Ottorino Respighi (1879-1936). “La Primavera” (“Spring”) from Trittico
Botticelliana. Composed 1927. First performed in 1927 in Vienna. Scored for
flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, horn, trumpet, glockenspiel, triangle, harp,
piano, celesta, and strings.
Italian composer and musician Ottorino Respighi was born in Bologna,
where, as a child, he learned violin and piano from his father. He later studied
composition and became a serious student of Italian music of the 16th, 17th, and 18th
centuries. Although he employed the musical idiom of his time, he also sometimes
imitated and borrowed aspects of older classical styles in his works. Because
Respighi was highly interested in the communicative and imitative aspects of music,
he is sometimes referred to as an “impressionist” composer. He wrote tone poems
that purported to imitate the sounds of nature, such as “The Pines of Rome” (1924)
and “The Fountains of Rome” (1916). Like many other composers, he was especially
fascinated by birdsong. In “The Pines of Rome,” he incorporated the actual recorded
sound of a nightingale into the music, and in “The Birds” he imitated a dove, a hen, a
nightingale, and a cuckoo, while borrowing tunes from 17th-century Italian music,
18th-century French music, and English folk music.
With Trittico Respighi tried his hand at ekphrasis, the artistic imitation in one
medium of another art form. The piece is a triptych, based on three paintings by the
Renaissance painter Sandro Botticelli (1445-1510). All three paintings, “La
Primavera” (Spring), “L’Adorazione dei Magi” (The Adoration of the Magi), and “La
nascita di Venere” (The Birth of Venus), hang in the Uffizzi Gallery in Florence, Italy.
“Spring” uses the sounds of birdsong and “antique” dance rhythms to
communicate the mood of the original painting, which depicts a group of
mythological figures in a wood with a cherub flying overhead. Since little is known
about the picture’s origin or commissioning, the specific allegory depicted here is
unknown. The painting has a dark side that is not evident in the music it inspired.
On the right, a well-dressed woman spreading rose petals and her companion are
perhaps being waylaid by a somber male figure, while, on the left, a young man is
about to pluck a fruit from the trees overhead. In the left-center, three female figures
dance (the Three Graces?), as does a woman in the exact center of the picture plane.
Respighi has focused his attention on the dancing rather than the allegory.
Respighi dedicated the work to Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge, an American
heiress and patron of chamber music. She sponsored the concert in Vienna where
the work premiered.
Bird-like trills in the winds and strings (reminiscent of Vivaldi) prepare for a
horn call, passed to the trumpets, that strives higher and higher and then ends
abruptly, giving way to a sprightly theme, played first by the bassoon and passed to
the other winds. A slower theme of rising dotted-quarter notes follows, played by
brass and bassoon, and then a lively hooked rhythm, maintaining the carefree mood
of a country dance. The hooked rhythm sparkles as harp, triangle, and glockenspiel
join in. The tempo gradually slows from Allegro vivo to Allegretto, and the dance
alternates from a quick three-four to a stately two-step and back again several
times. Instruments echo phrases back and forth, as winds imitate birds calling
sweetly to one another in the forest. Celesta, harp, glockenspiel, triangle, and trilled
winds and strings lend an otherworldly sheen to dainty dance rhythms and bird
sounds, while horn and trumpet create a feeling of wide-open spaces, of hunters’
horns heard distantly in the forest. After creating a mood of joy and mystery, the
piece ends abruptly.
Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1953). Peter and the Wolf. Composed 1936. First
performed 2 May 1936. Scored for flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, three horns,
trumpet, trombone, timpani, triangle, tambourine, cymbals, castanets, snare
drum, bass drum, and strings.
Peter and the Wolf was commissioned from Prokofiev by the Central
Children’s Theater in Moscow to help introduce children to classical music in an
appealing way. Unlike Britten’s “Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra,” Prokofiev
introduces each instrument subtly, giving children a narrative incentive to recognize
the sound of the instrument that plays the theme of each character. Prokofiev
composed the half-hour work in four days. At its opening, according to the
composer, “attendance was poor, and [it] failed to attract much attention,” but it has
since become a classic of its genre. Personalities as diverse as Leonard Bernstein;
Peter Ustinov; Arthur Godfrey; Eleanor Roosevelt; Mikhail Gorbachev; Sophia Loren;
Carol Channing; William F. Buckley, Jr.; David Bowie; Patrick Stewart; Sting; and
Dame Edna (the list goes on) have recorded the narration with various prestigious
orchestras. Assemble a group of “baby boomers” in a room, and you can probably
get them arguing over the merits of Peter Ustinov’s version over Arthur Godfrey’s,
or vice versa. Peter tells a simple story—but, for many people who grew up with a
beloved recording, it never grows old.
