Osvaldo Golijov (1960- )
Born in La Plata, Argentina, Osvaldo Golijov grew up in a musical and culturally Jewish household. The native Argentine tango and its newest incarnation in the hands of Astor Piazzolla were also influences. Nevertheless, Golijov followed a path of classical music training in Argentina, Israel and the United States, where he received a doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania. Presently, he teaches at College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts.
Golijov’s professional ascendancy has been remarkable. In chamber music, he has collaborated with the St. Lawrence String Quartet and the Kronos Quartet, and in the symphonic arena, he has written for soloists such as soprano Dawn Upshaw and cellist Yo Yo Ma. The 2000 premiere of Golijov’s St. Mark Passion took the music world by storm. Commissioned for the 250 th anniversary of J.S. Bach’s death, the massive work eventually led to an entire festival in 2006 built around it. The composer has also scored two of Francis Ford Coppola’s films.
Last Round (1996) was commissioned by the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group and was premiered in Birmingham, U.K. in October 1996. In writing this work, the composer acknowledges the deep influence of Piazzolla and his instrument, the bandoneon:
Astor Piazzolla, the last great Tango composer, was at the peak of his creativity when a stroke killed him in 1992. He left us, in the words of the old tango, “without saying good bye,” and that day the musical face of Buenos Aires was abruptly frozen. The creation of that face had started a hundred years earlier. . . . As the years passed, all converged towards the bandoneon: a small accordion-like instrument without keyboard that was invented in Germany in the 19 th century . . . which, after finding its true home in the bordellos of Buenos Aires slums in the 1920s, went back to Europe to conquer Paris high society in the 1930s. Since then it reigned as the essential instrument for any Tango ensemble.
And he goes on to discuss his music:
I composed Last Round in 1996, prompted by Geoff Nuttall and Barry Shiffman. They heard a sketch of the second movement, which I had written in 1991 upon hearing the news of Piazzolla’s stroke, and encouraged me to finish it and write another movement to complement it. The title is borrowed from a short story on boxing by Julio Cortázar, the metaphor for an imaginary chance for Piazzolla’s spirit to fight one more time (he used to get into fistfights throughout his life). The piece is conceived as an idealized bandoneon. The first movement represents the act of a violent compression of the instrument and the second a final, seemingly endless opening sigh. (It is actually a fantasy over the refrain of the song “My Beloved Buenos Aires,” composed by the legendary Carlos Gardel in the 1930s.) But Last Round is also a sublimated tango dance. Two quartets confront each other, separated by the focal bass, with violins and violas standing up as in the traditional tango orchestras. The bows fly in the air as inverted legs in crisscrossed choreography, always attracting and repelling each other, always in danger of clashing, always avoiding it with the immutability that can only be acquired by transforming hot passion into pure pattern.
Fantasia for Piano, Chorus and Orchestra, Op. 80 (Choral Fantasy)
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)
On Thursday, December 22, [1808,] Ludwig van Beethoven will have the honor to give a musical Akademie in the . . . Theater-an-der-Wien. All the pieces are of his composition, entirely new, and not yet heard in public.
First Part: 1, A Symphony entitled “A Recollection of Country Life” in F major . . . .
2, Aria. 3, Hymn with Latin text . . . . 4, Pianoforte Concerto played by himself.
Second Part: 1, Grand Symphony in C minor . . . . 2, Holy, with Latin text. . . .
3, Fantasia for Pianoforte alone. 4, Fantasia for the Pianoforte, which ends with the gradual entrance of the entire orchestra and the introduction of choruses as a finale.
What a night that must have been! With the premieres of both the Fifth and Sixth Symphonies and the G Major Piano Concerto, and also including choral, solo vocal, and solo piano music, this famous all-Beethoven concert began at 6:30 PM and lasted four hours! In planning it, Beethoven was undoubtedly aware of its length. Nevertheless, he felt it necessary to balance the concerto of the first half with a grand finale at the end that would include him at the piano and all the other musical forces of the evening. The Choral Fantasy may have been an afterthought, for he composed it in a very short time in mid-December, leaving the opening cadenza to be written down later.
