STRING THEORY
Connections in the string repertoire across centuries and continents are at the heart of this stunning musical experience, with familiar repertoire and new discoveries. The otherworldly luminescence of Mozart sets everything in motion, while the overlooked American genius Marion Bauer explores the human equation in her stunning Lament on an African Theme. The uncanny and ethereal violin technique of Byron Hitchcock brings us an inventive and dance-like Concertino by Hans Gál, the unsung musical genius and editor of the definitive editions of the Brahms symphonies. And our journey ends in another idyllic universe with Janáček’s unique voice that is somehow both Czech and heavenly.
Connections in the string repertoire across centuries and continents are at the heart of this stunning musical experience, with familiar repertoire and new discoveries. The otherworldly luminescence of Mozart sets everything in motion, while the overlooked American genius Marion Bauer explores the human equation in her stunning Lament on an African Theme. The uncanny and ethereal violin technique of Byron Hitchcock brings us an inventive and dance-like Concertino by Hans Gál, the unsung musical genius and editor of the definitive editions of the Brahms symphonies. And our journey ends in another idyllic universe with Janáček’s unique voice that is somehow both Czech and heavenly.
Available digitally to subscribers and single ticket buyers February 7
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Divertimento in B-flat Major, K. 137
Marion Bauer Lament on an African Theme, op. 20a
Hans Gál Concertino for Violin & Orchestra, op. 52
Byron Hitchcock, violin
Leoš Janáček Idyll Suite for Strings
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Divertimento in B-flat Major, K. 137
Marion Bauer Lament on an African Theme, op. 20a
Hans Gál Concertino for Violin & Orchestra, op. 52
Byron Hitchcock, violin
Leoš Janáček Idyll Suite for Strings
ABOUT BYRON HITCHCOCK
A native of Wyoming, Byron Hitchcock has performed across the United States, Latin America, and Asia to critical acclaim. Praised by the Boston Globe for his “fearlessly expressive” playing and his “finely honed tone,” Mr. Hitchcock has established himself as a dynamic and versatile artist, appearing on the concert stage as a concertmaster, soloist, and chamber musician.
In 2019, Mr. Hitchcock assumed the role of Concertmaster of both the Opera Colorado Orchestra in Denver, Colorado, and of the Central City Opera Orchestra in Central City, Colorado.
He has also served as Assistant Concertmaster of the Colorado Springs Philharmonic since 2016. Previously, Mr. Hitchcock acted as Concertmaster of the Brazilian Symphony Orchestra, the Wichita Symphony Orchestra, and the Spoleto USA Festival Orchestra. He has worked closely with such esteemed conductors as Lorin Maazel, Roberto Minczuk, Peter Oundjian, Semyon Bychkov, and Bramwell Tovey. He has appeared as a guest concertmaster with Opera in the Heights in Houston, Texas, and with the Arizona Opera Orchestra in Phoenix, Arizona.
As a soloist, Mr. Hitchcock’s “brilliant” and “uninhibited” playing has won him prizes in numerous competitions, including the Hudson Valley Philharmonic String Competition and the Boston Modern Orchestra Project Concerto Competition. He is an active recitalist, and recently completed recording Bach’s complete Sonatas and Partitas for Solo Violin, which is featured on his blog, Bachianas Americanas. Upcoming projects include Beethoven’s complete Sonatas for violin and piano, and recording Hans Gal's Concertino for Violin and Chamber Orchestra. An enthusiastic chamber musician, Mr. Hitchcock recently enjoyed collaborating with principal players of the Vancouver Symphony as a member of the Koerner Quartet, both recording and performing live on Canadian Public Radio.
Mr. Hitchcock has studied with members of the Juilliard, Takacs, Cavani, Emerson, and Cleveland Quartets. He holds a Bachelor’s degree from the Cleveland Institute of Music, a Master’s degree from the New England Conservatory, and an Artist Diploma from SUNY Purchase. His teachers include David Updegraff, Lucy Chapman, and Laurie Smukler.
Mr. Hitchcock performs on a 1998 Stanley Kiernosiak violin from Chicago.
A native of Wyoming, Byron Hitchcock has performed across the United States, Latin America, and Asia to critical acclaim. Praised by the Boston Globe for his “fearlessly expressive” playing and his “finely honed tone,” Mr. Hitchcock has established himself as a dynamic and versatile artist, appearing on the concert stage as a concertmaster, soloist, and chamber musician.
