III.
this movement has been criticized as being sanctimonious. i'm not really sure mendelssohn had it in him to write anything bordering on irreverent, but i find this movement quite beautiful regardless of what he intended.
d major, the first and only theme is a choir-like hymn given by the strings in a sort of mini-rounded binary form, the second phrase with the winds exploring a bit of A Major before the strings yank it back into D major.
from 2:00 begins a short section. i'm really not sure why litton gets so much faster in this recording, i would prefer he just kept his former tempo and let the harmonies do the tension-building. but anyway, this section features a bit of an agitato string accompaniment with a little bit of anguished interjections from the winds.
this leads us into a restatement of the theme at 2:38 in the wrong key of A major (the accompaniment figure remains to give it a bit of a push). the difference here is that when he blossoms the theme, instead of a major predominant chord, we get a d minor chord (iv in a major). this requires us to take a bit of a detour so he introduces a bit of a new material to finish it. but since we are in the wrong key, he cadences in a surprise G7-C and takes some time to do a short development on the opening themes, over a gentle rolling accompaniment of thirty-second notes which will last until the end of the movement. this development lasts until 4:03 where finally he gets to bring back D Major with the delicious g minor chord at 4:13. he repeats all this material in the right key.
4:53 represents the big A7 chord which will allow us to cadence affirmatively in D Major, and he puts a punctuation on that with the big arpeggio in the violins at 5:15. coda begins right after this, and takes us to a cadence which concludes the sinfonia quietly and sets us up for the cantata to follow.
The structure of this symphony is a bit complicated. "lobgesang" translates roughly to "hymn of praise," and it is mendelssohn's one choral symphony. the wiki page is pretty uniquely unhelpful for those looking at this symphony from an orchestra view. the orchestra plays three orchestral movements, all chunked together in a "sinfonia," and then the chorus joins for ten more movements, bringing the whole thing to a healthy total of over an hour (about 70 minutes), which was pretty extreme for a symphony (beethoven 9 is 70-80 minutes at a pretty glacial pace).
anyway we shall just cover the sinfonia, which itself is comprised of three smaller movements.
I. Maestoso con moto - Allegro
II. Allegretto
III. Adagio religioso
written in 1840 to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the invention of the printing press, it nevertheless makes no explicit reference to writing or printing, instead using primarily sacred text which often refers to the general idea of enlightenment, which was strongly tied to the culture of printing and reading. but it was also known as the "gutenberg cantata" and he also insisted on the genre label as "symphony-cantata," suggesting that he really wasn't thinking much of beethoven 9 when he composed it, formally. musically it has much more in common with bach's cantatas, which were also written with recitative-aria form.
while this symphony is published as no. 2, it was written fourth of the five. mendelssohn was quite hard on his other symphonies and never was satisfied with either of his most popular symphonies, the scotch (#3) and the italian (#4).
the symphony is scored for 2/2/2/2 4/2/3/0, timp + str, adding two cornets, an organ, and of course the SATB chorus for the latter movements.
these two videos are the first two segments of the sinfonia, which basically act as two different movements played attacca, the first in the home key of Bb major and the second in the relative minor of G. the recordings are andrew litton and the bergen philharmonic.
I.
the first movement is in a standard sonata-allegro form. there is a grand fanfare of a b-flat major theme first given by the trombones and echoed by the rest of the orchestra, and this is one of the most important themes in the symphony, recurring throughout the sinfonia as well as the cantata section, set to the words "alles was odem hat, lobe den herrn" or "all things that draw breath, praise the lord." the exposition proper begins at 1:04 and features a typically joyous mendelssohn theme characterized by dotted-rhythm arpeggios and a leap upwards descending by scale. he starts this theme twice and then springs off into one of his characteristically frenzied cascading runs, upon which he once again imposes the fanfare theme at 2:08 and even takes it through some development culminating in a big C major chord acting as the dominant of F (minor). instead he then gives us the second theme set in A-flat major (f-minor's relative major) at 2:40. as typical, the second theme is more lyrical, characterized by lots of parallel thirds. with a surprise c major chord (III of A-flat) he pivots into f-major, which will set us up for the animato at 3:20, introducing a bit of new material in the vein of the first theme and wrapping up the exposition nicely at the big f-major cadence at 4:21.
this part is the development, which goes on steadily using the fanfare theme as the primary modulating motive. he reaches a point where the strings are in e-flat, and uses the brass fanfare as the motivator for further modulation, eventually ending up at 5:31, a long section featuring running triplets in the strings and a big pedal Bb which destabilizes the fact that it's actually a I chord and perpetuates the development. there's a big pause after a long set-up for a g minor cadence. instead he does a development of the second theme set up in e-flat major but quickly springing upwards to a build-up to the recap (beginning of the second vid), which begins right at 0:46.
not much more to say about this movement, both the first and second theme material are abbreviated, with the second theme being stated in the right key of Bb at 1:07 with no gap/misleading key setup in between and the animato material at 1:39 also in the right key. 2:48 is the beginning of the coda, which begins like the development but takes us into a big cadence of Bb instead of other keys. the cool part is he jumps back into the maestoso version of the fanfare theme at 3:47 to conclude the "movement."
then cue a pivot from the tonic into the relative minor and we're off to the second movement.
