Masterworks 1 Program Notes

Beckel’s Toccata for Orchestra, Korngold’s Violin Concerto and Brahms’ Symphony No. 1

James Beckel
Toccata for Orchestra
James Beckel was born in Marion, Ohio in 1948. He composed this work on a commission from a consortium of the orchestras of Evansville, Indianapolis, Oklahoma City, Omaha, and Virginia in 2006. It was first performed in 2007 by the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Mario Venzago. The score calls for 2 flutes, piccolo, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, bass clarinet, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, harp, piano, and strings.

*****

A graduate of the Indiana University School of Music, James Beckel has been the Principal Trombonist of the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra since 1969, and is on the faculty of DePauw University and the University of Indianapolis. He has been an Individual Arts Fellow through the Indiana Arts Commission and the National Endowment for the Arts, and was recently selected as one of 50 composers to participate in the Continental Harmony Project. His compositions have been performed by orchestras all over the country.

Beckel writes that his Toccata for Orchestra “is meant to be a miniature concerto for orchestra. From the string quartet to the lyrical flute and clarinet solos in the middle of the work, to the fugue section, every instrument in the orchestra has a solo moment somewhere in the piece.

“A composition colleague of mine once mentioned a discussion he had about toccatas with the organist at the cathedral in Siena, Italy. He learned that in the 17th century, toccatas were typically improvisational preludes for church services, often involving music that would sequence keys in fourths or fifths to see which notes on the organ might be malfunctioning, as they were unpredictable instruments at that time. This practice would inform the organist which notes to avoid for the rest of the service. I decided to incorporate this musical idea into my Toccata. The melodic pattern of fifths states all the notes in the chromatic scale by the sixth measure, and is the basis for the B theme. The use of fifths is also dominant in the rhythmic accompaniment to the A theme.

“Structurally this work may be divided into five major sections. The first section includes the introduction, the A and B themes, and a miniature development. The second section is meant to contrast with the loud and rhythmic opening. The more intimate music features the clarinet solo, which leads into a string quartet. The third section is a quasi-fugue that begins quietly with the bassoons and culminates in a very loud, multi-metered passage for the percussion section. The fourth section abruptly returns to the quiet music of the second section, now heard in the solo flute with an ostinato accompaniment derived from the fugue theme. The fifth section is a recapitulation and coda.

“There are many definitions for toccata, including ‘a piece of music that shows the technical prowess of a soloist.’ In this case the ‘soloist’ is the entire symphony orchestra. Another definition of toccata is ‘to touch.’ While this meaning refers to touching a keyboard, I hope that the lyrical moments in this work will touch the listener and show off the beauty as well as the dazzling technical abilities of the orchestra.”

*****

Erich Korngold
Concerto for Violin & Orchestra in D major, Op. 35
Erich Wolfgang Korngold was born in Brünn, Moravia (now Brno in the Czech Republic) in 1897 and died in Hollywood, California in 1957. He composed his Violin Concerto in 1945, and it was first performed in 1947 by Jascha Heifetz with the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra conducted by Vladimir Golschmann. The concerto is scored for solo violin, 2 flutes, piccolo, 2 oboes, English horn, 2 clarinets, bass clarinet, 2 bassoons, contrabassoon, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, trombone, timpani, percussion, and strings.

*****

You may never have heard Erich Korngold’s name before, but the chances are good that you have not only heard his music, but enjoyed it. That’s because Korngold composed the film scores for a number of classic movies such as The Sea Hawk, Captain Blood, King’s Row, The Prince and the Pauper, Anthony Adverse, and The Adventures of Robin Hood. These last two earned him Oscars for best film score.

Korngold didn’t start out as a film composer: in fact, he was a child prodigy in a league with Mozart and Mendelssohn. Korngold was playing piano at age five and composing at six. By age ten he’d written a ballet score, and at thirteen a piano sonata that was premiered by no less than Artur Schnabel. He went on to write several very successful operas that were performed all over the world.

At which point, his life changed entirely.

Korngold came to Hollywood in 1934 to work with Max Reinhardt on A Midsummer Night’s Dream. He was immediately asked to write music for Captain Blood, and for the next few years he divided his time between Vienna and Hollywood. When the Nazis made it impossible to return to Vienna he moved his entire family to Hollywood, where he became one of the truly great film composers.

