Britten: Four Sea Interludes from Peter Grimes, Op. 33a

Paavo Jarvi and Cincinnati Symphony.
Program notes for ICSO 3/3


Britten's opera Peter Grimes tells the bleak story of a misanthropic loner fisherman who faces the unforgiving accusations of the townsfolk after his apprentices suffer unforeseen but accidental deaths. Tortured and unstable, Grimes is driven to suicide in the raging, stormy sea. Inspired by George Crabbe's poem "The Borough," Britten's work takes a more sympathetic view towards Grimes, and explores the darkness of a
man hopelessly marginalized. The opera premiered in 1945 and became one of Britten's first critical and commercial successes.  The Four Sea Interludes extracted from the opera comprise a series of vignettes
evoking the sea in its myriad symbolic states throughout the story. Their existence highlights the seaside setting's centrality in the opera; while the town is fictional, the opera is pervaded with the eerily haunting beauty of the coast along Britten's native Suffolk.

At only about three minutes per movement, each of the four portrayals is brief but highly illustrative. The first, Dawn, is drawn from the transition between the prologue and first act, and sets an austere stage. It utilizes only three main elements: a thin, high, and cold melody of sunlight piercing the clouds, given by violins and flutes; the gentle rising and falling murmur of the surf, featuring clarinet and violas; and ominous, dramatic swells from the brass. In Sunday Morning, which precedes act two, the sunny tolling of church  bells overlays digressive, meandering melodies in the strings and fragmented conversation in the winds, suggesting the townsfolk at worship against the backdrop of a lively ocean. The congregation scene depicts the townsfolks' callous bigotry towards Grimes.

In Moonlight, the most serene of the four movements, an unceasing and ever-more-yearning series of swells mimics the tide at nighttime, accentuated by glints of light from percussion and woodwinds. Underlying the nighttime serenity is a muted ominousness, though, and the fourth movement's Storm is the realization of all that was portended before it. The referenced storm actually takes place in the first act of the opera – however, the turmoil it reflects festers in Grimes himself and grows continually, making these seascapes also function as a reflection of Grimes' emotional state. The movement is full of violent swells and brutal crushing dissonances. Short-lived relief comes in the form of a few glowing, suspended arcs of melody, moments of brief hope in which the embattled Grimes imagines a possible safe haven. Ultimately, however, they are fleeting and must succumb to the tempest, which surges forward to a savage, oppressive victory.

(end program notes)
the opera itself, which we watched a couple days ago, is kind of a strangely paced work. the music that gets put into these four sea interludes as well as the passacaglia is definitely the best thing about the entire work. the thing about the opera itself is first, that none of the characters really inspire much sympathy. while this is sort of the point - peter grimes is unlikeable, but that shouldn't make us condemn him or make him deserving of his fate. the second thing about the opera is that a lot of the action in it, especially action which is supposed to convey the pettiness of the townsfolk, ends up being kind of superfluous. there's something about modernist art that struggles too hard to find art in the plain and the everyday, and for a genre so incredibly dependent on drama, it is either very, very difficult or just plain makes no sense at all to try to stage pedestrian action, even if it is "true."

anyway, these pieces are fantastically effective at evoking the cold grandeur of the sea - i think that's what the weird harmonies suggest the most to me. the atmosphere is incredibly stark, but the content itself is not focused, hence the meandering tonalities, melodies, and chords. very interesting stuff.

Elgar: Enigma Variations, Op. 36 - Variations X-XIV

X. Dorabella - intermezzo: allegretto

dora penny was a great friend who also had a stutter, depicted in the wind interjections in every bar. the first note of these little interjections is almost always stressed, giving a bit of an off-kilter feeling. the nickname was taken from mozart's cosi fan tutte. apparently elgar had a flirtatious but mild relationship with her, and this light and lovely variation reflects that. i particularly like the cello solo.

XI. G.R.S. - allegro di molto
ok it is actually all i can do to actually post this video because the images are kind of gross, please don't actually watch the video when you listen =/
george robertson sinclair was an organist at a cathedral. he owned a big bulldog called dan, and the variation has almost nothing to do with sinclair except that the dog was his. the first rapid descent shows the dog tumbling into a river. he struggles by swimming upstream, and finally manages to scramble to the bank, barking triumphantly.
sorry for the gross video...

XII. B.G.N - andante
basil g. nevinson was a well-known cellist, hence the big cello solo interlude that bookends this variation and the predominantly cello section melody. nevinson was the inspiration for the cello concerto, which elgar completed some years later.