II.
this movement is simpler and shorter, characteristic of a typical ternary or song-form second movement. in 6/8, the flanking sections are waltzlike and melancholy. the a-section is itself a sort of rounded binary, with a first section that repeats and a section that explores the dominant major (D), rounding off with a recall of first section material that wraps up in a gray unison pizz on g.
the middle section starts at 7:00 in G Major and features a 6/8 version of the fanfare theme we have come to know so well, presented by a wind chorale (one set of program notes i found describes this section as the sacred to the flanking sections' "secular."). it alternates every four bars or so with string material taken straight out of the A section. it cadences at 8:23 in g major and there is a bridge section with pizz bringing it back to the A section. all the thematic material returns to the home key, proven by a g minor coda at 9:14. like the first section, the movement itself ends with two final pizzes.
for him i will gladly do my first repeat-composer entry. this is the last movement of his third symphony, also known as the "scottish" symphony (because it was supposedly inspired by a trip to scotland or some such. the second movement most closely reflects this inspiration, though he doesn't directly steal any material from folk music at all).
the symphony was conceived early - 1829 - but not finished or published until 1842.
this movement is sprightly in a minor-key way. i have read a description that says it is "warlike," but i disagree a bit; it might be a bit grim and marchlike, but i hear no battle sounds. here we've got mariss jansons and the bayerischen rundfunks sinfonieorchester (three times fast please).
the snappy dotted rhythms and catchy tune are immediately accessible and i think that basically the only other thing one needs to understand about the movement to appreciate it is to hear how this super ear-wormy theme dies down after several minutes of development, a pianissimo. this transformation begins to occur around 6:50. the dotted rhythms sink and sink, and then all of a sudden we have no idea where we are anymore, and have to cling to the solo clarinet for guidance. then, suddenly, at 8:30, the uncertainty gives way to a noble hymn that mendelssohn suggested could be sung by a men's chorus. this is a sort of transformation of the tune that opens the whole symphony, and redeems the darkness that has clouded this fairly moody symphony (moody for mendelssohn, anyway).
enjoy! might have some difficulty updating on time tomorrow, we will see.
this piece and its genesis are readily findable on the internet, so i will just do something abbreviated here. to be honest this post is definitely just about my personal enjoyment of this piece, which is one of my favorite short orchestral pieces of all time.
the title of "overture" is kind of misleading, as there is no opera or play to follow it. it's just 10 minutes of "mood-setting" music - an early form of program music which lacks plot, but delves deeply into setting.
mendelssohn had a pretty charmed life - he wrote this in 1830, during travels to england and scotland. he was barely 20 at the time and had already gained fame by conducting a performance of bach's st. matthew passion, and for these few years he basically just traveled all over europe.
this is dedicated to king william iv of prussia. he also conceived bits of the scottish symphony during this trip, but that work took much longer to mature - that would turn out to be his third symphony and didn't get completed until 1842, becoming his op. 56.
here is a pretty awesome furtwangler recording. for some reason it took me a little while to wade through the recordings that are unlabeled and simply come with pretty pictures of said cave, and i almost thought youtube lacked any legitimate recordings of the piece, so i'll post a bunch here for easier access.
but actually these recordings all sound sort of similar to me: this music is so simple, so well-distributed, that it more or less plays itself. this recording is actually pretty idiosyncratic mostly because of the tempi he takes, which are really extreme (the last minute and half are at a blistering speed, while the stretch just before that is really, really slow).
toscanini gets kind of a reedy sound - a lot of modern recordings get a huge wash of sound from the strings, which lends itself well to the swelling seas, but the slides and thinness in this orchestra give a sense of clarity.
ok, and just because this is a cool recording:
video of casals. it has his characteristic unbalanced tempo but he really knows how to extract some conviction from the strings.
any number of the rest of the recordings that come up first on youtube when you type in hebrides will offer you more "standard" takes.
the piece has two motifs. the first is the very opening, which he came up with the day before his visit to the actual cave, and he included this in a letter to his sister fanny:
it is undulating, floats on top of the murmuring sixteenth notes of the strings. the second begins at 1:41 in the furtwangler recording. it's sweeter, in d major, and a bit wistful, swelling up and then receding, like the minor melody.
notice how tension is always built up by the moving sixteenths - you only become conscious of it at certain moments when it bursts into focus, for example around 2:35 with the ascending chromatic bass line, which provides some excellent impetus for the orchestra with its repeated notes.
the other thing to notice is the repeated wind and brass fanfare like figures - tattoos of sixteenths and dotted rhythms.
my favorite moment is 5:16 when the theme from the beginning is transformed into muted staccato notes for the strings. the key changes here are really leading, and the rhythm is compelling when articulated in a way that is completely different from the main melody.
ok, just enjoy this awesome piece. i have to put this in though, which i found courtesy of wikipedia:
