Program 3
Pavane, Op. 50
Gabriel Faure (1845-1924)

Composed in 1887.
Premiered on April 28, 1888 in Paris, conducted by Charles Lamoureux.

On September 12, 1887, Faure wrote to Marguerite Baugnies, hostess of one of the city's most important salons, with some charming words about his three-year-old son ("there is no sweeter, more intelligent, more sensitive, more discerning creature than he, and I cannot resist the temptation to tell you so") and an explanation: "You'll kill me but I still have done no composing since summer! I have not stopped going to La Madeleine (where he was assistant organist); I've not stopped giving lessons, and our pupils are at Versailles, at Ville-d'Avray, at Saint Germain, at Louveciennes! I have been having, on average, three hours' train travel per day. I should really need to get away from it all, to see othere landscapes than the ever-lasting Saint-Lazare station, other people, not to hear any more Sonatas for a while, to have a change of air in every sense!... The only new thing I have been able to compose during this shuttlecock existence is a Pavane."

Faure originally composed his Pavane as a purely orchestral work for Jules Danbe, conductor of the Opera-Comique and director of the Conservatoire concerts. There is no record, however, that Danbe performed the work, and Faure came up with another plan for it. On September 29, 1887, he wrote to Countess Elisabeth Greffulhe, "Robert de Montesquiou (the model for Proust's Baron Charlus and an 'aristocrat, scholar, aesthete and dandy, as he was described in a recent exhibition about him at the Musee d'Orsay), whom I have had the great fortune to meet in Paris, has most kindly accepted the egregiously thankless and difficult task of setting to this music, which is already complete, words that will make our Pavane fit to be both danced and sung. He has given it a delightful text in the manner of Verlaine: sly coquetries by the female dancers, and great sighs by the male dancers that will singularly enhance the music. If the whole marvelous thing with a lovely dance in fine costumes could be performed, what a treat it would be!" Faure, however, did not see his Pavane staged until 1919, when he included it in the one-act divertissement for Monte Carlo, Masques et Bergamasques, though the score was earlier performed, with voices, at Charles Lamoureux's concert in Paris on April 28, 1899. The chorus parts, which were grafted onto an already finished composition in the first place, are seldom heard today.

The pavane was a 16th-century court dance from Padua ("Pava" in the local dialect, hence "pavane") of a stately, processional nature. Carried across the Alps, the form reached its highest point of artistic perfection in works of the Elizabethan virginalists, and then fell from favor. As the riches of ancient music began to be uncovered in the late 19th century by pioneering musicologists, interest among composers in such old forms as the pavane was stirred. Sanit-Saens, included an example of the genre in his opera Etienne Marcel of 1879, and a few years later Faure contributed his interpretation of the early dance, marking it with his characteristic blend of yearning sensuality and cool classicism that Marcel Proust described as "a mixture of lechery and litanies." The piece is in a simple three-part form, with the return of the haunting opeing flute melody following a stern middle section. In 1903, Debussy, who, as man and musician, knew whereof he spoke, said, "The play of the graceful, fleeting lines described by Faure's music may be compared to the gesture of a beautiful woman without either suffering for comparison."

L’Ascension du Christ, Four Symphonic Meditations
Olivier Messiaen (1908-1992)

Composed in 1932-1933.
Premiered in February 1935 in Paris, conducted by Robert Siohan.

