ERIC HARRISON, HOST:
Good afternoon and thanks for tuning in to Little Rock Public Radio and Classical KLRE-FM, 90.5. I'm Eric Harrison, I write about arts and culture at the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette and I’ll be your host for the next two hours.
You're listening to ‘Major and Minor Masterpieces,’ where we will focus each week on a broad range of classical music, from chamber music to choral works to full symphonies and maybe even a touch or two of opera.
In today’s show we focus on the final three symphonies by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
It was June 1788. At 32, Mozart, who had achieved fame throughout Europe as a prodigy — he was playing keyboard pieces flawlessly at age 4 and composing at age 7 — was no longer a wunderkind and the fickle audiences in Vienna were losing interest.
Hapsburg Emperor Joseph II, a longtime patron, was embroiled in — and spending his money on — a war against the Turks, not on commissioning new music, and other commissions were getting hard to come by. And Mozart’s 6-month-old daughter, Theresia, had died suddenly.
Though he had earned incredible sums — especially for a musician — over the years, he had spent most of it and was first gradually, then precipitously, declining into poverty. Mozart wrote to a fellow Mason that “My situation is such that I am inevitably compelled to raise money.”
Nevertheless, Mozart was hard at work writing symphonies at a blazing pace, finishing three of them in a six-week period — No. 39 in E-flat major in June, the g minor Symphony No. 40 in July and the C-major Symphony No. 41 in early August.
The circumstances of these three masterworks is uncertain. It’s possible he was considering publishing them as a set, reflecting the successful publication of Joseph Haydn’s set of “Paris” symphonies the previous year. He may have planned them for a fund-raising subscription concert that never materialized. It’s also possible that he was spurred by the possibility of a visit to London, where Haydn had been a great success, that never materialized either.We do know there is no evidence of a commission for these works — and most of Mozart’s symphonic output was controlled either by commissions or by his travel schedule. For example, whenever he visited a city, he was expected to deliver a new piano concerto and/or a new symphony.
It is certain that in these three symphonies, Mozart was heading off in a new musical direction, in a way almost foreshadowing the Romantic Era that was to follow not long after his death, and paving the way for much of the work of the 19th century. Nearly a century after their composition, Johannes Brahms remarked that, although Beethoven’s First Symphony had offered what he called a “new outlook,” “the last three symphonies by Mozart are much more important!”
Let’s hear the first of these three ultimate Mozart’s symphonies, No. 39 in E-flat major. Andrew Manze conducts the NDR Radiophilharmonie. Listen in particular for the whimsical finale.
(WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART’S “SYMPHONY NO.39” IN E-FLAT MAJOR )
You’ve heard Andrew Manze conduct the NDR Radiophilharmonie in Mozart’s Symphony No. 39 in E-flat major.
According to the standard catalogue, codified by a man named Ludwig Ritter von Koechel in 1862, Mozart wrote 41 symphonies — that’s counting No. 37, which scholarship has revealed was mostly composed by Michael Haydn, Joseph’s brother, for which Mozart merely had written a 20-measure introduction. He may have actually composed 25 more.
Only two of those symphonies we know of, however, were in a minor key, and they happened to be in the same minor key — g minor. Both are among Mozart’s most dramatic works — the first, No. 25, written 15 years earlier in 1773, provides the first Mozart music you hear in the movie “Amadeus.”
The gravity of the Symphony No. 40 perhaps reflected Mozart's depression over his waning popularity, dwindling finances, canceled concerts, indifferent publishers, few students, his daughter's death and the dull task he faced of providing dances for royal soirees to stave off total poverty. And yet it is a work of unusual strength, profundity and determination.
Here’s Mozart’s Symphony No. 40, once again with the NDR Radiophilharmonie conducted by Andrew Manze.
(WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART’S “SYMPHONY NO.40” )
Andrew Manze and the NDR Radiophilharmonie have performed Mozart’s Symphony No. 40 here on Major and Minor Masterpieces, on Little Rock Public Radio and classical KLRE-FM, 90.5. I’m your host, Eric Harrison.
