Program Notes

November 21, 2008

Richard Strauss – “Also Sprach Zarathustra,” opening fanfare

In the broad world, there are few classical themes more widely recognized than the opening fanfare of Richard Strauss’ “Also Sprach Zarathustra.” From hilarious abuses – such as the once-popular novelty record of the amateur Portsmouth Sinfonia slaughtering the music – to awe-inspiring adaptations (remember the appearance of the monolith in “2001: A Space Odyssey?”), Strauss’ music has lodged itself in the popular consciousness.

Yet it is sometimes easy to forget that this music was written, not as soundtrack or marching-band fare, but as pure orchestral music, as part of a large-scale work that explores some of the most influential themes of modern philosophy.

For anyone who is familiar with the work of Friedrich Nietzsche, this genesis should be self-evident. Nietzsche wrote a book of the same title between 1883-1885. The book takes the form of a fictional tale in which Zarathustra, a character based loosely on the ancient Iranian prophet Zarathustra, returns to earth to repair the problems wrought by his absolutist philosophies of right and wrong.

Most notably, it is in this book that Nietzche proposed his belief that humans are responsible for their own moral code, and that mankind stands at a point of transition between his primordial, ape-like animalism, and the “Übermensch,” or superman.

This belief in the transcendent future of humanity and the responsibility of self-determination became fundamental to Nietzsche’s philosophy and legacy. And it was to this theory that Richard Strauss found himself so drawn that he chose to write a symphonic tone poem around the book’s ideas.

Premiered in 1896, Strauss’ “Also Sprach Zarathustra” is hardly a literal interpretation of Nietzsche’s book. “I did not intend to…portray Nietzsche’s great work musically,” Strauss later wrote. “I meant rather to convey in music an idea of the evolution of the human race from its origin, through the various phases of development, religious as well as scientific, up to Nietzsche’s idea of the Übermensch.”

Although the entire score of “Also Sprach Zarathustra” ranges across nine movements that take about 30 minutes to perform, the opening fanfare manages to express a compact version of Strauss’ idea. “The sun rises,” Strauss wrote in the score. “The individual enters the world or the world enters the individual.” 

The musical realization of this idea could hardly be simpler: over a pedal tone, three trumpets sketch out a rising melody that swells, with support from other instruments, to a triumphant climax that sustains, then flashes out like a snuffed lamp. Nothing more; yet so much: Here is the supreme example in all of music of power in simplicity.

Ralph Vaughan-Williams – “Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis”

If Strauss’ fanfare represents power in simplicity, Ralph Vaughan-Williams’ “Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis” stands as one of the great examples of beauty in simplicity. Here is music that flows like a sun-dappled brook, following a seemingly inevitable path at a lazy, mesmerizing pace that never breaks.

It is, in short, the kind of music that made Vaughan Williams the most beloved and revered British composer of his era. The composer of nine symphonies and numerous noteworthy short works for orchestra, Vaughan Williams is now credited with bringing about a major renaissance in British music at the turn of the 20th century; in honor of his influence, his ashes were interred in Westminster Abbey upon his death.

Two of Vaughan Williams’ most popular compositions are built on beloved English melodies: the “Fantasia on Greensleeves,” and the composition we will hear tonight, “Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis.” The piece is based on a vocal melody written by Tallis, a 16th century British composer and church musician. On this foundation, Vaughan Williams built a mesmerizing piece of music for an unusual string orchestra that consists of a full-sized orchestral string section, an eight-piece orchestra, and a string quartet. Vaughan Williams’ lush harmonies and swooning sentimentality transform this simple Renaissance melody into a beautifully serene piece of Romantic music.

Francis Poulenc – Concerto for Organ, Strings and Timpani

Francis Poulenc was never shy about the source of his inspiration and sustenance. "I am religious," he wrote, "by deepest instinct and heredity. I feel myself incapable of ardent political conviction, but for me it seems quite natural to believe and practice religion. I am a Catholic. It is my greatest freedom."