In 2019, Mr. Hitchcock assumed the role of Concertmaster of both the Opera Colorado Orchestra in Denver, Colorado, and of the Central City Opera Orchestra in Central City, Colorado.
He has also served as Assistant Concertmaster of the Colorado Springs Philharmonic since 2016. Previously, Mr. Hitchcock acted as Concertmaster of the Brazilian Symphony Orchestra, the Wichita Symphony Orchestra, and the Spoleto USA Festival Orchestra. He has worked closely with such esteemed conductors as Lorin Maazel, Roberto Minczuk, Peter Oundjian, Semyon Bychkov, and Bramwell Tovey. He has appeared as a guest concertmaster with Opera in the Heights in Houston, Texas, and with the Arizona Opera Orchestra in Phoenix, Arizona.
As a soloist, Mr. Hitchcock’s “brilliant” and “uninhibited” playing has won him prizes in numerous competitions, including the Hudson Valley Philharmonic String Competition and the Boston Modern Orchestra Project Concerto Competition. He is an active recitalist, and recently completed recording Bach’s complete Sonatas and Partitas for Solo Violin, which is featured on his blog, Bachianas Americanas. Upcoming projects include Beethoven’s complete Sonatas for violin and piano, and recording Hans Gal's Concertino for Violin and Chamber Orchestra. An enthusiastic chamber musician, Mr. Hitchcock recently enjoyed collaborating with principal players of the Vancouver Symphony as a member of the Koerner Quartet, both recording and performing live on Canadian Public Radio.
Mr. Hitchcock has studied with members of the Juilliard, Takacs, Cavani, Emerson, and Cleveland Quartets. He holds a Bachelor’s degree from the Cleveland Institute of Music, a Master’s degree from the New England Conservatory, and an Artist Diploma from SUNY Purchase. His teachers include David Updegraff, Lucy Chapman, and Laurie Smukler.
Mr. Hitchcock performs on a 1998 Stanley Kiernosiak violin from Chicago.
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 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 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.
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PROGRAM NOTES
by Mark Arnest
Overview: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Born January 27, 1756, Salzburg, Austria; died December 5, 1791, Vienna, Austria
Work Composed: 1772
The Divertimento in B-flat is one of a set of three Divertimentos that the 15-or-barely-16-year-old Mozart composed in Salzburg in early 1772, shortly after returning from a trip to Milan. The style is Italian – favoring clarity and songfulness over the denser German textures – though the occasional bits of counterpoint display the teenaged Mozart’s awareness of the Haydn brothers.
It’s not certain what ensemble Mozart intended the works for. The name “divertimento” is not in Mozart’s handwriting, and the first violin part would have been challenging for the era’s section players, so the pieces might have been Mozart’s first works for string quartet.
Although Mozart was already famous as a keyboard virtuoso, his early compositions did not always meet with high praise. It was around this time that an acquaintance of English musician Charles Burney – whose memoirs are an invaluable window into European music at this time – told him that the young Mozart’s compositions were “one further instance of early fruit being more extraordinary than excellent.”
Burney’s acquaintance sounds like a curmudgeon, because although Mozart would indeed get much better, this divertimento is utterly charming. Its three brief movements are all in sonata form, with the second theme of each movement set off by a modulation from the key of B-flat to the key of F. The development sections are brief – and in the first movement, there’s more development in the recapitulation section than in the preceding development section.
The andante is the most musically intriguing movement. It begins with a deceptive chord progression and takes nearly a half a minute to reach a tonic B-flat chord. The second movement brims with well-behaved energy, and the third movement is beguiling.
Overview: Marion Bauer
Born August 15, 1882, Walla Walla, Washington; died August 9, 1955, South Hadley, Massachusetts
Work Composed: 1927
Students of American classical music are more likely to have encountered Marion Bauer’s name than her music. She knew Charles Tomlinson Griffes and Amy Beach, two of the earliest notable American composers. She was the first of French composition teacher Nadia Boulenger’s impressive string of American students – and in one respect the most important one, since she paid for her lessons by teaching Boulanger English. She was one of the founders of the American Composers Alliance, an organization that did invaluable service to American music in the mid-20th century. And she taught for many years at New York University, where her students ranged from Milton Babbitt, who went on to become one of the most uncompromising of all modernist composers, to Harold Schonberg, who would become a legendary New York Times music critic.
Bauer seems to have been universally admired. Babbitt wrote that her students referred to her as “Aunt Marion” – “not derisively but affectionately” – and Schonberg called her “a great lady and an inspiring teacher” in his memoirs. Aaron Copland, in his 1941 book Our New Music, thanked Bauer for helping him when he was a young and unknown.