Olivier Messiaen, one of towering figures of modern French music, was born in 1908 in the ancient southern town of Avignon to Pierre Messiaen, a professor of literature noted for his translations of Shakespeare, and the poetess Cécile Sauvage. Olivier entered the Paris Conservatoire at the age of eleven to study with composer Paul Dukas, organist Marcel Dupré and other of that school’s distinguished faculty, winning several prizes for harmony, organ, improvisation and composition before graduating in 1930. The following year he was appointed chief organist at the Trinité in Paris. In 1936, Messiaen joined with André Jolivet, Yves Baudrier and Daniel Lesur to form La Jeune France, a group of young French composers pledged to returning substance and sincerity to the nation’s music, which they felt had become trivialized and cynical. Messiaen was appointed to the faculties of the Schola Cantorum and the École-Normale that same year. Called up for military service at the outbreak of hostilities in 1939, he was captured the following summer and imprisoned at Stalag VIII-A in Görlitz, Silesia. There he wrote his Quartet for the End of Time for the musical instruments available among his fellow musician-prisoners (clarinet, violin, cello and piano); the work’s extraordinary premiere was given at the camp in 1941. He was repatriated later that year, resuming his position at the Trinité and joining the staff of the Conservatoire as professor of harmony, where his students came to include such important musicians as Boulez, Stockhausen and Xenakis. In addition to his teaching duties in Paris, Messiaen gave special classes in Budapest, Darmstadt, Saarbruck and Tanglewood. He was a member of the French Institute, the Academy of Beaux Arts de Baviere of Berlin, the Santa Cecilia Academy of Rome, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He died in Paris in 1992.

Almost like a musical monk from a Medieval time, Messiaen’s life, works and religion are indivisible. “The foremost idea I wanted to express in music,” he wrote, “is the existence of the truths of the Catholic faith. I was born a believer and so it happens that the Scriptures have always made a deep impression on me since childhood. A number of my works are therefore intended to illuminate the theological truths of the Catholic belief. That is the first aspect of my work, the noblest, probably the most useful, the most valid, and the only one perhaps that I shall not regret at the hour of my death.” Few of his compositions, however, are specifically liturgical, Messiaen having chosen rather to address the widest possible audience in the concert hall (and, with his huge music drama Saint-François d’Assise of 1983, the opera house) in the most varied and colorful style devised by any mid-20th-century composer. Messiaen explained: “God being present in all things, music dealing with theological subjects can and must be extremely varied…. I have therefore tried to produce a music that touches all things without ceasing to touch God.”

Though he wrote works for solo piano, voices and chamber ensembles, most of Messiaen’s output is for organ or orchestra, whose vast resources of sonority are integral to his compositional style. Equally varied is the enormous range of influences that helped shape his music. Carla Huston Bell listed the following dizzying spectrum of inspirations in her 1984 study of the composer: his family (notably the refined literary tastes of his parents and the mystical Catholicism of his mother); the solid technical foundation of his early training; his interest in the rhythmic systems of ancient Greek and Asian Indian music; Gregorian plainchant; 14th-century isorhythm; Debussy; Stravinsky and Russian music; nature and birdsong; total serialization; and the symbiotic artistic interchange with his colleagues and his students. It is the true mark of Messiaen’s genius that from this potential maelstrom of sources he forged a distinctive and personal tonal language, one that makes his voice and message unique in modern music. Though the craftsmanship and complexity of his works are immense, Messiaen’s music is, above all, meant to be heard and shared, like a stage play, rather than studied just from the silent page. Though structurally impeccable, this is music more for the heart than for the head. “The listener’s only desire is to be charmed and this is precisely what will occur,” Messiaen predicted. “He will succumb in spite of himself to the strange charm of impossibilities which will lead him gently towards that theological rainbow which is the ultimate goal of music.”

The four “Symphonic Meditations” comprising L’Ascension, one of Messiaen’s earliest orchestral works, were composed in short score in Paris and Neussargues between May and July 1932, shortly after he had been appointed organist at the Trinité, and orchestrated one year later in Monaco. In 1934, he undertook an organ arrangement of the music, but found it so troublesome that he made numerous changes in three of the movements and composed the third anew. L’Ascension was inspired by texts from the liturgy for the Feast of the Ascension, the fortieth day after Easter, marking Christ’s ascent from earth to heaven.
The title of the opening movement — Majesty of Christ Beseeching His Glory of the Father — is reflected in a solemn but luminous chorale for woodwinds and brass led by the trumpet. Messiaen took its scriptural inspiration from the Gospel According to St. John: “Father, the hour is come, glorify Thy Son, that Thy Son may also glorify Thee.”

The second movement (Serene Alleluias of a Soul Yearning for Heaven) is headed with a phrase from the Ascension Mass: “We beseech Thee, Almighty God, that we may dwell in Heaven in spirit.” the movement is based on an elaborately decorated melody for unison woodwinds that recurs twice with sinuous accompaniments added in the strings; the two intervening episodes are given an exotic flavor by the English horn.

Alleluias on the Trumpets, Alleluias on the Cymbals (subtitled with a Psalm verse: “The Lord is gone up with the sound of a trumpet, O clap your hands all ye people; shout unto God with the voice of triumph”) is more dance-like than liturgical, and recalls a reply that Joseph Haydn once gave when asked why his sacred music wore such a happy countenance: “When I think of the Grace of God, my heart is so full of joy that the notes fairly dance and leap from my pen.”

The finale, Prayer of Christ Ascending to His Father, is based on a verse from St. John: “And now, O Father, I have manifested Thy name unto men ... and now, I am no more in the world, but these are in the world and I come to Thee.” The movement is scored for strings only (without basses) in tightly meshed parallel harmonies that Roger Nichols suggested portray “the effort with which Christ drags himself out of the mire of this world to join his Father in heaven.”


Harold in Italy, Symphony in Four Movements with Viola Solo, Op. 16
Hector Berlioz (1803-1869)

Composed in 1833-1834.
Premiered on November 23, 1834 in Paris Conservatoire, conducted by the composer with Chrétien Urhan as soloist.

In 1833, Berlioz married Harriet Smithson, the English actress who had inspired the Symphonie Fantastique three years earlier. Her only dowry was an overloaded account of debts, and the newlywed Berlioz determined to satisfy her creditors and give her a chance for a fresh start on the Parisian stage. To earn the large amount needed, he took the risk of arranging a concert for his benefit at the Paris Conservatoire in December, announcing that the Symphonie Fantastique and the premiere of the King Lear Overture would be on the bill, as well as an appearance by his friend Franz Liszt playing Weber’s Konzertstück. The concert proved to be one of Berlioz’s rare successes with Parisian public and critics.
Another surprise awaited Berlioz that night, as he related in his Memoirs. “To crown my good fortune,” he recounted, “one member of the audience stayed behind in the empty hall, a man with long hair and piercing eyes and a strange, ravaged countenance; a creature haunted by genius, a Titan among giants, whom I had never seen before, the first sight of whom stirred me to the depths. He stopped me in the passage and seized my hand, uttering glowing eulogies that thrilled and moved me to the depths. It was Paganini. That was the beginning of my friendship with the great artist who exerted such a happy influence on my career.”

Berlioz continued the story: “A few weeks after the concert, Paganini came to see me. He told me that he had a Stradivarius viola, a marvellous instrument, which he wanted to play in public; but he lacked the right music. Would I write a piece for it? I replied that I was more flattered than I could say, but that to live up to his expectations and write a work that showed off a virtuoso such as he in a suitably brilliant light, one should be able to play the viola, which I could not. ‘No, no, I insist,’ he said; ‘you will manage.’”

Berlioz set to work immediately on Paganini’s commission. His earliest plan for the composition included a chorus in addition to the orchestra and solo viola, and the subject was to be The Last Moments of Mary Stuart, inspired by a then-popular play running in Paris. The chorus was soon dropped, however, and Berlioz proceeded with what he called simply his “new symphony.” Paganini eagerly examined the first movement as soon as it was finished, but was disappointed by the lack of flamboyance in the solo part. “That’s no good,” he told the composer. “There’s not enough for me to do here. I should be playing all the time.” Berlioz suggested that Paganini consider writing his own concerto, but the virtuoso left without further comment on the music. “Realizing that my scheme would never suit him,” Berlioz continued, “I set to work to carry it out without troubling myself any more about how to show off the viola in a brilliant light. My idea was to write a series of orchestral scenes in which the solo viola would be involved, to a greater or lesser extent, like an actual person, retaining the same character throughout. I decided to give it as a setting the poetic impressions recollected from my wanderings in the Abruzzi, and to make it a kind of melancholy dreamer in the style of Byron’s Childe Harold. Hence the title of the symphony, Harold in Italy.”

The music’s association with Byron is tenuous. Its program seems to have been tacked on after the music was largely composed rather than having grown from the literary source, so there is little direct connection with the poet or his work. In its subject and its musical material, it is more a retrospective musical view of the three years that Berlioz spent in Italy as winner of the Prix de Rome than a musical translation of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage. The four scenes comprising Harold in Italy — Harold in the Mountains, Pilgrims’ March, Serenade and Orgy of the Brigands — have no counterparts in Byron, but they do reflect the composer’s experiences in Italy. He seems, for example, to have spent several afternoons with a gang of bandits, and their lusty exploits are reflected by the finale. Some of the thematic material, as well, comes from the Italian years. The theme which represents Harold was originally written for the Rob Roy Overture of 1832, a work that Berlioz tried to destroy but which resurfaced in copy many years after his death. Harold in Italy is far more Berlioz than Byron.

Paganini may have walked out of Berlioz’s apartment that afternoon in 1834, but he hardly walked out of the composer’s life. Though he never played Harold in Italy, the legendary virtuoso remained throughout his life the composer’s friend and supporter. In his Memoirs, Berlioz described the famous incident of the December 16, 1838 concert at which Paganini first heard the work he had inspired: “The concert had just ended ... when Paganini, followed by his son, came up to me at the orchestra door, gesticulating violently. He was already suffering from the disease of the larynx which killed him, and had completely lost his voice. He made a sign to the child, who put his ear close to his father’s mouth. Having listened carefully, he addressed me: ‘My father bids me tell you, sir, that never in all his life has he been so affected by any concert. Your music has overwhelmed him, and it is all he can do not to get down on his knees to thank you.’ At these astonishing words I made a gesture of embarrassment and incredulity; but Paganini, seizing me by the arm, dragged me back onto the platform, where many of the players still lingered. There he knelt and kissed my hand. No need to describe my feelings: the facts speak for themselves.” Two days later, Paganini’s son delivered a letter from his father to Berlioz. It read, “Beethoven being dead, only Berlioz can make him live again; and I who have heard your divine compositions, so worthy of the genius you are, humbly beg you to accept, as a token of my homage, 20,000 francs. Niccolò Paganini.” The generous gift allowed Berlioz the financial security to undertake the third of his symphonies, Romeo and Juliet, which he dedicated to Paganini.

In Harold in Italy, Berlioz again employed the cyclical technique of the idée fixe that he had earlier used in the Symphonie Fantastique. A melody representing the chief protagonist of the work (the idée fixe) is heard in each of the movements, musically and programmatically unifying the overall structure. The opening movement (Harold in the Mountains. Scenes of sadness, of happiness and of joy) is cast in two large sections. The extended slow introduction begins with a finely crafted contrapuntal strain for strings which leads to a minor-mode presentation of the idée fixe by the woodwinds in octaves. The mood brightens, and soon the solo viola enters to sing this main theme in a tender setting. The main section of the movement, a sonata form in fast tempo, is filled with joyful exuberance.

The second movement (March of the Pilgrims singing their Evening Prayer) suggests the steady tread to some holy shrine through its incessant pizzicato bass line supporting a simple song in the violins. The movement is built in the form of an arch, beginning softly and reaching its loudest point at the center before subsiding to a quiet close, rather as though the pilgrims were passing by in solemn procession. The following Serenade of a Mountaineer of the Abruzzi to his Mistress includes a vivacious piping melody and a pastoral theme, which are first presented independently and then together in the movement’s closing section.

To the poet Heinrich Heine, Berlioz described the finale (Orgy of the Brigands, Memories of Past Scenes) as “a hurricane.” The movement is prefaced by short recollections of the principal themes of the earlier movements separated by premonitory bursts of the music of the finale. After these preparatory stanzas, the colorful main body of the movement begins. Berlioz characterized this music as “that furious orgy where wine, blood, joy, rage, all combined, parade their intoxication; in this brigand scene the orchestra becomes a regular pandemonium ... whilst from the solo viola, the dreamy Harold, some trembling notes of his evening hymn are still heard in the distance as he flees in terror.”