(SOUNDBITE OF WOJCIECH “BOITEG” CIESLINKSKI’S “FIRST VIOLIN”)
—PROGRAM BREAK—
[EDUCATIONAL SEGMENT]
SARAH BUFORD, PRODUCER:
Hey listeners, welcome back to Major and Minor Masterpieces. I’m your producer, Sarah Buford, and it's time for our show’s little educational session, in which we break down some of the terminology we use when describing classical music and its history. We defined “sonata” in an earlier show back in season 1. As a reminder, it is a piece of music played as opposed to a piece sung. You’ve used the word sonata form to describe some pieces in our show though. Is sonata the same thing as “sonata form”?
ERIC HARRISON, HOST:
Well Sarah, not quite. Although many sonatas are written in sonata form, and it is the basis of much of classical music, especially of the music of the Classical Era - that includes music from Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven and beyond. You will hear it in sonatas, symphonies, chamber works and concertos.
“Sonata form” — or sometimes “Sonata-allegro form” — generally consists of three sections (the exposition, the development and the recapitulation) that explore two themes or subjects according to set key relationships. Mostly it’s used in the first movement of multi-movement pieces, but sometimes used in subsequent movements as well.
A piece may begin with an introduction, usually slower in tempo than the movement that will follow — followed by the exposition, in which the composer presents the movement’s primary and sometimes secondary themes. Sometimes, the exposition is repeated, note for note, before moving onto the "development," that’s where the composer develops — one might say that he plays with — the harmonies and textural possibilities of the themes.The composer then resolves it all in the "recapitulation," usually returning to the original themes in the original key.
Frequently the composer then wraps up the movement with a coda (from the Latin word for “tail”), which the composer bases on the material you’ve just heard but extends it or, as in the case of the finale of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, speeds it up for dramatic effect.A lot of modern popular songs do in fact follow a variation of the sonata form. Look no further than Weezer’s song “Dreamin’” on the band’s Red Album.
SARAH: Excellent! Let’s get back to more music on Major and Minor Masterpieces.
[END OF EDUCATIONAL SEGMENT]
(SOUNDBITE OF WOJCIECH “BOITEG” CIESLINKSKI’S “FIRST VIOLIN”)
ERIC: It wasn’t Mozart who gave his Symphony No. 41 the nickname “Jupiter.” An English publisher in the 1820s applied that title, possibly in part because of what one commentator called the work’s “regal demeanor and Olympian grandeur.”
The fourth movement, in particular, suggests the musical direction in which Mozart was heading. It reflects musical techniques that surfaced in his later works, including his “Requiem.” And there are echoes of works to come from Mozart’s successors, including Beethoven and Schubert.
And in a way, the finale also looks back: one commentator notes that the movement’s primary theme — whole notes of C-D-F-E — was not only a well-known Gregorian chant but the theme of Mozart's very first symphony, written when he was 8.
The NDR Radiophilharmonie and conductor Andrew Manze perform Mozart’s Symphony No. 41 in C major, the “Jupiter.”
(WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART’S “SYMPHONY NO.41 ‘JUPITER’ IN C MAJOR” )
You’ve heard the NDR Radiophilharmonie and conductor Andrew Manze perform Mozart’s Symphony No. 41 in C major, the “Jupiter.”
And now for this week’s lagniappe. Mozart’s opera “The Marriage of Figaro” performed by the Academy of Koln with conductor Michael Alexander Willems.(WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART’S “THE MARRIAGE OF FIGARO” )You’ve heard the Academy of Koln and conductor Michael Alexander Willems perform the Overture to “La Nozze di Figaro,” “The Marriage of Figaro,” concluding this all-Mozart program on Major and Minor Masterpieces.
(SOUNDBITE OF WOJCIECH “BOITEG” CIESLINKSKI’S “FIRST VIOLIN”)
Thanks for tuning in this week to Major and Minor Masterpieces. I've been your host, Eric Harrison, of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Our producer is Sarah Buford of Little Rock Public Radio. And a big thank you to our friend Wojciech Chiselinski for our transition and credit music.
Tune in again next week for Major and Minor Masterpieces on Little Rock Public Radio and classical KLRE-FM, 90.5.