In itself, the Choral Fantasy held a position of importance in Beethoven’s mind. Apparently, it was the model that inspired the epochal finale to the Ninth Symphony. (Even the hymn-like themes of each are similar.) When offering the latter score to a publisher in 1824, Beethoven remarked that the finale was composed “in the manner of my piano fantasy with chorus, although on a far larger scale.”
The Choral Fantasy begins with a lengthy piano solo (which Beethoven may have improvised at the premiere). The orchestra then launches into a melody that Beethoven drew from his song, Gegenliebe, composed during his first years in Vienna. The composer then offers some varied points of view on this theme, differing widely in character and instrumentation, leading finally to the choral entrance. This begins softly but gathers power as the full complement alternates with piano and vocal soloists. The Fantasy, a most unusual work, ends first like an operatic finale and then like a glorious piano concerto.
The original German choral text has been attributed to Christoph Kuffner. In Natalia McFarren’s translation, it runs:
Soft and sweet thro’ ether winging
Sound the harmonies of life.
Their immortal flowers springing
Where the soul is free from strife.
Peace and joy are sweetly blended
Like the waves’ alternate play;
What for mastery contended
Learns to yield and to obey.
When on music’s mighty pinion,
Souls of men to heaven rise,
Then doth vanish earth’s dominion,
Man is native to the skies.
Calm without and joy within us,
Is the bliss for which we long.
If the art, the magic wins us,
Joy and calm are turned to song.
With its tide of joy unbroken,
Music’s flood our life surrounds.
What a master-mind hath spoken,
Thro’ eternity resounds.
Oh, receive ye, joy invited,
All its blessings without guile.
When to love is pow’r united,
Then the gods, approving, smile.
Symphony No. 3 in E-flat Major, Op. 97 (“Rhenish”)
Robert Schumann (1810-1856)
In 1850, the Schumann family moved from Dresden to Düsseldorf. The people of Düsseldorf graciously welcomed their new conductor, and Robert Schumann immediately responded to their warmth. This took the form of a sudden and remarkable burst of creative activity that included composing the “Rhenish” Symphony and the Cello Concerto.
The beauty of the Rhineland and the charm of its people gave Schumann inspiration for his symphony, but Schumann’s references to programmatic content were sparse and general. He called the work “a piece of Rhenish life,” and wrote that “one should not show one’s heart to the public: A general impression is better for them; then at least no wrong comparisons are made.”
Schumann provided specific programmatic references only to the second and fourth movements. None appeared with the first movement, although we can well imagine one. With its unrelenting exuberance, it could relate both to Schumann’s feelings of affirmation and joy and to the town’s festivities. Its two themes, a soaring, syncopated main theme and staccato secondary idea provide the fodder for what analyst Joan Chissell calls “one of his most powerful development sections, remarkable for its directness, absence of padding of any kind, and organic growth.”
The second and third movements should be considered as a pair, since they seem to illustrate Schumann’s statement, “The popular elements had to predominate, and I think I have succeeded.” The Scherzo has the tempo and feeling of a German Ländler dance (historically, the bridge between the minuet and the waltz). Schumann called this movement “Morning on the Rhine.” The third movement is brief and composed in the manner of an intermezzo or song without words. Donald Tovey calls it “an arioso form without development.”
The fourth and fifth movements also form a pair: prelude and finale. Schumann originally subtitled the fourth movement, “In the style of an accompaniment to a solemn ceremony,” but later dropped the inscription. The music was prompted by Schumann’s experience seeing an archbishop elevated to cardinal in the Cologne Cathedral. The final movement revives the festive mood of the symphony’s opening. Alternately broad and spiky, the themes provide fertile ground for development. Toward the end, the glorious, solemn theme from the fourth movement returns to mellow the finale’s effervescence and round out a magnificent symphony.
