wrote that his music was “written in its own peculiar style,” and that art must be more than the “preservation of the past.” That implies a bold aesthetic, and had the Sinfonie sérieuse been composed in 1821, it would be bold indeed; but it was composed around 1841, and in the intervening years the musical world had been turned upside down by Berlioz, Mendelssohn, Chopin, Schumann, and Liszt. Berwald’s symphony is bold compared to a Haydn symphony, but not so much compared to Schumann’s first symphony, composed the same year. It may simply be that musical taste passed him by: His music was at first a little too adventurous, and then, when audiences developed a taste for adventure, not quite adventurous enough.
The Sinfonie sérieuse is a fine symphony nevertheless, with striking passages in each of its four movements. Berwald shared with Beethoven a love of upbeats, which give the music enormous rhythmic energy. The orchestration contains colorful and imaginative touches, such as a passage in the slow movement with pizzicato strings in three octaves.
The first movement is vigorous, with strongly contrasted themes. It’s set in a conventional sonata form, with a major twist: The recapitulation, when the music returns to the opening material, begins in the wrong key. The piece returns to G only with the arrival of the lyrical second theme.
The Adagio maestoso is harmonically adventurous, with a great deal of ambiguity about its key. Like Schubert, Berwald plays with the difference between relative majors and minors (two keys with the same key signature, such as F major and D minor) and parallel majors and minors (major and minor keys with the same key center, such as F major and F minor). This movement was performed at Berwald’s funeral.
The Stretto is Mendelssohnian in its lightness and effervescence. The middle section is is made even more enchanting by its distant tonal relationship to the opening. The Finale combines ideas from the first three movements with its own material. Although in this instance Berwald’s upbeats bring the music dangerously close to Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, the triumphant ending is undeniably effective.
Concert Overview:
Today’s program is extraordinarily eclectic, with its four works spanning some 300 years. Chronologically, it begins with Tomaso Vitali’s famous Chaconne, a work that takes the listener on a journey full of unexpected turns. Next is Franz Berwald’s Sinfonie sérieuse, showing a composer straddling the line between Classicism and Romanticism. Richard Wagner’s Forest Murmurs displays Romanticism in full bloom. And finally we reach Ingrid Stölzel’s Soul Journey, a radiant new work in a new orchestration.
Overview: Richard Wagner
Born May 22, 1813, Leipzig, Germany; died February 13, 1883, Venice, Italy
Work Composed: 1857
Why It Matters: Although conceived for the stage, Wagner’s music
It didn’t take Richard Wagner long to realize that he needed a dramatic situation to draw his best music from him. There are numerous early instrumental works, including a symphony that earned the young composer his first recognition and a piano sonata that he deemed worthy of designating Opus One, but once Wagner settled on opera he rarely returned to instrumental music. Of his mature instrumental works, the Siegfried Idyll – an overflowing of inspiration from the opera Siegfried – is a masterpiece; but the Kaisermarsch, composed to celebrate the founding of the German Empire following the Franco-Prussian War, is decidedly not, despite the overwhelming technique underlying it.
But when composed in response to a dramatic situation, Wagner’s instrumental music is consistently inspired. The instrumental passages from the operas and music-dramas are some of the best-known pieces Wagner composed, from the stormy opening of Die Walküre to the erotic rapture of the prelude to Tristan und Isolde.
Many of the best-loved instrumental pieces come from Der Ring des Niebelungen, Wagner’s epic fifteen-hour opera cycle. A few are organic, such as the above-mentioned Walküre prelude and “Siegfried’s Funeral March” from Götterdämmerung. Others are semi-organic, such as the famous “Ride of the Valkyries,” which is heard in concert halls with the voices simply omitted, and “Siegfried’s Rhine Journey” from the Götterdämmerung prologue, which is abridged in addition to having the voices omitted. And a few are cobbled together, such as the “Forest Murmurs” from Siegfried. Besides having the voices removed, it does not exist as a continuous stretch of music, and has been pieced together from several passages in the opera. (There are several different versions, of which Zumpe’s is the earliest and still best known.)
There’s no doubt that the removal of words and dramatic context from this music alters its meaning. Wagner was one of the most philosophical of composers, and his dense motivic structures lose their philosophical significance when removed from the dramatic situation. For instance, Wagner places the forest among the creations of nature by making the deep and sonorous opening, with oscillating strings rising through a minor triad, a transformation of the Nature motive with which Der Ring des Niebelungen begins. But Wagner quickly switches his attention from the original rising Nature motive to the oscillation itself, creating a shimmer of sound that has influenced composers ever since. Later on other motives dominate, such as a version of the Love motive, the Magic Fire, the Sleeping Brünhilde, and Siegfried himself. The striking birdsong-like motive will return later in the opera with voices, as the birds advise Siegfried on what to do next; but it’s heard initially without words, as Siegfried cannot yet understand birdsong.
