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Fantaisie pastorale hongroise, op. 26…………………………….Franz Doppler (1821
– 1883)
Like many nineteenth-century composers, Franz Doppler’s career
benefitted from a variety of national influences. He was born in
L’viv (formerly Lemberg), in Western Ukraine, where he and his
brother Karl first received instruction from their Austrian father,
Joseph Doppler, who was an Imperial regimental musician. Franz and
Karl were both accomplished flautists, hailed as prodigies during
childhood, and both would have parallel careers as composers and
performers. Following a series of concert tours in Europe, the
family settled in Pest in 1838 where Franz composed operas for the
Hungarian National Theater. These operas, which were very famous in
Doppler’s time, often combined Italian influences, such as that of
Donizetti, with elements of Russian, Polish, and Hungarian music.
The Eastern European elements Doppler brought to his music reflect
not only the composer’s native ties, but also a nineteenth-century
preoccupation with folk culture and aesthetics. This fascination
would resurface throughout his career, most famously in his
orchestral arrangements of Franz Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsodies for
piano. The Eastern European folk idiom was also central in his op.
26 Fantaisie pastorale hongroise.
Doppler composed the Fantasy for flute after moving to Vienna in
1858, where he composed most of his ballet music and taught flute at
the Vienna Conservatory. Originally as a chamber work for two flutes
and piano, the piece was perhaps inspired by his touring days with
his brother, when he and Karl would often perform flute duos of
their own composition. The Hungarian folk idiom is immediately
established in the opening bars, with brilliant virtuosic
passagework over simple accompaniment, which is periodically
suspended for cadenza-like passages. After an opening, rhapsodic
section in a minor key, the mood abruptly shifts to a more measured
folk melody in a major key, though still generously allowing for
embellishment from the soloist. The song-like melody deftly moves
into a fiery dance, even more strongly suggesting a Hungarian folk
influence, and calling for even more rapid virtuosic figures from
the soloist.
Pied Piper Fantasy
……......................................………………..….John Corigliano
(1938 – )
for flute and orchestra
VII. The Children’s March
American composer John Corigliano gained much of his early
experience working in public media; following his training at
Columbia he was a music programmer for the New York Times radio
station. He also produced recordings for Columbia Masterworks
1972-73 and worked with Leonard Bernstein on the Young People’s
Concert series for CBS (1961-72). He has often collaborated with
“mainstream” musicians and institutions, including several forays
into film and television scoring. He is perhaps best known for his
score for the 1999 film “The Red Violin,” which earned him an
academy award. Corigliano has often voiced his commitment to
intelligibility, and indeed most of his earlier works are very
tonal. His reputation as an “accessible” composer, however, is
perhaps countered by his 1981 Pied Piper Fantasy. The work is a very
intricately composed, largely non-tonal concerto featuring extended,
non-traditional instrumental techniques and notation.
The concerto is based on the medieval legend of the Pied Piper of
Hamelin, the story of a small German town overrun with rats. The
town hires a piper to lure the rats into the Weser River with his
magical song, though when the town refuses to “pay the piper,” the
piper uses the same song to lure away the town’s children,
implicitly to their death. The story of the Pied Piper refers to an
actual, yet unknown, historical event in the fourteenth century,
which resulted in Hamelin losing its children. Hypotheses include a
plague, the piper symbolizing death, but also a mass colonization of
Eastern Europe. The legend first found a narrative in the sixteenth
century and has since been published in many versions, including
those by Johann Goethe and the Brothers Grimm. One of the more
famous versions of the story is the poem by Robert Browning, written
in 1842, which provided the basis for Corigliano’s concerto.
Corigliano collaborated with flautist James Galway in writing the
Pied Piper Suite. Galway also played the tin whistle, a type of
recorder, which led the composer to investigate legends surrounding
folk wind instruments. A programmatic concerto presented enough of a
structural challenge to Corigliano. However, he was concerned that
the story lacked the necessary confrontations or tensions for
virtuosic writing. Corigliano’s version, therefore, also includes
battle scenes between the Piper and the rats which are depicted
through rapid passagework. For the final movement, the “Children’s
March,” the soloist switches from flute to the tin whistle to depict
the children being led away from Hamelin. In creating musical as
well as dramatic interest, the movement includes other flutes and
drums played by children and led by the soloist. Corigliano
describes the musical program depicted in the movement:
The Piper has had enough. He puts his flute aside and pulls a tiny
tin whistle out of his pocket and plays The Children’s March. In
contrast to the chorale, the march is bright, cheerful and lively.