But Copland didn’t include Bauer in the book’s discussion of notable American composers, and it has been her fate to be much admired but seldom performed. Some composers go out of fashion, but Bauer was never in fashion. Her music before about 1920 was deemed too modern; and when Modernism hit with full force in the decade after the First World War, almost overnight it became too old-fashioned.
Lament on an African Theme gives an idea of how undeserved that neglect is. It began as the second movement of her String Quartet, on the manuscript of which she wrote, “Based on an African Negro Lament.” A few years later, her colleague at New York University, Martin Bernstein, arranged it for string orchestra and gave it its current title. (The reason for this is unclear, since Bauer was perfectly capable of doing this herself.)
The piece features a diatonic melody spiced up with chromatic, almost Impressionistic harmonies. The opening is solemn, with anguished moaning figures becoming more and more prominent, leading to a climax that’s marked brutale; the piece then dies away.
Overview: Hans Gál
Born August 5, 1890, Brunn am Gebirge, Austria; died October 3, 1987, Edinburgh, Scotland
Work Composed: 1939
Growing up in Vienna, Hans Gál didn’t show a marked interest in music until, at age 14, he heard an orchestra program featuring Wagner’s overture to Die Meistersinger and Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. After that, he was obsessed, and he became one of the star pupils at the New Vienna Conservatory. During World War I, Gál served in the Austro-Hungarian army, but not in the front lines: Due to his poor eyesight, he wrote, “my rifle had become too dangerous for our own people.” After the war his career continued to progress, and in 1919, he was appointed lecturer in harmony and counterpoint at Vienna’s University – a post once held by Anton Bruckner.
But Vienna in the years after the First World War was no place for an ambitious young artist. In just a few years, the intellectually and artistically stimulating centerpiece of a great multicultural European empire had been transformed into the shabby, oversized capital of a small country, with few opportunities and many reminders of its vanished splendor. Austrian artists moved to Weimar Germany in such vast numbers that humorist Anton Kuh was inspired to write, “I moved to Berlin in order to remain among fellow Viennese.” Gál joined them, and it was in Germany that he had his big break with the 1923 premier of his comic opera, The Sacred Duck. (It’s about as silly as it sounds.) Gál quietly became a leading figure in German music. His edition of Brahms’s music remains the gold standard, and his 1924 Guide to Score-Reading is still in print. In 1929 he was named head of the Music Academy in Mainz, where, with his typical efficiency, he rebuilt the Academy into one of Germany’s finest music schools in just four years.
Gál’s German success ended abruptly when the Nazis took over in March 1933. The Jewish Gál was immediately fired, and performances of his works banned. Like many people, he didn’t immediately grasp the seriousness of the Nazi threat, and Gál wasted a year trying to get his job back. He then returned with his family to Austria, and when the Anschluss came in 1938, the family fled to Great Britain. He was at the University of Edinburgh when Great Britain entered the war, and aside from a few difficult months in 1940 when he was interned as an Enemy Alien – where those who fled the Nazis had to share space with actual Nazis – he remained in that city for the rest of his life. He was a leader in the city’s cultural life, helping found the Edinburgh International Festival in 1947, and continuing to compose until the year before his death at age 97.
Gál’s musical style is not easy to characterize. His style was conservative, but not reactionary: He had assimilated the musical language of Richard Strauss, and some passages in The Sacred Duck are reminiscent of Der Rosenkavalier. There is not a trace of irony in his music, and when there are Classical references, they are Classical, not Neoclassical à la Stravinsky or Busoni. And while Gál’s music is expressive, it contains no hint of autobiography: The Concertino is light and charming, despite being composed a year after Gál has had to flee the country of his birth, and while a world war is breaking out.
None of the Concertino is aggressively modern, and much of it is unabashedly old-fashioned – especially its lyrical opening, featuring a melody that’s long but tightly constructed. The jagged second theme shows Gál’s awareness of 20th-century trends, but the chromaticism is more in the vein of Strauss than of Schoenberg or even Debussy. The movement has a clear narrative arc, and when the jagged theme returns near the end, it’s almost immediately calmed by the soloist.
The two movements are connected by a violin cadenza that displays Gál’s skill in writing for the instrument. The second movement then begins with a charming, light-hearted theme, made even more fairy-like when it’s repeated with an accompaniment of high pizzicato strings. A contrasting theme is lyrical, with slightly syrupy chromaticism reminiscent of Richard Strauss or Delius. The development section is more boisterous, but the fairy atmosphere is never far away. There’s a second cadenza before a long accelerando – achieved more through shortening note values than by increasing the tempo – that leads to the end.