After the war, Korngold began to write concert music again, starting with this Violin Concerto. If it’s hard not to think of the movies when you hear it, there’s a good reason: much of the music is drawn from the scores he wrote for the silver screen. In the first movement the violin enters straight away, with a sweet and lyrical theme from Another Dawn. Even as the movement expands and the solo part becomes more and more showy, lyricism is at its core.
The atmospheric opening of the second movement Romance sets the scene for a gorgeous aria for the soloist; this is music where there is beauty simply for beauty’s sake. The Finale, drawing from The Prince and the Pauper, is a rondo full of the spirit of the dance.

While many classical composers including Prokofiev, Shostakovich, Copland, Bernstein, and others wrote the occasional movie score without tarnishing their reputations, it was not a two-way street. Once he moved to Hollywood, the critics tended to dismiss Korngold as just another hack film composer. Part of this was sheer prejudice, but another part was that composers of orchestral film scores—to this very day—usually write them in the late-romantic style. That style was “obsolete” even before Korngold wrote his first note. It’s one thing to dabble in films, but it’s quite unforgivable (to the musical elites, that is) not to have rejected a manner of composing that dates back to Brahms in favor of something new. Korngold had a hard time getting his works played, or even noticed, once he became a Hollywood success. Music lovers, on the other hand, love music when it’s good no matter what the pedigree of the composer might be—and they, for once, are leading the critics back to Korngold to re-discover the treasures in his work.

*****

Johannes Brahms
Symphony No. 1 in C minor, Op. 68
Johannes Brahms was born in Hamburg in 1833 and died in Vienna in 1897. Sketches for this work date back as far as 1862, but Brahms did most of the composing between 1874 and 1876. The first performance took place at Karlsruhe, Baden in 1876 under the direction of Otto Dessoff. The symphony calls for 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, contrabassoon, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, timpani, and strings.

*****

“I shall never compose a symphony! You have no conception of how the likes of us feel when we hear the tramp of a giant like him behind us.” So said Brahms to his friend, conductor Hermann Levi; the “giant,” of course, was Beethoven.

Everyone wondered how Brahms could have reached his early forties without writing a symphony. After all, at the same age Beethoven had completed eight of his nine, Haydn half a hundred. When Brahms was only 21 his friend Robert Schumann wrote, “But where is Johannes? Is he flying high or only under the flowers? Is he not yet ready to let drums and trumpets sound? The beginning is the main thing; if only one makes the beginning, then the end comes of itself.”

Brahms did, in fact, make beginnings, but the ends didn’t quite come of themselves. After hearing Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony Brahms was inspired to compose a symphony in the same key of D-minor. He completed three movements before he abandoned the project. The music he produced was good—two of the movements were used later in the D-minor Piano Concerto and one found its way into Ein Deutsches Requiem—but apparently not good enough. “Composing a symphony is no laughing matter,” said Brahms, no doubt hearing the giant’s footsteps behind him.
Brahms knew that his First Symphony would be seen as an artistic manifesto in an age when such things were taken very seriously. Many romantic composers looked upon Beethoven as the Great Liberator, the one who opened the doors to unbridled romanticism. Brahms, on the other hand, was predisposed to believe that much of the strength of Beethoven’s romanticism came largely from his classicism, that the dramatic outbursts were all the more powerful because of the surrounding context of discipline. For Brahms, the heart and mind had to counterbalance each other.
Critical reaction to the First Symphony was mixed. The champions of unfettered romanticism took the symphony as a rebuke to their aesthetic and treated it as such; the fans of Brahms’ style, on the other hand, called it “Beethoven’s Tenth.” Those with greater insight delighted in how Brahms’ passion—as refined by his intellect—led to a work whose impact was greater than either.

Toda

y the First Symphony is a monument familiar to all. There is the pulsing introduction to the turbulent first movement; the melancholy second; the graceful, tune-laden third; and the transcendent Finale, with its startling transformation of a reverent trombone chorale into a bold consummation—all are remembered, yet each encounter with the symphony is a renewal.

The comparisons to Beethoven were inevitable, then as now. In a way, both men approached the same destination from opposite directions: Beethoven had pushed outward on the boundaries of classicism, while Brahms applied discipline to the unrestrained romanticism of his age. Brahms waited to issue his First Symphony until he was a master of his craft, not only able to withstand the comparison but one whose own footsteps would ring in the ears of those who followed.

                                                                           —Mark Rohr
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                                                                          mrohr@comcast.net