| CANDIDE À PARIS | ||||||||||
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Overture to The Marriage of Figaro, K. 492 In 1781 Mozart finally parted company with his hated employer, Salzburg’s strict archbishop Hieronymus, Count Colloredo, and left the city for good. He set out for Vienna, capital of the Holy Roman Empire and the center of Central European culture, as a free-lance musician, a novelty at the time. In spite of early success, especially with his piano concertos and as pianist, he could never secure a position in court and his financial situation went from bad to worse. It was not that he was unable to make money, but rather that the cash flow always went out faster than it came in. Opera was the most prestigious musical genre in Vienna, and Mozart had the luck to team up with one of the best librettists of all time, Lorenzo da Ponte (1749-1838). Born in Italy of Jewish parents and converted as a child to Catholicism, da Ponte wrote the librettos for three of Mozart’s greatest operas: Don Giovanni, The Marriage of Figaro and Cosi fan tutte. A wheeler and dealer by nature, da Ponte got into trouble – not for the first time – with the authorities in Vienna and, after a stint in London, where he was involved in theatrical intrigues that left him headed for debtors’ prison, he ended his long life as the first teacher of Italian at Columbia University in New York. Unfortunately, the three da Ponte operas met only with limited success in Vienna. It was only after Mozart’s death that their true value was appreciated. The Marriage of Figaro is one of the oldest operas in the standard repertoire and one of the most youthful in spirit. When Pierre de Beaumarchais’s play, on which the opera is based, was published in 1782, it’s unflattering portrait of the aristocracy understandably caused an uproar and horrified Louis XVI. Like any scandal, it proved irresistible and must have spread rapidly, because Mozart’s opera to Lorenzo da Ponte’s libretto was premiered only four years later. As is customary for most opera overtures of the eighteenth century, this one contains no music from the opera itself. Nevertheless, the overture captures the spirit of the opera with its opening bars, a sequence of rapid notes on the strings scurrying like whispering conspirators.  They are answered by the whole orchestra with festive trumpets, and these alternating moods continue throughout the ebullient overture. | ||||||||||
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| Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Symphony No. 31 in D Major, K.297, "Paris" In 1777 Mozart set out with his mother on a grand tour of Germany and France, ending up in Paris where his mother suddenly died. The trip turned into a financial disaster as well: no court appointments; few substantive commissions; and, because of his long absence, dismissal from his post with the Salzburg court orchestra. As for the Parisians, they mostly ignored him, while he repaid them in kind. As his letters home show, he despised the Parisians and their musical culture. Compared to his usual pace, Mozart also composed few major works during that time. One of the most significant was the Symphony in D Major. It was commissioned by Joseph Le Gros, the impresario of the foremost orchestral concert series in Paris, the Concerts spirituels, whose large orchestra was the pride of the city. The orchestra had a large and well-disciplined wind section, including clarinets, and this is the first symphony in which Mozart used this relatively new instrument. On the other hand, he found the strings sounded abominable, claiming to fear for the life of his symphony. Nevertheless, the premiere went well with repeated applause. To conform to Parisian taste, the Symphony has only three movements. Considering that fact that most composers of this period were writing rather standard sonata form first movements, ABA slow movements, and rondo finales, the Symphony is amazingly innovative, particularly in its proliferation of melodies, In the first movement alone, Mozart trots out a composite theme that cycles through with six separate and distinct melodies, leading one to question "what is a theme anyway?"; &; The six short tunes can best be though of as a "theme group," which belongs together because all the separate entitities are in the same key. But the pompous opening melody is the musical glue that Mozart uses as a refrain between many of the new musical ideas and with which he concludes the movement. A second theme group consisting of six more melodies is in the expected dominant key (A major) which is maintained through the exposition. The opening motive opens the brief development, which then sets off on a new melody entirely. The recapitulation begins back all the melodies from the exposition, this time in the tonic key. The graceful Andante heard today is a replacement for the original one, which