“All his music has been written in terms of what Plato called ‘the absolutes,’ with a faith in the concept that there is an absolute truth, an absolute beauty, and an absolute rightness of things.”
—Leonard Bernstein on Samuel Barber
Bernstein wrote some 40 “Anniversaries” over the years (including “For Stephen Sondheim” heard July 31, and “For William Schuman” heard Aug 2), but the very first he penned was “For Aaron Copland,” his friend, champion, and mentor. The 1942 work is tender and sweet, and captures both the tenor of the relationship between the two while representing Copland’s unique musical fingerprints through the use of open chords and rhythmic melodies. Around the same time that Bernstein wrote his tribute, Copland composed his ballet Rodeo. It was among the first of his works expressly written for mass appeal, and it remains among Copland’s most popular pieces. The ballet is in five sections, ending with Hoe Down. Copland was inspired by a recording of a Kentucky fiddler named Bill Stepp performing a traditional square dance tune called “Bonaparte’s Retreat.” The main melody that opens and closes the work came from Stepp’s interpretation of the fiddle tune, while the middle section quotes another Irish folk tune: “Miss McCleod.” Copland himself excerpted and arranged Hoe Down in the version heard today for violin and piano. Though the piece sounds quintessentially American, its roots lay across the ocean, and that’s where we’re headed for the next step in today’s journey. British composer and pianist Huw Watkins’s (born July 13, 1976, Ponypool, Wales) 50th birthday coincides with the nation’s 250th (happy birthday, Huw!), and today’s performance of his String Trio No. 2 will find his older brother, the fantastic cellist Paul Watkins, taking on the cello part. The work is a dazzling and colorful breath of fresh air, which the composer describes as follows:
“It is made up of seven short movements, each one picking up an idea, or a note left hanging from the preceding one, and taking it in quite different directions. This continues until the last two movements revisit much more thoroughly the athletic, fanfare-like material heard right at the beginning of the first.” It is a stunning bit of music and provides all of the players plenty of virtuosic challenge, enough that an older brother might give his little brother a stiff arm for all the difficult “athletic, fanfare-like material.” We cross the channel and find ourselves at the end of the program and the season, not with the work of an American, but that of a Frenchman. Gabriel Fauré (born May 12, 1845, Pamiers, France; died November 4, 1924, Paris, France) holds a special place in the development of French music, and, much like Copland, he was intent on infusing his music with an identifiable French sound as a response to the Germanic hegemony of Beethoven, Schumann, and Brahms. Among his most beloved works is his 1880 Piano Quartet No. 1 in C minor, whose long gestation (he began the work in 1876) also included one of Fauré’s biggest personal blows. In the early 1870s he met the charming and lovely Marianne Viardot while attending musical soirées at her mother’s home. The two began a 5-year courtship and became engaged in 1877. It was the best of times, and it became the worst of times. Just five months later, Marianne would call off the engagement, and the otherwise unflappable Fauré was heartbroken. Many see the Adagio movement of this work as an unleashing of his feelings, although his friend and biographer wrote, “Nothing, in my opinion, warrants docile acceptance of such a sentimental and imprudent thesis.” Fauré himself was known to scoff at indulgence. However intended, there is undeniable pathos in this music. The work opens with a brooding theme, contrasted by a more mellifluous melody. Both are treated to subtle ever-changing shifts that look forward to the colorful writing of his most famous student, Maurice Ravel. The gossamer Scherzo has a light bearing and a sophisticated wit. The finale of the 1880 premiere was revised substantially in 1884, which is what we hear today (the original movement is lost to history). Pulling together musical ideas reminiscent of earlier movements, the finale has a driving intensity and a brilliant coda bringing the work, and this summer’s festival, to a thrilling conclusion. Copland deeply admired Fauré, writing in the October 1924 edition of the Musical Quarterly: “The themes, harmonies, form, have remained essentially the same, but with each new work they have all become more fresh, more personal, more profound.” May we all continue to find our own paths, reinvent ourselves, and imagine into being a future in which we, as a nation, move ever closer to a more perfect union.
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–ML