All of this is surely a loss; but it is not entirely a defect. Despite the abundance of great vocal music in the world, the union of words and music has always been a bit of a shotgun wedding, and the removal of the words enables listeners to focus on Wagner’s ravishing sound without being distracted by the necessity of plot or character development. It’s okay simply to let yourself be carried along the intoxicating stream of sound, without wondering what it all means.
Overview: Tomaso Antonio Vitali
Born March 7, 1663, Bologna, Italy; died May 9, 1745, Modena, Italy
Work Composed: Probably between 1710 and 1730
Why It Matters: One of the most popular pre-Bach works in the violin repertoire
Tomaso Antonio Vitali was the son of Giovanni Battista Vitali, the most illustrious composer in Bologna. The younger Vitali followed in his father’s footsteps; he was also successful as a teacher.
But the younger Vitali would be all but forgotten today were it not for this remarkable Chaconne, which was not published until 1867, over a century after his death. That version, arranged by violinist Ferdinand David, contained modulations that were so unusual for music of the early 1700s – from G minor to B-flat minor and E-flat minor – that many musicians questioned its authenticity. (Hector Berlioz had touched a nerve by premiering his 1850 La fuite en Egypte as a work by an imaginary 18th Century composer named Ducré, and nobody wanted to be fooled again.) We now know that the Chaconne is authentic, based on the manuscript’s age and its handwriting; also, we now know that Vitali’s father composed chaconnes containing changes of key, though not as wide-ranging as his son’s.
There remains some question of whether Tomaso Vitali composed it, however. The manuscript ascribes the violin part to “Tomaso Vitalino,” who we assume is Vitali, partly because no other composer’s name comes closer, and the manuscript dates from a time when the spelling of names was quite fluid.
A chaconne is a piece based on a short, repeating bass line that typically descends. The most famous are Bach’s stupendous Chaconne from the D-minor Violin Partita, and Pachelbel’s ubiquitous Canon, which despite its name is both a canon and a chaconne. The chaconne’s repetitious quality means that the composer is increasingly challenged as the piece gets longer: It’s not difficult to compose six variations on a bass line, but exceedingly difficult to create sixty – as is the case here.
Vitali’s Chaconne simultaneously looks backwards and forwards. On the one hand, the form itself had its heyday in the 17th Century, when Vitali’s father was composing reams of them: In the days before composers had developed techniques to organize large stretches of time through changes of key, the chaconne’s repetition was a simple solution to the challenge of composing large, yet musically coherent, pieces. On the other hand, the boldness of Vitali’s modulations looks forward to the most audacious passages in Mozart and Beethoven. It’s not surprising that these modulations caused the piece to be viewed with suspicion, but it’s also not surprising that a composer conceived the idea of a modulating chaconne: It’s an effective antidote to the form’s inherently static quality. The modulations provide a welcome sense of departure and return.
The question of authenticity has led violinists and orchestrators to treat the piece very freely. The manuscript consists only of a violin part, a bass line, and numerals that would have told an 18th-century keyboard player how to harmonize the piece. David’s original publication took many liberties with the manuscript, and subsequent arrangers have tended to add to rather than subtract from these alterations; unlike many Baroque pieces, there has been no strong movement to strip away these glosses and return to the “true” Vitali Chaconne. This freedom has helped keep the piece a vital and living part of the repertoire. The arrangement performed today, by the Italian composer Ottorino Respighi, is one of the most glorious.
Overview: Ingrid Stölzel
Born 1971, Karlsruhe, Germany
Work Composed: 2014
Why It Matters: A recent work by a fresh voice in contemporary composition.
Ingrid Stölzel was born in Karlsruhe, Germany, in 1971. She has lived in the United States since 1991, and studied at the University of Missouri and the University of Hartford. She currently teaches composition at the University of Kansas School of Music in Lawrence, Kansas. She has written of Soul Journey:
The moment I read Whitman’s poem Grand is the Seen, I knew I had to set these beautiful words to music. A soundworld arose immediately and as I was getting deeper into the writing process, the music flowed freely, as if Whitman’s words themselves already had the music embedded in them and all I had to do was tap into the energy of it all. At times it felt truly magical and mysterious!
After finishing the first song and hearing the wonderful premiere by Mezzo Soprano Virginia Dupuy and pianist Shields-Collins Bray at the Abiquiu Chamber Music Festival in New Mexico, I realized I was not quite ready to let go of Whitman’s words. I discovered two more wonderful poems from Whitman’s Leaves of Grass that, although written at different times, seemed to belong together with Grand is the Seen to form a cycle. For me, these three poems create a beautiful journey, a journey of the soul from awakening to awareness to transcendence.
Soul Journey - Three Whitman Songs
From Leaves of Grass
I. Grand Is the Seen
Grand is the seen, the light, to me - grand are the sky and stars,
Grand is the earth, and grand are lasting time and space,
And grand their laws, so multiform, puzzling, evolutionary;
But grander far the unseen soul of me, comprehending, endowing all those,
Lighting the light, the sky and stars, delving the earth, sailing the sea,
(What were all those, indeed, without thee, unseen soul? of what amount without thee?)