did not please Le Gros, who found it too long and with too many modulations. Mozart seldom wrote straightforward ternary (ABA) slow movements, and this one abounds with musical ideas, which like the first movement consists mostly of short motives strung together into longer themes. The little opening motive operates in a similar fashion to the opening idea in the first movement. It returns after a "B" section of new music & and before a "C" section of still more new music. Naturally, it also closes the movement. Notice that in this movement, the mood and nature of the themes is constant, the variations created by changes in melody, key and mode. Other of the composer's symphonic slow movements, especially in the later symphonies, create more operatic drama in the middle sections. The finale contains one of those Haydnesque surprises. It opens with whispering strings, but suddenly bursts forth with a grand tutti that elicited surprise and thunderous applause at the premiere. It is a stormy sonata allegro movement with spiky leaps. The second theme is a canon, combined later in the development with a fugue so that the two play simultaneously. | ||||||||||
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Selections from Candide During Senator Joseph McCarthy’s Communist witch hunts of the early 1950s, which particularly targeted artists, writers and musicians, Leonard Bernstein and playwright Lillian Hellman decided to use Voltaire’s satirical novel Candide as a vehicle to make a political statement. According to Hellman, the novel attacks “all rigid thinking...all isms.” Bernstein thought that the charges made by Voltaire against his own society’s puritanical snobbery, false morality and inquisitorial attacks on the individual were identical to those that beset American society. Incidentally, Hellman added to Candide’s adventures and adjusted his responses to them, in keeping with the updated political agenda. Bernstein had his own satirical musical axe to grind, describing Candide – with its tour of European folk and courtly dances – as “a valentine to European music.” In the tradition of the best operetta, however, the “valentine” had quite a few poisoned arrows. After Hellman and Bernstein spent two years of intermittent cooperative work, the play opened in the fall of 1956. It failed – that is, all but the overture. In its orphaned state, the overture became a staple of the orchestral repertoire and one of Bernstein’s most frequently performed works. It reflects the breakneck pacing of Voltaire’s satire with its worldwide adventures and buffoonery, interspersed in places by mock and real tender moments. In 1974, equipped with a new libretto that concentrated on its madcap humor rather than its political and social message, Candide was successfully revived. The musical saw 741 packed performances in the Broadway Theater, but Bernstein was still not satisfied. Two operatic versions followed in 1982 and 1989, and a CD of the final version, one of Bernstein’s last recordings, became a bestseller. But just as Bernstein never finished tweaking the opera/operetta/musical/all of the above, others have entered the fray – notably a madcap PBS Great Performances production available on DVD. Candide’s plot follows the adventures of four disciples of the philosopher of optimism, Dr. Pangloss, in the court of the Baron of Westphalia (a backwater). Pangloss, despite millennia of evidence to the contrary, maintains that this is the “best of all possible worlds.” His four protégés are: Candide, the Baron’s bastard son; Cunegonde, his legitimate daughter; Maximillian (Max), his legitimate son; and Paquette, a serving girl attached to Max. After war destroys Westphalia, the four are scattered to the winds, Cunegonde and Max presumed dead. A true Panglossian believer, Candide sets out to seek a better fortune. In his travels, he takes a world tour – not always willingly – meeting up in Paris with a live (!?) Cunegonde, now a courtesan who has been repeatedly raped and prostituted. About the only thing she has left is her virginal state of mind – and even that’s pretty rocky. More adventures – in which Cunegonde is lost and found a few more times – take Candide to Massachusetts, Mexico, Eldorado (where the streets are paved in gold and there is neither greed nor strife) and the gambling dens of Venice. None of it makes a whole lot of sense – which is why Candide’s itinerary over the years has continually changed (like today’s airline routes). The twenty-one selections loosely follow the plot and include: Act 1 1. Overture: In keeping with the traditional operetta overture, it consists of melodies from the operetta. Act 2 11. “My Love:” The Gobernador of Monte Video promises to marry (Hah!) Cunegonde after she has again been separated from Candide. | ||||||||||
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| Copyright © Elizabeth and Joseph Kahn 2008 | ||||||||||