After decades of neglect, Gál’s music has been undergoing a well-deserved revival in the past few years; even The Sacred Duck was recently staged for the first time since 1933. His music isn’t revelatory, but it’s often beautiful.
Overview: Leoš Janáček
Born July 3, 1854, Hukvaldy, Moravia; died August 12, 1928, Ostrava, Czechoslovakia
Work Composed: 1878
Leoš Janáček is music history’s greatest late bloomer. The son of a village teacher, and the 9th of 14 children, he showed exceptional musical talent, and his parents sent him to study at the Abbey of St. Thomas in Brno, a town in the southeast of what’s now the Czech Republic but was then part of the Austrian Empire. (Its claim to fame at that time was that Napoleon made his headquarters there in the days leading up to the Battle of Austerlitz.) He studied hard and worked hard, but if he had died at age 60, his epitaph could have read, “best musician in Brno.” It was then, with the Prague premier of his opera Jenufa – itself already ten years old – that Janáček began to be noticed worldwide. Success restored his flagging self-confidence, and the last decade of his life was his most productive.
But that’s a story for another day. The Idyll is a product of the young, unknown composer, just 23 or 24, who hasn’t yet found the voice that would make him world famous. (In fact, even his formal music training would not end until two years later.) It’s drenched in the world of Dvořák, whom Janáček had met several years earlier, and whose Serenade for Strings, which Janáček had conducted the previous year, is the Idyll’s obvious model. Dvořák acknowledged the honor by attending the work’s premier on December 15, 1878.
If the Idyll strays perilously close to the style of its composer’s mentor, that doesn’t decrease its appeal for listeners. Most of the seven movements share a simple ABA form, in which two statements of one section frame a contrasting section; but within those constraints, the piece is sophisticated, and several of the closing sections are not repeats but transformations of their corresponding opening sections.
The first movement is rustic, with big sonorities; the cool outer sections contrast with a warmer middle section. The second-beat accents in the opening section of the second movement give it a bit of a mazurka feel, while the middle section breaths the spirit of Czech folk music. The third movement is one of the work’s highlights. It’s a minor-key lament in 5/4 time, and when the middle section changes to major and two-bar groups of 3/4 – six beats where there were previously five – there’s a palpable feeling of opening up. The major-key ending is radiant.
The rambunctious fourth movement shifts back and forth from major to minor, giving it a slightly elusive mood before major finally wins out. The grieving mood with which the fifth movement begins is dispelled twice – first by the consoling music that follows the grief, and then by the middle section’s peasant dance. The ending returns to the mood of consolation, but the grief is by no means forgotten.
The opening of the light and delightful sixth movement, with its succession of four-bar phrases, could accompany a folk dance; but some six-bar phrases in the more introspective trio would throw the dancers off. The sonorous final movement may be the work’s most musically ambitious, as Janáček expertly handles the transition from the almost brutal rhythm with which the work begins to a gently flowing one. Strong second-beat accents emphasize the suite’s close connection to Czech folk song.
by Mark Arnest
Overview: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Born January 27, 1756, Salzburg, Austria; died December 5, 1791, Vienna, Austria
Work Composed: 1772
The Divertimento in B-flat is one of a set of three Divertimentos that the 15-or-barely-16-year-old Mozart composed in Salzburg in early 1772, shortly after returning from a trip to Milan. The style is Italian – favoring clarity and songfulness over the denser German textures – though the occasional bits of counterpoint display the teenaged Mozart’s awareness of the Haydn brothers.
It’s not certain what ensemble Mozart intended the works for. The name “divertimento” is not in Mozart’s handwriting, and the first violin part would have been challenging for the era’s section players, so the pieces might have been Mozart’s first works for string quartet.
Although Mozart was already famous as a keyboard virtuoso, his early compositions did not always meet with high praise. It was around this time that an acquaintance of English musician Charles Burney – whose memoirs are an invaluable window into European music at this time – told him that the young Mozart’s compositions were “one further instance of early fruit being more extraordinary than excellent.”
Burney’s acquaintance sounds like a curmudgeon, because although Mozart would indeed get much better, this divertimento is utterly charming. Its three brief movements are all in sonata form, with the second theme of each movement set off by a modulation from the key of B-flat to the key of F. The development sections are brief – and in the first movement, there’s more development in the recapitulation section than in the preceding development section.