XIII. *** - romanza: moderato
this is my favorite variation because of the transformative middle section. wiki reports that this was supposed to be lady mary lygon, a friend of elgar and his wife who just happened not to be available when the variations were finished and elgar sent her a note requesting to use her initials. but a different story gaining traction is that the stars actually refer to a secret lover that elgar had named dora adeline nelson, and they had a love child named pearl. nelson was a cook in the kitchens; being of lower caste, elgar could, of course, never acknowledge their existence or his love, but apparently it was an open secret in the servants' circles. who knows? but it would certainly be more of a reason to keep the stars - it somehow seems unlikely that lady mary lygon would have refused to let her name be used even post publication, and if it were innocuous it seems elgar had plenty of time afterwards to clarify it. buuuut, there are at least two other theories out there, including "helen weaver" and "alice stuart-wortley."
anyway, the variation's main material is graceful and lyrical and suggests a lady for sure. but the middle section i mentioned is introduced by a sudden cessation in the flowing movement of the theme, and seems really to have nothing to do at all with the theme. alternating thirds in the violas underly a timpani roll played with hard sticks, giving a metal edge to the sound, kind of an ominous rumbling on the horizon. the clarinet solo is apparently a quotation from mendelssohn's calm sea prosperous voyage. this is all in the harmonically far away key of a-flat major.

you get some bernstein for the last variation because the other guy is too noob to finish his collection of videos. (i would have uploaded all bernstein, but for some reason this is the only movement that was posted.)

XIV. E.D.U. - finale: allegro presto
edu was his wife's nickname for himself. the finale is longest besides perhaps nimrod, and includes throwbacks to the variations of the two biggest influences on his life, II (his wife) and IX (nimrod/jaeger). we end triumphantly in g major.

Elgar: Enigma Variations, Op. 36 - Variations V-VIII

V. R.P.A. - moderato
richard penrose arnold was also an amateur pianist and the son of a poet. elgar wrote that his playing had a way of "evading difficulties but suggesting in a mysterious way the real feeling. his serious conversation was continually broken up by whimsical and witty remarks."
this actually makes complete sense if you listen to the movement, which suggests a darkness that could easily be soupy and anguished but moves a bit too easily for that. then of course the major section brings in the "whimsical" insertions by winds and violins.

VI. Ysobel - andantino
the variation is attacca from the previous, and begins right at 2:19. isabel fitton was a viola student of elgar's. the variation is played mostly by a solo viola, and the opening viola (section) statement includes a sort of exercise in string crossing, reportedly one of elgar's jokes, in which the viola has to cross from the C string to the D string without hitting the G string in between (the interval is a tenth - from the open C to an E above that). so i can imagine that for a performer/conductor aware of this, it would be important to resist the temptation to use a less awkward fingering of just putting the E up on the G string in third position.
the moment when the strings melt away to reveal the solo viola is particularly lovely.

VII. Troyte - presto
arthur troyte griffiths was an architect and amateur pianist who was apparently quite terrible at playing the piano. this apparently represents elgar's abortive attempt to teach him, and his "enthusiastic incompetence." wiki, though, reports that the almost unplayably fast movement depicts a day when they both got caught in the rain and had to make a mad dash for shelter. i like to think that elgar wrote those ridiculous fifths in hopes that violinists wouldn't be able to play it that fast and it would more effectively represent troyte's fail on the piano.
(i find the images that accompany this movement in the above recording hilarious.)

VIII. W.N. - allegretto
winifred norbury was a friend of elgar's who was fairly easygoing, but most accounts agree that the variation is as much about the house she lived in as the woman herself. the house itself was a classic 18th century house which was the site of many chamber performances and musical gatherings. one writer suggests that her laugh is hinted at in the central section (the oboe + trills).

IX. Nimrod - Adagio

this is far and away the most celebrated of the entire set of variations, and gets played often independently. it's slow and chorale like, and depicts an episode in elgar's life in which his friend augustus jaeger convinced him to continue composing even after elgar had decided to stop. nimrod, the "mighty hunter" in the Book of Genesis, is a reference to the german meaning of jaeger's name, hunter. jaeger provided support and constructive criticism throughout elgar's composing career, and was his closest musical friend.

the opening bars carry a small hint of beethoven's work (according to elgar himself, it is just a shadow of the opening of the second movement of beethoven's pathetique sonata). this was, apparently, what jaeger himself hummed when he reminded elgar that beethoven had had to go through great difficulties but continued to compose greater and greater music. 