The plot involves a young boy named Peter, a Young Pioneer (a movement
inspired by the Scouts), who lives with his grandfather. (Peter’s jaunty theme is
played by the stringed instruments.) One day, Peter goes out into the meadow and
leaves the garden gate open. Taking advantage, the duck that lives in the yard comes
out to take a swim in the local pond. (The duck’s melancholy theme is played by the
oboe.) A little bird (played by the flute, of course) starts arguing with the duck, as
the cat stalks them both. (The sneaky cat’s theme is played by the clarinet.) Peter
warns them, and both escape—the bird to a tree and the duck to the safety of the
pond.
Peter’s grandfather comes out and scolds Peter for going outside the garden
gate. (The bassoon plays Grandfather’s stern, crotchety theme.) “What if a wolf
should come out of the forest? What would you do then?” Peter pays no attention,
because “boys like him are not afraid of wolves.” Grandfather leads him back to the
house and locks the garden gate.
Of course, a wolf soon emerges from the forest. (Three French horns play a
foreboding, minor-key theme in harmony.) The cat now becomes the hunted, but
she escapes by climbing a tree. The duck, which has jumped out of the pond in
excitement, is not so lucky, and the wolf swallows her down. Then he stalks around
the base of the tree where the cat and the bird have found a temporary refuge.
Seeing the wolf, brave Peter grabs a rope and climbs a branch of the same
tree that overhangs the garden. His friend, the bird, flies around the wolf’s head to
distract him. The wolf snaps at the bird, but can’t catch him. Meanwhile, Peter
lassoes the wolf’s tail and hoists him up into the tree. The hunters emerge from the
forest at this point, hot on the trail of the wolf. (The hunters are represented by the
woodwinds, with shot sound effects on timpani and bass drum.) Peter talks the
hunters out of shooting the wolf, and all the remaining characters form a triumphal
procession to the zoo. Even the duck’s theme returns—we can hear her because, in
his hurry, the wolf had swallowed her whole.
Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov (1844-1908). “The Flight of the Bumblebee,” an
interlude from The Tale of Tsar Saltan. Composed 1899-1900. First performed
in 1900 in Moscow. Scored for two flutes, two oboes (one doubling English
horn), two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, three
trombones, tuba, timpani, and strings.
The familiar short piece known as “The Flight of the Bumblebee” is actually
an untitled musical interlude from Rimsky-Korsakov’s opera The Tale of Tsar Saltan,
based on a folkloric poem by Pushkin. The interlude occurs in Act III, between
Scenes 1 and 2, when the Tsar’s son is transformed into a bumblebee by a magical
swan so he can fly off to visit his father, who doesn’t even know he’s alive, thanks to
the machinations of the Tsarina’s jealous sisters.
The music cleverly imitates the buzz of an angry bee with rising and falling
chromatic sixteenth notes, played initially by the flutes and first violins, and later by
the clarinets, English horn, and second violins. Pizzicato and staccato notes by
strings, winds, and horns, along with occasional tremolo by violins and violas, give
the musical line a shape and make the bee sound appropriately threatening. The
insect does indeed sting several characters in the very next scene.
Camille Saint-Saëns (1835-1921). The Carnival of the Animals. Composed
February 1886. First performed in a private concert on 9 March 1886. Scored
for flute (doubling piccolo), clarinet, two pianos, xylophone, and strings.
In the 19th century, the world of music was highly polemicized in a way that
might seem familiar to us today mostly in other areas: religion or politics. Audiences
at classical concerts no longer shout their displeasure if the works of a composer
they do not admire are performed—they are more likely to leave the hall or simply
stay away. But in Saint-Saëns’ time, after the Franco-Prussian war, French
composers were fighting a life-and-death battle against the hegemony of Germanic
music. Prussia had invaded France in the 1870s, had besieged Paris and come close
to burning it. Wagner was admired by many in France, but, for others, his virulent
German nationalism did not sit well. In 1885, a proposed plan to stage Wagner’s
opera Lohengrin at the Paris Opera-Comique was met with this attack by French
writer Juliette Adams: “When I hear the music of Wagner, I hear the tread of
conquering soldiers.”
Saint-Saëns was caught up in the controversy surrounding this proposed (but
never realized) production in a book he published the same year called Melody and
Harmony. Saint-Saëns prided himself on being clear-headed and judging composers
on their merits, no matter how he felt about them personally. Although he had been
an early champion of Wagner’s music in France, he was repelled by Wagner’s
intense nationalism and the cult that was arising around it. “I profoundly admire the
works of Richard Wagner, despite their bizarre aspects. They are superior and
powerful; that is enough for me. But I have not been, am not, nor will ever be an
adherent to the Wagnerian religion.”
