Conductors Knowledge/Apologies for Unintentional Hiatus

Anyone following this will have realized by this point that i'm having a lot of difficulty catching up, or even keeping up with my every day commitment in the meantime. i think there is something about having fallen behind in the first place that made me feel like it was no big deal to add the additional day, and since i've fallen behind i've gotten used to having to do at least 4 or 5 entries at a time to make me feel like i've made any progress. so obviously i fall even more behind because the bear of having to do 5 entries in a day is quite big. so i'm not sure how to continue because at my count right now i am a total of at least 33 days behind, over a month. i'm still going to try, but i feel like calling this a 365 blog at this point is sort of dishonest.

in that vein, the next group of posts will be a series in reflection or recapping the events and lessons of the 2011 ithaca international conducting masterclass, which was held last week. i was privileged enough to be invited as an auditor. the whole experience for me was not a turning point but a great opening door for me. here were, in a non-technical sense (subsequent posts will be devoted to technical/concrete lessons i learned or was taught), the major insights i derived from the class.

1. as the baby of the group at 23, i learned that i still have quite a while to learn how to make this work. of course, it will be hard if, at 30, i decide not to try anymore and then have to get a job in a field i haven't been engaged in for the last several years. but hopefully at that point i will be able to weasel my way into some sort of arts administration, where i can at least be engaged in work for a cause that matters to me, even if i'm not actually doing work that i love.

2. these types of conducting workshops are THE primary method/avenue of engagement, learning, and community building for conductors. In any given locale you aren't going to be able to get a bunch of conductors together the same way you can have a bunch of violins or singers or wind instruments; after all, they are not only very busy but also far in between. even if there happen to be a number of ensembles in one city all with different conductors, they are likely to be different enough and work in ways such that the conductors will not often need to get together and chat about their work.

3. technique building in conducting has always been fuzzy. in the case of the clinician, CSC, it seemed as though his technique building phase came mostly from sheer self discipline. he talked quite a lot about how he used to practice his patterns on a rotating weekly basis, 2 pattern on tuesdays, 3 on wednesdays, etc... and how he used to just lay in bed trying to see whether he could conduct some pattern, waiting for music to come along so he could "attach" his technique to do it. there isn't really a consistent school out there like suzuki which has established these things, much less can teach it. to a degree that's nice because conducting isn't as if you're playing an instrument - but there are still right and wrong things to do, and it's difficult to figure out just how much right is "right" and how much is actually helpful. figuring this out, though, seems to be an act of self-study, and few people are out there who have either the time or patience to sit down and tell you what you're doing wrong in such an exact sense.

OK, that did take me less than 15 minutes to write, maybe i should just turn this into a "music reflections" blog :P

Mahler: Symphony No. 7 - V. Rondo-Finale

and now we've finally reached day.
this movement is in C major, and essentially a rondo with the opening bombast as the refrain. note the riotous timpani, and affirmation of the key.

1:50 begins the B section. It is light and playful, reminiscent of the first nachtmusik (but wittier and more playful) as well as the fifth movement of the fifth symphony.

2:45 return of the A section, except in a sort of different meter, with the strings playing an eigth-note variation on the original. it is also spliced and diced with itself. the true return doesn't come until 3:57, with the return of the theme in the trumpets and the clarinet.

4:57: a sort of C section, in a bit broader tempo, marchlike, but not aggressive - in fact it almost immediately makes its way into a sort of boisterous country-sounding theme in the violins with lots of dotted rhythms (then incorporating snatches of the music from 2:45).

6:00 A section again, a half step up. this is c-sharp instead of c.