More evolutionary, vast, puzzling, O my soul!
More multiform far-more lasting thou than they.
II. I swear I think (from “To Think of Time”)
I swear I think now that every thing without exception has an eternal soul!
The trees have, rooted in the ground! the weeds of the sea have! the animals!
I swear I think there is nothing but immortality!
That the exquisite scheme is for it, and the nebulous float is for it, and the cohering is for it!
And all preparation is for it—and identity is for it—and life and materials are altogether for it!
III. Darest thou now, O Soul
Darest thou now, O Soul,
Walk out with me toward the Unknown Region,
Where neither ground is for the feet, nor any path to follow?
No map, there, nor guide,
Nor voice sounding, nor touch of human hand,
Nor face with blooming flesh, nor lips, nor eyes, are in that land.
I know it not, O Soul;
Nor dost thou—all is a blank before us;
All waits, undream’d of, in that region—that inaccessible land.
Till, when the ties loosen,
All but the ties eternal, Time and Space,
Nor darkness, gravitation, sense, nor any bounds, bound us.
Then we burst forth—we float,
In Time and Space, O Soul—prepared for them;
Equal, equipt at last—(O joy! O fruit of all!) them to fulfil, O Soul.
Overview: Franz Berwald
Born July 23, 1796, Stockholm, Sweden; died April 3, 1868, Stockholm, Sweden
Work Composed: 1841
Why It Matters: A well-written symphony by a composer who has never achieved the renown he deserves
There’s no obvious explanation for Franz Berwald’s professional travails. For a composer, he was born with many advantages: His family had a musical pedigree going back several generations; he was industrious and curious, eventually acquiring a deep knowledge of theory and orchestration; he had opportunities, with his music receiving performances in several countries. And, as is abundantly clear from this first of his four symphonies, he had talent.
And yet somehow Berwald managed to achieve widespread obscurity during his lifetime, to the extent that he had to make his living outside music, first as as an orthopedist and later as the manager of a glass factory. His musical resume is a list of disappointments, rejections, and lukewarm receptions of works that rarely received a second performance. It was only toward the end of his life – and after his death – that he began to achieve recognition.
Part of Berwald’s struggles were a function of the time in which he lived. Music history is often taught as a relatively orderly progression of styles, but there are a lot of messy transitions from one period to another; and during those transitions – when there’s no well-defined style for the industrious student to master – few people are talented enough to create great music. In music, the most striking example is the period between the glories of the high Renaissance and the Baroque: There’s nearly a century in which only the titanic figure of Claudio Monteverdi stands out.
Berwald was born into one of these gaps – the period between the birth of Beethoven in 1770 and the flood of Romantic composers that begins with Mendelssohn in 1809. During the first decades of the 19th Century, as Classicism was slowly transformed into Romanticism, only a handful of composers managed to develop original voices: Rossini (b. 1792) revolutionized Italian opera through sheer talent and energy; Schubert (b. 1797) blazed his own astonishing path; and Berlioz (b. 1803) would become the most incomparable of the Romantic composers, arguably both the most revolutionary and the most conservative.
Adding yet another layer to the puzzle is the fact that Berwald was something of a late bloomer. Responding to a criticism in 1821, Berwald wrote that his music was “written in its own peculiar style,” and that art must be more than the “preservation of the past.” That implies a bold aesthetic, and had the Sinfonie sérieuse been composed in 1821, it would be bold indeed; but it was composed around 1841, and in the intervening years the musical world had been turned upside down by Berlioz, Mendelssohn, Chopin, Schumann, and Liszt. Berwald’s symphony is bold compared to a Haydn symphony, but not so much compared to Schumann’s first symphony, composed the same year. It may simply be that musical taste passed him by: His music was at first a little too adventurous, and then, when audiences developed a taste for adventure, not quite adventurous enough.
The Sinfonie sérieuse is a fine symphony nevertheless, with striking passages in each of its four movements. Berwald shared with Beethoven a love of upbeats, which give the music enormous rhythmic energy. The orchestration contains colorful and imaginative touches, such as a passage in the slow movement with pizzicato strings in three octaves.
The first movement is vigorous, with strongly contrasted themes. It’s set in a conventional sonata form, with a major twist: The recapitulation, when the music returns to the opening material, begins in the wrong key. The piece returns to G only with the arrival of the lyrical second theme.
The Adagio maestoso is harmonically adventurous, with a great deal of ambiguity about its key. Like Schubert, Berwald plays with the difference between relative majors and minors (two keys with the same key signature, such as F major and D minor) and parallel majors and minors (major and minor keys with the same key center, such as F major and F minor). This movement was performed at Berwald’s funeral.
The Stretto is Mendelssohnian in its lightness and effervescence. The middle section is is made even more enchanting by its distant tonal relationship to the opening. The Finale combines ideas from the first three movements with its own material. Although in this instance Berwald’s upbeats bring the music dangerously close to Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, the triumphant ending is undeniably effective.
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