The andante is the most musically intriguing movement. It begins with a deceptive chord progression and takes nearly a half a minute to reach a tonic B-flat chord. The second movement brims with well-behaved energy, and the third movement is beguiling.
Overview: Marion Bauer
Born August 15, 1882, Walla Walla, Washington; died August 9, 1955, South Hadley, Massachusetts
Work Composed: 1927
Students of American classical music are more likely to have encountered Marion Bauer’s name than her music. She knew Charles Tomlinson Griffes and Amy Beach, two of the earliest notable American composers. She was the first of French composition teacher Nadia Boulenger’s impressive string of American students – and in one respect the most important one, since she paid for her lessons by teaching Boulanger English. She was one of the founders of the American Composers Alliance, an organization that did invaluable service to American music in the mid-20th century. And she taught for many years at New York University, where her students ranged from Milton Babbitt, who went on to become one of the most uncompromising of all modernist composers, to Harold Schonberg, who would become a legendary New York Times music critic.
Bauer seems to have been universally admired. Babbitt wrote that her students referred to her as “Aunt Marion” – “not derisively but affectionately” – and Schonberg called her “a great lady and an inspiring teacher” in his memoirs. Aaron Copland, in his 1941 book Our New Music, thanked Bauer for helping him when he was a young and unknown.
But Copland didn’t include Bauer in the book’s discussion of notable American composers, and it has been her fate to be much admired but seldom performed. Some composers go out of fashion, but Bauer was never in fashion. Her music before about 1920 was deemed too modern; and when Modernism hit with full force in the decade after the First World War, almost overnight it became too old-fashioned.
Lament on an African Theme gives an idea of how undeserved that neglect is. It began as the second movement of her String Quartet, on the manuscript of which she wrote, “Based on an African Negro Lament.” A few years later, her colleague at New York University, Martin Bernstein, arranged it for string orchestra and gave it its current title. (The reason for this is unclear, since Bauer was perfectly capable of doing this herself.)
The piece features a diatonic melody spiced up with chromatic, almost Impressionistic harmonies. The opening is solemn, with anguished moaning figures becoming more and more prominent, leading to a climax that’s marked brutale; the piece then dies away.
Overview: Hans Gál
Born August 5, 1890, Brunn am Gebirge, Austria; died October 3, 1987, Edinburgh, Scotland
Work Composed: 1939
Growing up in Vienna, Hans Gál didn’t show a marked interest in music until, at age 14, he heard an orchestra program featuring Wagner’s overture to Die Meistersinger and Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. After that, he was obsessed, and he became one of the star pupils at the New Vienna Conservatory. During World War I, Gál served in the Austro-Hungarian army, but not in the front lines: Due to his poor eyesight, he wrote, “my rifle had become too dangerous for our own people.” After the war his career continued to progress, and in 1919, he was appointed lecturer in harmony and counterpoint at Vienna’s University – a post once held by Anton Bruckner.
But Vienna in the years after the First World War was no place for an ambitious young artist. In just a few years, the intellectually and artistically stimulating centerpiece of a great multicultural European empire had been transformed into the shabby, oversized capital of a small country, with few opportunities and many reminders of its vanished splendor. Austrian artists moved to Weimar Germany in such vast numbers that humorist Anton Kuh was inspired to write, “I moved to Berlin in order to remain among fellow Viennese.” Gál joined them, and it was in Germany that he had his big break with the 1923 premier of his comic opera, The Sacred Duck. (It’s about as silly as it sounds.) Gál quietly became a leading figure in German music. His edition of Brahms’s music remains the gold standard, and his 1924 Guide to Score-Reading is still in print. In 1929 he was named head of the Music Academy in Mainz, where, with his typical efficiency, he rebuilt the Academy into one of Germany’s finest music schools in just four years.
Gál’s German success ended abruptly when the Nazis took over in March 1933. The Jewish Gál was immediately fired, and performances of his works banned. Like many people, he didn’t immediately grasp the seriousness of the Nazi threat, and Gál wasted a year trying to get his job back. He then returned with his family to Austria, and when the Anschluss came in 1938, the family fled to Great Britain. He was at the University of Edinburgh when Great Britain entered the war, and aside from a few difficult months in 1940 when he was interned as an Enemy Alien – where those who fled the Nazis had to share space with actual Nazis – he remained in that city for the rest of his life. He was a leader in the city’s cultural life, helping found the Edinburgh International Festival in 1947, and continuing to compose until the year before his death at age 97.