This inflammatory and prophetic statement (Hitler was a future adherent to
the “cult” of Wagner) was enough to ruin Saint-Saëns’ 1886 tour of Germany.
Wherever he appeared, he was greeted with a chorus—of boos and catcalls. When
he returned home, he needed a rest.
To recover from the tour, he took a house in a small Austrian village and set
to composing Carnival of the Animals. The work was intended for the amusement of
his students at the École Niedermeyer in Paris. In a letter to his publisher, SaintSaëns said that he knew he should be working on his Third Symphony instead, but
that he couldn’t help himself. “C’est si amusant!” (“It’s so much fun!”) he exclaimed.
In fact, the work was so very much fun that, after a few private performances
for friends and acquaintances, Saint-Saëns declined to publish the work during his
lifetime for fear it would detract from his reputation as a serious composer. (He did
leave instructions for publishing it posthumously.) That might seem strange to us
today, but the work is full of musical quotations, jokes, and general silliness that
might have been criticized or misunderstood in the highly charged musical scene of
the time.
I. Introduction et marche royale du lion (Introduction and the Lion’s Royal March)
Pianos and strings play a stirring introduction, starting with tremolo by the
pianos and slowly accelerating and rising three-note phrases in the strings. The lion
is treated to a royal march, including an imitation of his roar: up and down scales
growled out on the low notes of one piano.
2. Poules et coqs (Hens and Roosters)
This brief section uses upper strings, clarinet, and piano to imitate the
unmistakable clucking of hens and the crowing of a rooster.
3. Hérmiones (animaux véloces) (Wild Asses: Swift Animals)
The pianos play rising and falling scales against each other, painting an
exciting picture of scampering and playful animals.
4. Tortues (Tortoises)
Tortoises move slowly, so slowly it takes a moment to recognize that SaintSaëns has borrowed and slowed down the famous “can-can” dance tune from
Offenbach’s “Orpheus in the Underworld.” Strings play the tune against slow triplets
by the pianos. An occasional, but intentional, “sour note” suggests the tortoises’
ungainly movements.
5. L’éléphant (The Elephant)
Played at the unusual tempo Allegro pomposo, the elephant’s dance is another
musical joke. The pianos play a mincing triplet figure, suggesting a dainty dance
step, while the double basses play dances cribbed from Mendelssohn (the Scherzo
from A Midsummer Night’s Dream) and Berlioz (“Dance of the Sylphs” from La
Damnation de Faust) that are usually played fast and lightly by higher-pitched
instruments.
6. Kangourous (Kangaroos)
The pianos imitate hopping Kangaroos, playing rising and descending fifths
faster and slower.
7. Aquarium
The aquarium theme is a mysterious and floating tune, played by winds and
strings over tinkling descending scales played by the pianos.
8. Personnages à longues oreilles (Characters with Long Ears)
The long-eared characters are obviously donkeys, imitated by the strings.
Some have suggested that Saint-Saëns might be referring to music critics in this very
short movement.
9. Le coucou au fond des bois (The Cuckoo in the Depth of the Forest)
The pianos play slow chords while the clarinet (off-stage) plays a repeated
two-note birdcall. The whole effect is melancholy and mysterious.
10. Volière (Aviary)
The solo flute imitates lively birdsong as other instruments chime in with
background sounds, as of other birds.
11. Pianistes (Pianists)
Pianists are animals, too, apparently. These pianists do a miserable job of
playing their practice scales—based on common exercise books of the day—but
here the mistakes in rhythm are built right into the music. Saint-Saëns also instructs
the pianists to play like beginners, adding mistakes as they go. This joke was
probably intended for Saint-Saëns’ students.
12. Fossiles (Fossils)
Of all the musical “in-jokes” in the piece, this one is perhaps the most
complex. Played by violins, clarinet and xylophone, the music quotes from SaintSaëns’ own work and several other pieces. The xylophone imitates the fossils’
clattering bones, playing bits from Saint-Saëns’ “Danse Macabre,” while the other
instruments quote from French nursery rhymes like “Ah! Vous dirai-je, Maman”
(“Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star”), “Au clair du lune,” and others. Saint-Saëns also
references the aria “Una voce poco fa” from Rossini’s opera The Barber of Seville
(played on clarinet), and other classical pieces. In a way, Saint-Saëns is “digging up”
musical fossils from the past and embedding them in the bedrock of his piece.
13. Le cygne (The Swan)
Played by solo cello with piano accompaniment, this is the only movement
that Saint-Saëns allowed to be published during his lifetime. The simple, stately
melody almost makes us see a majestic swan gliding through the water.
14. Final (Finale)
The bright Finale brings the whole work together in a satisfying way. We
hear a lively, moving new theme, but several animals return from the previous
sections, including the braying jackass, perhaps having a last laugh.
© 2015 Mary Eichbauer