6:41 the theme almost immediately sinks back in to a C" section, with the slower rhythm, featuring a number of really fantastic violin and wind solos. it broadens to the strings, and slows to a sort of wistful dance that is rudely interrupted a few times by odd brass fanfares, e.g. 7:46 (after which it immediately turns around and goes back to the same old, as if ignoring it).

the second attempt succeeds, though, and the music is accelerated back to the tempo primo, quickly spiraling out of control in a sort of mad whirl which the trumpets call back into order. i have trouble making sense of this movement past this point; it seems to want to be everything at once. at 9:13 after a long ritardando, you get another trumpet call which seems to imply that the movement will soon be over, but not even close.

the beginning of the second video features a return of the B section, with ever more chromatic plays on the trills in the rustic theme. a unique section here features a bunch of fluttertongue as well as saltando bowing from the strings.
the next return of the A section at 1:28 seems to dead-end quickly, and we get another of the same whirling climaxes around minute 8. instead of being interrupted, it slows to a halt, and then segues into C music, almost opposite of the way it ended the last time.

this movement has posed the most trouble for musicologists, historians, and myself as well. writing this entry i can't help but just feel like i am merely pointing out the musics of different sections, only if one were to map them all this movement would have like 20 sections. however, the conclusion is brilliant and exciting, and exceptionally satisfying, one of mahler's best i think (especially the way bernstein does it ;) not everyone has that horn slide...)

Mahler: Symphony No. 7 - IV. Nachtmusik: Andante amoroso

the second nachtmusik, this one is in f major, and gives much more the impression of a romantic evening; with the addition of classical guitar and a mandolin and unique writing for the harp, the movement takes on a leisurely songful serenading mood full of atmosphere.
this was apparently schoenberg's favorite movement, the one he went to in his defense of the symphony.

note the trills by the mandolin, sustained notes that pop out from the texture.
about 5:20 the music takes a sudden drop, adding undercurrents of dissatisfaction and a lot more dissonance until suddenly, the graceful music of the nocturne bursts out again.
the second theme is given by a solo cello at about 6:26. it's more song than dance, lyrical instead of lilting. later on, it alternates with snatches of the more playful music, which is usually accompanied by the plucking of the mandolin. but gradually becoming more saturated with heavy emotion until it hits a stride.

there are a few moments of stillness; everyone sighs in relief and repose. but then the violins burst in with the emotionally-laden recap.
2:22 is a hardcore throwback to one of the climaxes in mahler 5 adagietto, if you know that movement well.
almost immediately he steps back and begins a climb to a frenzied sort of buildup which is more active than any of the music we've heard in this movement so far. he seems to change his mind almost immediately, though, returning to the initial mood.
4:08 coda; we hit a glistening fmajor chord in the strings, and the high f seems to stutter for a moment, throwing in a bit of uncertainty to the wind utterances, in terms of key and tonality. with some hesitation, the music gradually revolves around the right center, and comes to a gentle halt.

Mahler: Symphony No. 7 - III. Schattenhaft: Fließend aber nicht zu schnell

shadowy: flowing but not too fast

this is a pretty self explanatory movement, but fascinating to listen to. it's in d minor, but shifts around spookily, dropping out into different keys, turning everywhere. one music critic described it as a "most morbid and sarcastic mockery of the Viennese waltz." the movement is full of things that go "bump" in the night, weird shrieks from the winds and shadowy flautando scales from the strings. there are a variety of effects such as what we've come to know as the bartok pizz (pizzing so hard that the string hits the wood),
3:17 begins a little more lilting but still somewhat grim middle trio section; this only lasts a couple minutes, but swoops and slides forward and backward with sudden intrusions of fast in a melody that keeps trying to be stately but can never manage it. note the prominent viola solos.

5:10 theme comes back.
5:48 sudden halt with a bang of the timpani; music gradually restarts again, but understated and spooky. it gradually adds layers until it builds up to another climax.
movement ends with a timpani and pluck out of nowhere.

Mahler: Symphony No. 7 - II. Nachtmusik: Allegro moderato. Molto moderato (Andante)

this movement is in c minor but floats in between that and c major so often that it wouldn't be completely wrong to say it was in c major.
the first of two "nachtmusik"s, this is the spookier one; a bit darker, having the mood of a quiet march (he described it as a depiction of an evening patrol).

we begin with a horn call which rises majestically like the moon over winds giving swirling bird calls and more crawling figures which might depict some of the other things moving about in the night. eventually the horns get to state a full sentence of their theme, one of the best, i think, that mahler ever wrote. i really like how it switches back and forth on a dime, between minor and major. the tattoo that gets iterated underneath it is quiet but very marchlike, true to the image.

3:49 marks the second theme in a-flat major, a sudden departure into a fast waltz like melody and lyricism which occasionally throws in some of the heavily dotted figures from the march, but overall maintains the broadness and loveliness of some of his most pastoral work. at 5:35 he brings an extended, improvisatory sounding version of the opening horn call, and even throws the cowbells in here for good measure.

at 6:35, the opening horn melody comes back, and we repeat some of the exposition before departing into a development of sorts. with a pluck of the harp and strings and some swirling trills in the winds, the oboe introduces a wistfully dancelike c minoir figure which dominates this middle section; this gets woven in with lots of motifs from the opening, until it climaxes like the chattering of night creatures reaching its apex. it spills over and seems also to disappear into nothing.

with that, we return to the wistful figures of the beginning of the development, but now transformed into a duet for two celli. this is one of my favorite moments of the entire symphony.
two plucks of the harp bring us to a standstill and then we begin a climb back to the recapitulation, which blooms at 1:45.
3:33 is the equivalent of the waltzlike second theme. except here he turns it into a sort of carnival feeling atmosphere, throwing in xylophone and cowbell. around 5:15 this becomes meshed into the march.

the movement ends quietly, with a smattering of pizz and a g harmonic from celli and harp, leaving it ambiguous as to whether it concludes in major or minor.

Mahler: Symphony No. 7 - I. Langsam – Allegro risoluto, ma non troppo

this symphony was written from 1904-5, but didn't get premiered until 1908 in prague. in the meantime a lot of changes had happened in his life; he had resigned as conductor of vienna, his daughter had died, and he had learned of his own incurable heart condition. a lot of musicologists cite this as the basis of a lot of the darkening revisions he made to the symphony during those three years.

the whole symphony clocks in at somewhere between 80 and 90 minutes. it can't be said to be in one key, because it opens in e minor which becomes b minor in the first movement; goes to c minor in the second movement, d minor in the third, f major in the fourth, and c major in the last. this is a concept known as "progressive tonality" (where the piece doesn't bother to cycle back to a supposed "home" key but instead moves and ends in an altogether different one).
the symphony was well received but not tremendously popular, and has more puzzled critics afterwards than anything else. it's worth noting, though, that this was the symphony that won schoenberg over to mahler's support, and he wrote mahler after hearing the first performance, saying that it was a great treat to hear the symphony and he didn't know why he hadn't seen the value in mahler's music up until that point.
from some things mahler hinted at, we know basically that he thought of this whole symphony as a sort of night transforming into day. the first movement sets a foundation for the entire thing, hence all of his rapid switches between moods and interruptions of lines. the middle movements are three night songs, which depict night in a variety of ways (the second and fourth are called nocturnes; the third is a creepier rendition). and the last movement, in his own words, are "broad day."

the first movement begins in b minor, ending in e major. it's in sonata form, though so long that you might not even recognize it. because it's so long i am not going to give a blow by blow, but just point out some interesting things.
the introductory melody is played by an instrument we know as the baritone horn, but mahler wrote "tenorhorn" in his scores. the rhythm that the strings play muttering underneath it will come back several times; as ever, mahler is great at introducing disparate themes and then mashing them up later in quite ear-catching ways. one thing i think that comes out in particular in this symphony, especially this movement, is the use of augmented intervals, or intervals that are just one half or whole step larger than you would predict them to be. when ascending they produce the stretches that guide him into a different key, and when they are descending they make the bottom drop out of the music.
2:56 is when the music morphs into a sort of militaristic march/dance that dominates the movement. this is the allegro "risoluto." it is a bit amorphous, grotesque, then darkening.
6:00 is a slow second theme, almost honeyed but still taking some surprising whirls out into a space you don't expect. we are brought back to the march to close the exposition.

this second vid is basically the development. you hear the opening solo of the tenorhorn again, but then we almost immediately spin into a weird mishmash of all the themes up to this point.
notable in the development are several points where everything seems to just stand still. one such is at 3:10, where the stillness is interrupted by a faraway trumpet fanfare and some birdcall like gestures in the winds, which sort of recall the march from the beginning. the harp b major gliss transforms the world into an idyllic vision before a long journey back to the recap around 6:20. the basses rudely interrupt with the falling figure from the beginning, and brass gradually incorporate some of the martial themes from the exposition into a huge B major climax in which all the strings come in. it seems like it's going to be affirmative, but then suddenly falls into a crunching b minor. throughout this section we always get the sense that the music is trying to rise into the major, but keeps being pushed down or turned in the wrong direction.

finally we reach the big e major, and this is more or less where the rest of the movement will stay, with the exception of a brief idyll in g major (around 2:00), the equivalent to the slow theme in the first half.
one set of program notes i found for this movement describes the march at the end of this movement as curiously bittersweet. i think this comes from the destabilization of keys. marches are usually affirmative, stable, and this is not, even though the end is triumphant enough to at least imply how the symphony itself will end.

Debussy: Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune

for preparation for conducting auditions, my teacher suggested that i be able to write down the title of this thing, in french. um... yea, i mean, i can sort of do it...

prelude to the afternoon of a faun is based on a poem by the same name by poet stephane mallarme, a symbolist artist and critic. it was written in 1894 and eventually became part of a ballet. the prelude itself is considered one of the cornerstones in the compositional/tonal development, a sort of set-up for 20th century tonality.

this and almost all other french compositions of the time were all works that would have likely not been composed were it not for paris itself. while vienna, salzburg, berlin etc all had thriving musical exchange, it's hard to find any place that music got as truly integrated into the artistic scene as paris. by this i mean how artists across disciplines constantly produced works that were directly inspired by their contemporaries. the sheer number of gatherings that ALWAYS involved artists from all corners made it inevitable. that's of course not to say that artists in other countries/cities didn't know each other or of each other; of course they did. no single body of work from one place reflects that bond as strongly as anything produced in paris during the 19th century.

this is the original poem, which was published in its final form in 1876. you can pop it into a translator to read. but the premise is just about the lazy afternoon of a faun (a mythical creature of the forest half goat half human). he is playing some pipes as he watches lustily but lazily at the passing forest nymphs and naiads. after he fails in his pursuit he drifts off to sleep and has lots of sketchy dreams.

though the poem has a sort of plot, the piece is very atmospheric - it basically is meant to evoke a mood, and not really to portray any events, though you might liken some of the elements in it to those found in the piece (such as the sinuous lazy opening flute line, which you might hear the faun playing at the beginning of the poem). it's possible that it is meant to represent only the first part of the poem - the lazy adulation of all the forest creatures - because debussy originally planned for there to be two other movements (they were never written). but all in all it is not so much a tone poem as a mood piece (or, appropriately, just a prelude).

this is the only recording i can find that is interesting on youtube...

stokowski apparently on his 90th birthday.

this piece is hard to dissect because it is so languid and so well blended. i'll give it a rough shot.

we begin with a slow flute solo, slithering up and down, accompanied by harp glisses and gentle swells of the strings. this is marked tres modere. it comes and goes in speed and intensity, but the flute line remains a constant presence. sometimes it finds its way to the sunlight. the writing here reminds me a lot of his first nocturne, nuages.

3:31 a new section, new instrumentations - whole tone scales given by solo clarinets and flutes, with a shadowy collection of skittering celli and pizz underneath. one can imagine lots of sinuous visions flitting by.

at 4:00 we have the beginnings of a swell that will spur the piece to a higher level of intensity; strings come out lushly, and the harmonies get a bit brighter, but still nebulous. at the last moment there is a retenu, and we return to tempo primo dreamily at 4:59. 

5:27 is a shift into a different key area, a sort of d-flat major. the new motif given by the winds here reminds me a lot of the third movement of pines of rome. this new theme is quite a bit sunnier, and is accompanied by ongoing harp arpeggios and triplets which grind against the strings' duple rhythm melody. a minute later everything dies away and we have a rendition of that same melody but now played by one solo violin, with the triplet figures in gentle solo winds.

OK, instead of finishing this sort of play by play i'm just going to paste something i wrote for a class in which this was one of the listening assignments we had to respond to. that week was debussy/ravel, a bridge to twentieth century tonality. i think the nature of this piece is described a bit more aptly below. for me the prelude has no boundaries, internally. there are sudden moments of clarity which we can grab onto, but otherwise it is just like being in a drug induced haze or a dream. the reason this piece was such a big deal was because of its real lack of tonal center, and that's mostly what i've written about below.

These pieces display a nebulous, constantly shifting tonal center and a pushing of the traditional boundaries of functional harmony (or in many cases throwing it out the window). There aren't really chord progressions or modulations in the usual sense, instead, Debussy uses alternative scales (the whole-tone and pentatonic, often) and moves around keys as if they have been mapped out in a field according to both their parallel and relative keys, resulting in a lot of surprising key changes in enharmonic keys (different approaches which seem to converge on the same key, substitutions, etc) which make both his and Ravel's music really difficult to read on a string instrument, except perhaps the harp, which is built to move around keys in just such a way. In this sense both composers' music, while extremely difficult for harpists, seems to suit the instrument rather well.
There are a lot of tritones and other augmented intervals (from the whole-tone scale or some other alternative to the traditional diatonic scale) that lend themselves to the feeling of "enharmonicism," the feeling that the intervals occupy a function somewhere in between different keys, and may allow the music to change harmonic "centers" on a dime.
[...]
The poems that Ravel and Debussy both selected to set to music have an ethereal, somewhat lazy, misty quality in the word choice and subject material that is well-evoked in the music of both these composers.

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Rimsky-Korsakov: Scheherazade, Op. 35 - IV. Festival At Baghdad. The Sea. The Ship Breaks against a Cliff Surmounted by a Bronze Horseman.

Allegro molto — Lento — Vivo — Allegro non troppo e maestoso — Tempo come I


see previous post for the first half of the movement vid.


this movement is extremely virtuosic and impassioned. as is implied in the title, it's kind of a mishmash of the previous themes, set in a new light, as well as a little bit of new material (the festival, etc)
the first minute or so is alternation of a furious orchestral representation of the suite's opening motif, the sultan (who will kill scheherazade at any moment, it seems, but for his curiosity about the stories she tells), and a newly impassioned version of the scheherazade leitmotif, which is now even more ornate, faster, and flamboyant.


the carnival begins at the vivo, 7:47 in the video. the softly galloping theme is given first by the flute, then by the strings. then rimsky begins his typical process of repetition with augmentation. a second part of the theme comes in at 8:37, slightly broader (in rhythm only; the tempo remains the same).
9:09 brings the return of a third movement theme - a brief few moments of nostalgia. but without warning we are snapped back into the tempo and mood of the festival, with quick and piquant colors and rhythms.

one of the program notes i read notes that the flavor of the polovtsian dances that rimsky had just been working on with borodin's score comes out particularly in this section of baghdad revelry. see for yourself. 


this section goes on for a while, but i won't bore you by describing what rimsky does with the motif; it's all the same music, but he reinvents it by inserting shorter or longer sections of hiatus, playing with the rhythms (duple time, triple time, quadruple time) alternating it with that third movement melody, using different instrumentations, and usually adding some additional little lick in some instrument to accent it, usually from an entirely different section of the piece. we finally come to a more satisfying cadence, where we find ourselves all of a sudden right in the middle of the raging sea from the first movement (4:37).


from here is a depiction of one of sinbad's (many) shipwrecks. the swaying waves are augmented by even more chromatic swells from the winds, a rolling bass drum/timpani, and sustained chords from the brass.
the shipwreck happens on a plummeting chromatic line starting in the violins, then, with a final fanfare from the brass, all is quiet.


6:27 is the beginning of the final section; the mood is stricken, the waves are still there, but calm now, and the reappearance of the chorale figure from the first movement reassures us that it was all just a story. scheherazade's voice comes in again to conclude the movement, which ends quietly - as most stories do.

Rimsky-Korsakov: Scheherazade, Op. 35 - III. The Young Prince and The Young Princess: Andantino quasi allegretto

Andantino quasi allegretto — Pochissimo più mosso — Come prima — Pochissimo più animato


curious to know what everyone thinks of the customary "naming" a movement by its tempo changes. what happens to the custom once we get into the late 19th century and every section of a movement has a different tempo? seems silly. i don't know that there are abbreviation standards in place for this sort of thing though. i expect sometimes we just take the tempo of the main body of the movement, because usually the changes are either very close to the beginning, as an introduction to the main part, or towards the end, as the movement speeds up or winds down.


please refer to previous post for the video with the first half of this movement, am trying to avoid having to post any of these twice.


this movement is supposed to be fairly simple both in melodic content and in form, which is basic ternary. we have a very sweet almost pastoral theme, which is given first by violins. (this is also the only movement which does not begin with the violin solo, but she has her say at the end of the movement...) some program notes call this a love scene; i think it's a bit more innocent than that, but who knows.
the theme is circled around lots of instruments, and also gets lots of ornamentation in the form of a sort of rising and falling skitter or scale, usually in the upper strings or winds. it is in E flat, so it acts as a sort of neapolitan to the dominant, d minor/major. (the movement itself is in G.)

celibidache takes the middle section, which starts at 9:14, quiiiite a bit more slowly than is customary. it is introduced by a snare drum, and a dancelike theme forms the central part of the movement, first given by the clarinet, but then accented by more percussion (we get the introduction of the triangle here) and pizz from the string section. the quietness of the percussion writing, and some of the wind solos (i like the brassy trumpet one, which is so honeyed that it reminds me of some early jazz).


we go back to the original opening matter at 1:45, with the violins. scheherazade's voice comes back in for a little bit, turning into an extended string crossing arpeggiatic cadenza. as that's going on, the romantic theme of the movement comes back, with the violin finally snapping out of it to cadence with that theme.
this last segment at last shows some development of that theme, kind of interestingly late for that sort of thing. the shifting of keys typical to developments comes in around 5:00. the movement closes with a sort of blend of the more sprightly elements from the middle section and the romanticism of the main theme.

Rimsky-Korsakov: Scheherazade, Op. 35 - II. The Kalendar Prince: Lento - Andantino - Allegro molto

the full tempo markings of this movement: Lento — Andantino — Allegro molto — Vivace scherzando — Moderato assai — Allegro molto ed animato


the opening of this movement is a little more nostalgic, with the violin solo in e minor (the first time it is in A minor, set a fourth higher), and quite a bit slower and less bold. here we get a sense of royal mystique, suspense and sparkle.

from the kennedy center program notes:

The Kalenders were a particular category of fakir, roving monks who turned up at Eastern courts and bazaars dispensing stories, magic tricks and wit in exchange for a coin or a night's lodging. The "Kalender Prince" was one of those mendicants who turned out to be a nobleman in disguise. 

the theme that opens the movement after scheherazade's intro is wistful, lilting, with little grace notes, based on a repeated figure descending stepwise (and on its rhythm, which is actually a sort of hemiola). the theme is first shown by the bassoon, then the oboe, eventually becoming a dance with the strings as it is speeded up. with each repetition of the theme each instrument is given a sort of additional "ad lib" in the triplets just before the cadence to the next instrument. after the strings it is given, staccato, sprightly, and faster, to the wind section. but suddenly, at 4:25, a solo cello pauses the ramp up with a rhapsodic solo. a solo oboe rounds off the section.


5:17 is the middle section, introduced by a rude awakening by the lower strings, alternated with a trumpet/trombone fanfare figure. this is rotated, and finally we get them stacked on top of each other above an insistent tritone chord. finally we hit a stride and the music goes into a brisk tempo giusto.


6:41 is a very unique moment - extended solos for the clarinet above perpetual pizzes. we snap out of it and back into the martial mood of the beginning of the middle section. (the new thing here is the addition of a scurrying upwards motif in the strings along with a piccolo twitter, supposedly representing sinbad's bird from the first movement.)
the middle section is flanked also by the same type of solo as the clarinet's at 6:41, this time assigned to the bassoon, along with distressed alarm bells from the high winds.

there is a brief transition to the original opening theme of the movement, with some interesting modal insertions, a bit of rubato, and some ornamentations from different instruments. overall the sound is much lusher the second time, a little more rhapsodic, but basically the same.
we pause at 2:40, and then begin a coda, which is a looooong ramp up to the end, starting with a suspended tremolo rendition of the theme in the violins, which makes room for some wind solos before accelerating the triplets to a whirling end.

Rimsky-Korsakov: Scheherazade, Op. 35 - I. The Sea and Sinbad's Ship: Largo e maestoso - Lento - Allegro non troppo - Tranquillo

whoo i'm behind. just fyi, for anyone who reads regularly - when/if i ever get to the point where i am caught up in terms of entries for the month, i will be backdating the entries so that there are the correct number of entries per month (this is the easiest way to keep track).

here's something fairly easy - rimsky's symphonic poem is one of his two original orchestral masterpieces, the other being his capriccio espagnole. it displays characteristic verve, color, orchestration, and the obligatory huge violin solo; it's also pretty much textbook program music. for anyone who played this piece in youth orchestra, as i did, it pretty much becomes one of the biggest representative experiences of the young musician's early career. it is just one of the most universally adored pieces out there.

this orchestral fantasy was conceived as rimsky worked to finish borodin's prince igor score, part of which was blogged here. summer of 1888, rimsky finished this as well as his russian easter overture, op. 36.
rimsky actually disliked overly programmatic tendencies, so rather than trying to tell four stories from the books, he named his movements after themes to be found in the tales. (originally the names were even more vague - prelude, ballade, etc; but his colleagues prevailed upon him to give more detailed names.) he wanted the fantasy to be a russian take on oriental/arabic themes, so you get 1. large usage of the harp and an extended percussion and wind section which included: piccolo, snare/bass drum, tambourine, cymbals, and tam-tam 2. huge russian sounds and 3. lots of implication of "oriental" music (from the european sense) like the pentatonic scale.

i have waded through lots of youtube youth orchestra debris to bring you the below recording, which is celibidache/swr stuttgart (if it is not really cooperating with you, just pause and wait; it's worth it i think). but if you have the time make sure you check out this other fascinating recording featuring david oistrakh as the concertmaster. in many places the ensemble and sometimes the intonation is kind of atrocious, but it is quite worth it to hear those few violin solos.

we open with a grand dramatic unison line in a sort of modal E, allowing the curtain to rise. the violin solo, some form of which flanks every movement, is of course, none other than scheherazade herself, telling her stories. the harp interjections lend that misty quality of sending us back on a "long long ago" type of journey. it's basically a big recitative for the violin, who gets to take pretty much as much time as s/he wants. (in instrumental terms we call this a cadenza, but it is really quite a bit more operatic than that, especially when we consider the "character"-ness of the solo.)

we're off and immediately rimsky paints a huge picture of rolling waves with the lower strings arpeggiating back and forth as per the rocking of water and the presumed ship. sinbad the sailor receives 7 tales in the original arabian nights, and they are all about his sea voyages (with i think one exception). i think in the original writing they are all encased in one tale that a post-voyage sinbad tells to another poor guy who also just happens to be named sinbad (the tale of "how i became rich," basically). almost all of the tales involve him getting shipwrecked in some fashion, but his ingenuity always prevails and allows him not only to defeat whatever monsters are in his path but to return home with even more riches as well.

this movement is basically two parts, the second part of which is almost an exact reflection of the first part except in a different key. we have the sea motif - grand, windy, soaring, played by all the strings over a full wind and brass chorale, and rising all the time. this is in E major.
3:47 is a soft wind chorale introduction to the development of that grandiose motif, which we might be able to think of as scherazade's actual storytelling - the whole grand scene sort of recedes into a "storytelling" level, the solo violin comes back to soliloquize, in b minor, and its music gets expanded into the actual story. the motif here is full of triplets, a bit more flowing, much more quickly moving, and gets twined with the waves and the theme from the beginning. notice the big brass entrance around 5:33. we reach a head at 5:53, which is a big cadence in E major. the section rounds off with a similar trailing off into the chorale figure, but this time given by six violin solo and with a bit of wind ornamentation, at 6:58.
from here to the end of the movement is basically a repeat of 3:47 on, with a different instrumentation - solo cello instead of horn, use of different wind shadings, but the same violin solo (this time in e minor). it is compressed, but contains all the same motifs.
at 9:17 we hit a tranquillo, which begins the downward ramping of this movement, as if the story has reached its apex and is just wrapping up. all the motifs seem kind of tired.
for some dumb reason the recording cuts off only like two minutes before the end of the movement so for the rest of it take a look at the next blog entry.