Gál’s musical style is not easy to characterize. His style was conservative, but not reactionary: He had assimilated the musical language of Richard Strauss, and some passages in The Sacred Duck are reminiscent of Der Rosenkavalier. There is not a trace of irony in his music, and when there are Classical references, they are Classical, not Neoclassical à la Stravinsky or Busoni. And while Gál’s music is expressive, it contains no hint of autobiography: The Concertino is light and charming, despite being composed a year after Gál has had to flee the country of his birth, and while a world war is breaking out.
None of the Concertino is aggressively modern, and much of it is unabashedly old-fashioned – especially its lyrical opening, featuring a melody that’s long but tightly constructed. The jagged second theme shows Gál’s awareness of 20th-century trends, but the chromaticism is more in the vein of Strauss than of Schoenberg or even Debussy. The movement has a clear narrative arc, and when the jagged theme returns near the end, it’s almost immediately calmed by the soloist.
The two movements are connected by a violin cadenza that displays Gál’s skill in writing for the instrument. The second movement then begins with a charming, light-hearted theme, made even more fairy-like when it’s repeated with an accompaniment of high pizzicato strings. A contrasting theme is lyrical, with slightly syrupy chromaticism reminiscent of Richard Strauss or Delius. The development section is more boisterous, but the fairy atmosphere is never far away. There’s a second cadenza before a long accelerando – achieved more through shortening note values than by increasing the tempo – that leads to the end.
After decades of neglect, Gál’s music has been undergoing a well-deserved revival in the past few years; even The Sacred Duck was recently staged for the first time since 1933. His music isn’t revelatory, but it’s often beautiful.
Overview: Leoš Janáček
Born July 3, 1854, Hukvaldy, Moravia; died August 12, 1928, Ostrava, Czechoslovakia
Work Composed: 1878
Leoš Janáček is music history’s greatest late bloomer. The son of a village teacher, and the 9th of 14 children, he showed exceptional musical talent, and his parents sent him to study at the Abbey of St. Thomas in Brno, a town in the southeast of what’s now the Czech Republic but was then part of the Austrian Empire. (Its claim to fame at that time was that Napoleon made his headquarters there in the days leading up to the Battle of Austerlitz.) He studied hard and worked hard, but if he had died at age 60, his epitaph could have read, “best musician in Brno.” It was then, with the Prague premier of his opera Jenufa – itself already ten years old – that Janáček began to be noticed worldwide. Success restored his flagging self-confidence, and the last decade of his life was his most productive.
But that’s a story for another day. The Idyll is a product of the young, unknown composer, just 23 or 24, who hasn’t yet found the voice that would make him world famous. (In fact, even his formal music training would not end until two years later.) It’s drenched in the world of Dvořák, whom Janáček had met several years earlier, and whose Serenade for Strings, which Janáček had conducted the previous year, is the Idyll’s obvious model. Dvořák acknowledged the honor by attending the work’s premier on December 15, 1878.
If the Idyll strays perilously close to the style of its composer’s mentor, that doesn’t decrease its appeal for listeners. Most of the seven movements share a simple ABA form, in which two statements of one section frame a contrasting section; but within those constraints, the piece is sophisticated, and several of the closing sections are not repeats but transformations of their corresponding opening sections.
The first movement is rustic, with big sonorities; the cool outer sections contrast with a warmer middle section. The second-beat accents in the opening section of the second movement give it a bit of a mazurka feel, while the middle section breaths the spirit of Czech folk music. The third movement is one of the work’s highlights. It’s a minor-key lament in 5/4 time, and when the middle section changes to major and two-bar groups of 3/4 – six beats where there were previously five – there’s a palpable feeling of opening up. The major-key ending is radiant.
The rambunctious fourth movement shifts back and forth from major to minor, giving it a slightly elusive mood before major finally wins out. The grieving mood with which the fifth movement begins is dispelled twice – first by the consoling music that follows the grief, and then by the middle section’s peasant dance. The ending returns to the mood of consolation, but the grief is by no means forgotten.
The opening of the light and delightful sixth movement, with its succession of four-bar phrases, could accompany a folk dance; but some six-bar phrases in the more introspective trio would throw the dancers off. The sonorous final movement may be the work’s most musically ambitious, as Janáček expertly handles the transition from the almost brutal rhythm with which the work begins to a gently flowing one. Strong second-beat accents emphasize the suite’s close connection to Czech folk song.