It grows in volume and spirit despite occasional interruptions from
the burghers’ brass group. After the march’s first peak, the Piper
begins to trill. Suddenly a group of young flutists positioned in
the audience answers his call. The Piper calls again, and another
group responds and yet another. The flutists join with young
drummers similarly positioned in the audience, all moving toward the
stage; more children appear, answering the Piper, and all gather on
stage where he proceeds to lead them in The Children’s March. As a
final bid for attention the burghers try an outburst of their
chorale, but it is easily swamped by the piping children who, led by
the Piper, begin to march off the stage, back into the audience and
eventually out of the hall. They play a counterpoint to an
orchestral restatement of The Piper’s Song; this begins in the low
range of the cellos and grows as it progresses through the strings
and winds to a final utterance by the orchestra’s solo flute,
echoing the town’s sense of loss. The lonely sounds return in the
orchestra, as the jaunty distant marching melody fades away.
Minuetto…………………………………………………...…..……..Giovanni Bolzoni (1841 –
1919)
Italian composer Giovanni Bolzoni is primarily remembered as a
gifted conductor and music pedagogue. His career is almost entirely
confined to Italy, most notably his conducting position at the
Civica Scuola di Musica in Savona, and at the Teatro Municipale in
Piacenza. From 1884 to 1889, upon the recommendation of Ricordi and
Verdi, Bolzoni became the conductor at the Teatro Regio in Turin. It
was in Turin that he also conducted the city’s last symphonic
concerts of the Concerti Popolari. Despite his constant exposure to
Italy’s thriving operatic tradition, Bolzoni wrote mostly chamber
and symphonic music, often favoring musical sketches and short
character pieces. During his tenure as director and professor at the
Turin Liceo Musicale from 1887 to 1916, Bolzoni drew some of the
school’s emphasis away from opera and introduced a series of
instrumental classes, including one for string quartets. The
Minuetto actually first appeared in one of Bolzoni’s quartets. The
piece follows the traditional minuet and trio form established in
the eighteenth century. The stylized dance is immediately recognized
in a charming, lilting theme. The primary theme is contrasted by the
theme of the trio, which is appropriately with thinner
orchestration, before the familiar, graceful theme returns,
reminding us of Bolzoni’s gift for establishing musical character.
Little Red Riding Hood ……………………………..…………………….Paul Patterson (1947
-- )
for narrators and orchestra
Text by Roald Dahl
English composer Paul Patterson’s career often features some type of
reconciliation between opposing forces. In his early career in the
1970s, he forged friendships with Polish composers such as
Penderecki, Lutos?awski and Stachowski, which resulted in his
adopting the provocative textural techniques of the Polish school.
In the 1980s, however, he moved more toward the twentieth-century
English tradition, his compositional voice more reminiscent of
Benjamin Britten. Likewise, Patterson showed an affinity for large
choral and orchestral forces, for example his 1983 Mass of the Sea
and his 1988 Te Deum, yet he occasionally demonstrated a light
touch. This lightness is apparent in his works for the King’s
Singers and his multiple works for young performers or listeners.
These works include his 1992 setting of Little Red Riding Hood,
based on Roald Dahl’s poem after the classic children’s tale. The
original version for full orchestra was commissioned by the Roald
Dahl foundation and was an immediate success. Patterson would set
the score again for chamber orchestra and wind band, and again as
the Little Red Riding Hood Songbook in 2000.
Patterson describes the score as “very tuneful – amazingly so for
me,” yet the dramatic incidents of the tale allow for a variety of
styles and necessary bursts of discord. From the start Patterson
sets the stage with glittering orchestration, assigning a clear
musical character to each element to the story, from the precocious
Little Red Riding Hood to the lumbering Big Bad Wolf. However, in a
story where characters pretend to be other characters, Patterson’s
themes can cleverly impersonate other themes.
Written and compiled by M.K. Ables
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