Natchitoches-Northwestern Symphony

Program Notes for

Wednesday, January 15, 2025, 7:30pm Magale Recital Hall:

Academic Festival Overture, Op. 80 by Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)

Johannes Brahms came from a working-class family in Hamburg. Money was tight. To help make ends meet, he quit school at fourteen and headed to the seaport to work as a barroom musician. By all accounts, it was probably not a very wholesome place. And despite the antics of drunken sailors, young Brahms did his best to focus on playing the piano and reading books during his breaks. 

By the time he hit thirty, he was a respectable musician. When he started composing and publishing symphonies, audiences heard his music as far away as New York City. Imagine his surprise when, at age forty-five, the University of Breslau announced its intention to award Brahms an honorary doctorate. This came with a strong suggestion that he might write a symphony to mark the occasion. Something noble that would reflect the lofty Latin title of his honorary degree. But Brahms was too much of a free spirit to get boxed into something like that. He answered with one of his most playful scores, a ten-minute piece filled with what he called a “rollicking potpourri of student songs.”

He quotes four tavern songs that would have been immediately recognizable to the college students. The first song, introduced by the trumpets, “Wir hatten gebauet ein stattliches Haus” (“We have built a stately house”), was used as a theme song for a student organization that advocated for the unification of Germany. The second song is “Der Landesvater” (“Father of our Country”), which can first be heard in the strings. The bassoons introduce the third song “Was kommt dort von der Höh?” (“What comes from afar?”), a song that was associated with freshman initiations. These three songs alternate before the full orchestra joins together in a rousing rendition of “Gaudeamus igitur” (“Let us rejoice, therefore”), a popular song in Europe whose text dates back to a 13th-century Latin manuscript. Though the song was occasionally used in academic ceremonies it was a popular drinking song with students because of its lighthearted text with a carpe diem theme of how we should rejoice while we are young because eventually the earth will claim us.

So, at the premiere, with Brahms conducting, it is fun to imagine the students’ stifled laughter and the school officials, probably less-than-enthused, decked out in their academic regalia being serenaded by songs sung in beer halls!

Symphony No. 1, Op. 21 by Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)

Beethoven was 30 years old when he announced himself as a symphonic composer at a concert in Vienna April 2, 1800. He had written so much already with two piano concertos, the opus 18 string quartets, and several piano sonatas. He had been living in Vienna for eight years and had lessons with the two most famous classical masters Haydn and Mozart. When he set out to write his own symphony, he wanted to compose in the classical tradition but show his personality, his innate sense of dramatic passion within the structure and form of his mentors.

The first movement opens in an extraordinary way. The first chord is the dominant of an unrelated key. This slow introduction then is ambiguous, and it isn’t until we get halfway through that we realize that we are in fact going to C-major. Even though this movement is in the traditional “sonata form,” there is enormous originality in how it develops. The way he uses the instruments, and fragmented melodies passing through constantly changing colors as if in dialogue. It has contrasting harsh dynamics, almost outraged music, juxtaposed with brilliance and incredibly sweet musical ideas. And for the Viennese audience of the middle class and aristocrats, this rather less than elegant approach to the symphony must have been rather shocking.

The second movement in contrast is a sweet triple-meter dance, like a minuet or French passepied. It seems to be like a courtship dance that swoons with infatuation. It has a fugue like opening with themes that are light on their feet. In contrast, the middle section starts in C-minor with fragments of the themes that sounds like an argument between the instruments. When the initial themes return it is recomposed with added counterpoint. Then, in the coda, they say goodbye with a sighing, kiss-blowing, farewell.

Beethoven really shows his radical spirit with the third movement. Haydn and Mozart called their third movements “Minuet” and Beethoven calls it that here but writes above it Allegro molto e Vivace.  That means very fast and the moment one hears this supercharged energy and swiftness of tempo one realizes that this is not your ordinary minute, and this is not your ordinary composer.  

The finale has an introduction that has a sense of humor. It opens with a “C” unison chord. Then the first violins left alone, build a soft slow scale, in fragments, like stacking toy blocks. When it gets just below the top of where you expect it to end up, it takes off with incredible velocity and  has an energetic playful scale-like-rollercoaster-ride of a first theme. The second theme is contrasting but is also energetic with shouts of joy passed between instruments. The coda has a new idea that is march like that brings this unique passionate symphony to a close.

Hungarian March from “The Damnation of Faust,” Op. 24 (1846) by Hector Berlioz (1803-1869)

In 1846, in preparation for concerts in Budapest, Berlioz composed this march on a popular Hungarian theme, the “Rákóczi March”which in turn derives from a famous song that originated in the 17th century. The composer conducted the premiere and later wrote this about the concert in his autobiography:

“First the trumpets give out the rhythm, then the flutes and clarinets softly outlining the theme, with a pizzicato accompaniment of the strings, the audience remaining calm and judicial. Then, as there came a long crescendo, broken by dull beats of the bass drum, like the sound of distant cannon, a strange restless movement was to be heard among the people; and as the orchestra let itself go in a cataclysm of sweeping fury and thunder, they could contain themselves no longer, their overcharged souls burst forth with a tremendous explosion of feeling.”

The enormous success of the piece led Berlioz to wedge it into his opera “The Damnation of Faust” (where its role in the opera is unrelated and not in Goethe’s original story).  The march remains today popular as a standalone orchestra piece.

Finlandia, Op. 26, by Jean Sibelius (1865-1957)

Finlandia is a symphonic poem composed in 1899 that expresses the desire for independence from the control of Czarist Russia. He wanted to create something recognizably Finnish, and the original title, Finland Awakens attracted negative attention from the czarist régime, so for a while the piece was known as Impromptu. However, the composer later described its true meaning in stirring words: “We fought 600 years for our freedom, and I am part of the generation which achieved it. Freedom! My Finlandia is the story of this fight. It is the song of our battle, our hymn of victory.”

It begins dark with massive chords in the brass which establishes the music’s parameters of great depth and seriousness of the struggle. Woodwinds and strings follow with the same material but solemnly this time creating a feeling of angst and despair.  This yields gradually to a more defiant, resolute section with fanfares and rising energy. It ultimately breaks free, giving way to a hymn tune that expresses the complexity of feeling contentment for freedom at the same time feeling sadness as we remember those we lost and the sacrifices that were made. Sibelius then takes this tune and builds it into a triumphant ending.

Incidentally, words were added later to this tune in Finnish about the dawning of a new birth of freedom and has become one of Finland’s most cherished national songs. In addition, this tune has been set with different words around the world, appearing in hymnals and song books with texts such as Be Still My Soul, At the Table, Land of the Pine, and Our farewell Song.