Elgar: Enigma Variations, Op. 36 - Theme, Variations I-IV

there are 14 variations (plus a theme) in all. here they will be divided up into 3 entries. the whole thing totals just over 30 minutes, about the length of a very short symphony, so i don't feel too badly about trying to use this to catch up to my intended post rate :P

this is elgar's one and maybe only well-known orchestral work, excepting maybe his cello concerto and to a much lesser degree his second symphony and violin concerto. elgar was an english composer from 1857-1934, and he wrote this piece in 1899, in his forties.

check out this epic handlebar mustache.

                                                       

elgar considered himself a sort of outsider in the british music scene and we know he was heavily influenced by the music of continental europe. but, when we (performer musicians) think of elgar we can't help but think of quintessentially english music. probably like this image, his british identity has probably become bound with his compositional qualities in your mind already.

but lets put this aside for now.
nobody who has ever heard of this piece doesn't know that these initials refer to people who were important to elgar, and until recently we didn't even know about half of them. so now that we do know them (or so we think), it's of course one of the favorite guilty pleasures of program-music analysts/lovers to find which aspects of the personalities are reflected in the music.



Theme

usually themes require little explanation, but this is one of the most complex themes i have ever heard. not that it's really that harmonically or structurally complex, but the one quality of most themes i've heard is that it is memorable - an earworm, even - and singable. this is neither. it definitely took two or three play-throughs for me to even be able to hum the thing from memory, and even then it's not always clear what the "melody" of the theme is. so listen to the beginning a few times. of course, it's likely that you've hear this piece a few times already and so might already know what the theme sounds like, but i had never even listened to this piece until last week.

the story goes that elgar was improvising at the piano, and his wife enjoyed hearing this particular little bit of music, upon which he decided to improvise several variations about their mutual acquaintances.

the theme is sort of mournful, even a bit solemn. we begin with a sort of fragmented, breathy, off-beat G minor. this segues directly into a middle section which is a bit more lyrical, in G Major. then the g minor material comes back, fragmented as before. the ending chord is a G Major.

before the premiere elgar said something interesting: "The ‘Enigma’ I will not explain – its ‘dark saying’ must be left unguessed, and I warn you that the apparent connection between the Variations and the Theme is often of the slightest texture; further, through and over the whole set another and larger theme ‘goes’, but is not played . . . So the principal Theme never appears, even as in some late dramas – eg Maeterlinck’s L’Intruse and Les sept Princesses – the chief character is never on stage."
these sentences have been discussed pretty much to death. but for me this explains the fragmentary nature of the theme itself. for him the theme existed somewhere else, and is never fully realized in the entire work. think of the theme as a sort of window, which is partially obscured and doesn't allow the entirety of the light behind to come through.
furthermore, contrary to what everyone thinks, the "enigma" refers to this obscured quality of the theme. NOT the initials!
i'm going to go on a small tangent. if this portrayal of the theme is right, then it definitely explains why the theme actually sounds like a variation. one can imagine a sort of pre-theme that IS singable. after a bit of experimentation i have a line that basically just follows what the bass line does.
(halfnotes to each note)
Bb C D Eb D C Bnat C C# D Eb C
B  C D E D C B A
it's interesting that in this light the major section is pretty much an exact copy, harmonically, of the minor section, with the necessary changes to make it into a major.
i think the real theme would go something like: B a g C a D c bb A c Bb c d G a F eb d C eb...
etc

I. C.A.E. - l'istesso tempo
caroline alice elgar was his wife. wiki reports that the four note motif that opens the movement in the violins (A# B F# G, I think) is something elgar used to whistle when coming home to his wife. in rehearsal the conductor told us that his wife was a gentle, very domestic person, which is reflected in all this very understated variation except the outburst of passion that comes out of nowhere and lasts for all of two bars, not even given a proper cadence before shrinking back into its shell. presumably this was a portrayal of how elgar saw her.

II. H.D.S.-P. - Allegro
hew david stuart-powell, an amateur pianist. the highly chromatic toccata-like style of this variation makes it a nightmare for the orchestra. apparently this is a big travesty of the licks he used to warm up with on the piano before beginning to play. elgar wrote that it was chromatic to beyond stuart-powell's liking. he played a lot of chamber music with elgar.

III. R.B.T - Allegretto
richard baxter townshend receives the first "major" variation. he was the author of the "tenderfoot" series and also an amateur actor, and elgar liked how his usually low voice "flew off" into the soprano range when he was acting. i suppose you can hear this in the oboe, with the swells on higher notes, and the little interjections in the strings.

IV. W.M.B. - Allegro di molto
this exuberant, galloping variation belongs to william meath baker, who was "a country squire with an abrupt manner and a tendency to bang doors behind him when leaving a room." elgar wrote that he "expressed himself somewhat energetically."

Handel: Concerto Grosso in D Minor HWV316 (Op. 3 No. 5)

for today's triple post: a trio of great baroque composers from different corners of europe. fair warning, the posts for the next week will not be great, owing to the audition next weekend... i mean, of course the music will be great, but i will want to avoid doing anything truly dear to me for lack of the time to do a proper entry.

handel wrote a number of concerti grossi for strings and continuo. this is Op. 3/5, the fifth in his first set. (the second set is Op. 6, another set of twelve which is slightly more popular and forms a bit more coherent whole.) this opus was published in 1734, though this particular work dates to 1717-8.
since it's so short i'll just do it in its entirety.
five movements: the largo; a fugue (allegro); adagio; allegro, ma non troppo; and allegro.
when it was published, originally only the first two movements were released, and this might remind some of you of a sort of french overture style. there is quite a lot of content in the fugue movement, which is a three part fugue for oboe and strings.

enjoy

Britten: Simple Symphony, Op. 4 - IV. Frolicsome Finale

early britten. apparently he wrote this string orchestra piece just after he got dissuaded from taking a scholarship he had won to go study with alban berg in vienna, when he was 20. everyone in britain was so against the idea of serialism that everyone was like OMG and so he stayed, writing this directly afterwards in dedication to his viola teacher. (now that i think of it i can't think of any british serialists, although in late elgar and britten you can hear a different brand of semi-atonalism). it was first performed in 1934, and was a major success.

coming in at only 16 minutes, it's a brief but not silly work. the movements are sort of arrangements and rescorings of little melodies he wrote between ages of 9-12 (what were you doing as a prepubescent child, hmmmm?) they all have kind of misleadingly silly titles.
I. boisterous bourree
II. playful pizzicato
III. sentimental sarabande
IV. frolicsome finale

the opening of this last movement is a unison upthrusting sequence of fifths and fourths which lays the foundation for the whole movement. this developed through this very short movement. there is a playful minor theme played by the violins after the unison introduction, which gets played with between major and minor keys, modulating on a dime in unexpected ways that don't quite satisfy one's need for cadence. the rhythm is motoric and seems to just propel the movement full circle to the ending, which is pretty much as it began.

Holst: The Planets, Op. 32 - III. Mercury, the Winged Messenger

so all anyone ever really recognizes from this suite is mars and jupiter. here is movement 3, a sparkling 4 minute character piece.

holst wrote this from 1914-1916, and it premiered in september 1918 to an audience of 250 (and on short notice - the orchestra only saw the music two hours before the performance). it didn't go completely public until 1920, all the performances up to then being either semi-private or incomplete.

despite the name of the suite, it's common knowledge now that the motivation for the piece was not actually astronomic or mythological, but rather astrological - holst really liked astrology and fortunetelling, and he used a horoscope book to come up for the subtitles to all these. mercury is one of the movements for which the roman mythology coincides more or less with the astrology (a winged messenger, associated in astrology with intellect, communication, and mental facility). but saturn the bringer of old age (a god of dance, agriculture, and justice), uranus the magician (god of nothing in particular in mythology, but definitely not a magician), and neptune the mystic (god of the sea) have rather less going for them in the mythological sense.

here's a british recording for a quintessentially british piece. BBC and mackerras

this movement is fleeting and fast, like you might expect. it's scherzando, 6/8, marked vivace. pretty simple to grasp. it's basically in sonata form. the exposition has two main themes, one at the beginning, delicate ascending and desceding inversions of chords, finished off by a chromatic ascending flourish. the second is first played (after a few tries) at 0:38 by the oboes.

1:00 begins the middle section (it's actually not quite enough to call a "development"), and this middle theme is a little more dancelike, first played by a single violin. it basically gets repeated until all the orchestra is playing it, and then it dwindles back down to a single flute. then the recap, at 2:02. he takes the time to develop both themes from the first minute, until solo instruments (including a twinkling celeste) bring back all three and weave them together (or at least put them rapidly end on end).

if you really wanted to connect this to astrological properties of mercury, you definitely could, first with the speed of the movement, then with the rhythms - an incessant 6/8 or 2/4, mechanical and rapid - plus lots and lots of hemiola (listen to the middle section), cross rhythms, and orchestral relays, passing the baton of a melody seamlessly from instrument to instrument. it really leaves little to the imagination, which is one reason i think it's a popular suite - a bunch of character pieces tied up with a fairly compelling theme, even if a common misperception is that those characters are roman gods and goddesses. it works for the first four movements, which is why i suspect those have become the most well-known. i know that personally i enjoy thinking of the celeste as mercury's winged slippers.