It is surely for this reason that much of the French composer’s finest music is written with evident religious overtones. His most famous and widely performed work today is the “Gloria” of 1959, a composition built on the Catholic Gloria in Excelsis Deo text. In 1950, the prominent Parisian critic Claude Rostand referred to Poulenc as “half bad boy, half monk,” an apt reflection of the composer’s bent toward music that is by turns playful, satirical, and deeply reverent.

Poulenc himself recognized these tendencies in his musical personality. In 1936, the composer gave his listeners a clear indication as to the character of his then-new Concerto for Organ, Strings, and Timpani, when he wrote that “this is not the amusing Poulenc…but rather a Poulenc who is heading for the cloister – a 15th Century Poulenc, if you like.”

It’s a rare composer who is so accurately self-aware. But it is nevertheless worth clarifying that this great Concerto is hardly staid or conservative in its musical language or emotional range. Rather, this is Poulenc at his most fervent and urgent – a spirited cry to the heavens that evokes the Gothic grandeur of old cathedrals in a musical language that is decidedly individual, modern, and revelatory.

The Concerto is broken into six sections, each connected by recurring themes that are transformed throughout the piece. The opening flourish for organ evokes the great organ music of Bach; and these echoes recur to the very last notes of the Concerto. But in between, Poulenc creates endlessly revealing textures and nuances that bring this Concerto firmly into the modern era. “The sacred and the secular interact here,” wrote Jean Roy, a friend of the composer, “forming an alliance that corresponds to Poulenc’s innermost nature.”

Camille Saint-Saens – Symphony No. 3, “Organ”

Perhaps only in Mozart was a talent equal to Camille Saint-Saens evident at such an early age. By age two, Saint-Saens was playing the piano and demonstrating absolute pitch. By age three, he was writing and reading music; by five, he was reading opera scores and Beethoven sonatas. His first solo recital, given at the tender age of ten, presented challenges rarely taken up by musicians twice his age: a Mozart concerto, a Beethoven concerto, a Prelude and Fugue by Bach, and four other works...all performed from memory. At that concert, Saint-Saens' mother was asked, "What kind of music will he be playing when he's twenty?" To which she replied, "He will be playing his own!"

Good call. By age twenty, Camille Saint-Saens had already composed three symphonies (he began enumerating his symphonies with the third of these; the first two were never published in his lifetime), as well as numerous other smaller-scale works. His gifts as a performer were soon recognized by such luminaries as Gounod, Rossini, Berlioz, and Liszt (who proclaimed Saint-Saens the best organist in the world). "I live in music like a fish lives in water," Saint-Saens said, composing "as an apple tree produces apples."

The crowing achievement of Saint-Saens' career, the Symphony No. 3 was written in the mid-1880s, at the behest of the London Philharmonic Society. The glorious incorporation of the organ in this work was no doubt inspired by the availability of a great organ in the hall where the work was to be premiered (unfortunately, unbeknownst to Saint-Saens until rehearsals began, the organ had been replaced by a much lesser instrument). By the time of the Symphony's composition, Saint-Saens was already a much-celebrated composer throughout Europe; but he himself recognized that he had reached his zenith. "I have given all that I have to give," Saint-Saens said after composing the Symphony No. 3. "What I have done I shall never do again."

The Symphony is structured in an unorthodox two-section form that Saint-Saens had pioneered with his Fourth Piano Concerto. Each of the two sections is divided into two parts, thus recalling the traditional four-movement symphonic form. The whole work is built around a leading theme that appears in successive transformations throughout. The first section begins with a slow Adagio, followed by an agitated, pessimistic Andante section. The mood gradually softens, and the first section ends in a spirit of quietude. The second section opens like a wake-up call: an energetic, fantastic Allegro Moderato. This is followed finally by the triumphal Maestoso that leads us toward the final, fast flourish which brings the Symphony to a close.

Program notes written by Joe Nickell