Click Here to hear some of the various themes found in Shostakovich's Symphony No. 4.
Haydn Symphony No. 22, E-flat Major, Hob. I:22, The Philosopher
Adagio
Presto
Menuetto—Trio
Finale: Presto
Shostakovich Symphony No. 4, C Minor, Op. 43
Allegretto poco moderato
Moderato con moto
Largo—Allegro
Program notes by Rebecca Jemian
The composers of the two symphonies on today’s concert were very much products of their time. Franz Joseph Haydn was a member of a nobleman’s court in the Hapsburg Empire. By the time he left the court in 1890, society had changed: the rise of the middle class went hand in hand with a decrease in court life. Haydn is known to some as Papa Haydn, Father of the Classical Period, and his compositions sweep from Baroque-style works through the quintessential Classical forms. Dmitri Shostakovich was one of the first composers to come of age in the Soviet Union. He weathered the changes in the twentieth century as Stalin rose to power and seized control of the country’s culture and society.
Franz Joseph Haydn
Born March 31, 1732, in Rohrau, Lower Austria
Died May 31, 1809, in Vienna
Symphony No. 22, E-flat Major, Hob. I:22, The Philosopher
I. Adagio (Slow); II. Presto (Rapid); III. Menuetto—Trio; IV. Finale: Presto
Haydn received his musical education in Vienna, then the musical capital of Europe. He sang in choirs from the age of eight, and was always associated with churches and courts. As the musical capital, Vienna played host to musicians from all over Europe, and thus, Haydn became acquainted with all the current musical styles. He learned to compose during the final flowering of the Baroque era, and his early works reflect that style.
Haydn joined the court of Esterháza in 1761; the estate was a day’s travel from Vienna and run by Prince Paul Anton Esterházy who loved music and was an amateur baryton player (somewhat like a guitar). Esterházy supported a resident orchestra, an opera theater, and many other musicians. One of Haydn’s duties was to write music exclusively for use at Esterháza. With the abundant musical resources at his disposal, Haydn produced a body of symphonies, string quartets and keyboard sonatas; over the nearly thirty years that Haydn served this court, these multi-movement instrumental works took on an aesthetic that has come to epitomize the Classical style.
Haydn’s Symphony No. 22 illustrates an early step in the change from Baroque style to Classical style. Composed in 1764, the work has more similarities with church music from the Baroque than it does with Haydn’s mature symphonies. The first movement is in a slow tempo, and it has a chorale prelude design in its use of a measured chant-like theme accompanied by arpeggiated figures. The second movement is lively, but does not have the balanced phrases so typical of the Classical era. The minuet is very stately, and the final movement looks forward to the wit of Haydn’s later finales. Equally striking is Haydn’s instrumentation: he calls for two English horns, the lower-pitched member of the oboe family; this pair contributes to both the Baroque and church features of the symphony, recalling some of Bach’s choral works. Speculation continues about the nickname, The Philosopher. Some believe that the gravity of the first movement, with its call and response of instruments stating chorale phrases above a clock-like accompaniment, evokes a deep thinker.
Works from this period of Haydn’s life illustrate the changes taking place in musical culture. It is exciting to hear these less-performed works, connecting Haydn with preceding styles and being reminded how vast his contributions were to music of his time.
Haydn calls for 2 English horns, bassoon, 2 horns, and strings in his Symphony No. 22; the performance traditions of the time would have dictated that a harpsichord also be used for rhythmic and harmonic support.
The Louisville Orchestra most recently performed this symphony in the 1975–76 season. The work lasts approximately 23 minutes.
Dmitri Shostakovich
Born September 25, 1906, in St. Petersburg, Russia
Died August 9, 1975, in Moscow
Symphony No. 4, C Minor, Op. 43
I. Allegretto poco moderato (Fast, a little moderately); II. Moderato con moto (Moderately, with motion); III. Largo—Allegro (Slow—Fast)
In discussing this piece, it is important to consider Shostakovich’s personal course within the context of events that unfolded around him in this fertile period of Russian-Soviet history. The nationwide political situation cast a strong shadow on all artists, and its effects were felt throughout the musical world. The state of scholarship and understanding of this period is still unfolding as more sources are discovered and a more complete context is revealed.
Shostakovich finished his studies at the Leningrad (the name for St. Petersburg from 1924 to 1991) Conservatory in 1926. His graduation piece was his first symphony, which was performed in Leningrad, Berlin and Philadelphia within the next two years. Shostakovich moved into the professional world with a wide-eyed belief that he could be both experimental—as in his avant garde second and third symphonies—and popular—demonstrated by his 1928 orchestration of the popular song from the Roaring Twenties, “Tea for Two.”
The 1920s were optimistic times in Soviet history after the Revolutionary period of the previous decade. Cultural organizations, such as the Association for Contemporary Music were founded to foster creativity. Yet, the mood shifted as Stalin seized more power and instituted strict organizations to further his goals of industrialization and collectivization. His first Five-Year Plan, which ran from 1928 until 1932, affected the cultural community. The cultural reconstruction (perestroika) proposed by the authorities in 1932 diminished artistic variety and made clear that composers needed to focus their work on the state’s aesthetic goals.
The buzzword of the day was “socialist realism,” attributed to the writer Maxim Gorky. The Composers’ Union interpreted this to mean that “The main attention of the Soviet composer must be directed towards the victorious progressive principles of reality, towards all that is heroic, bright, and beautiful. This distinguishes the spiritual world of Soviet man and must be embodied in musical images of beauty and strength. Socialist realism demands an implacable struggle against folk-negating modernistic directions that are typical of the decay of contemporary bourgeois art, against subservience and servility towards modern bourgeois culture.” In other words, excessively abstract works were out of favor, and appropriate works would be those that communicated directly, simply, and exalted the Russian people.
Shostakovich had told friends in the early 1930s that he was starting work on a new symphony—his fourth, yet it seems that he scrapped some initial starts on the work. At the end of 1934, however, he referred to this upcoming project as “a monumental programme composition of expansive thought and immense passion.” He began composing the piece in early 1935 and wrote the bulk of it between September 1935 and April 1936.
Shostakovich’s second opera, Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District, had premiered in January 1934 to very enthusiastic reviews. The work was widely regarded as supporting governmental ideals about art, and performances of it took place around the world, thus furthering Shostakovich’s blossoming career and international reputation. Then, in a sudden reversal on January 28, 1936, the government’s newspaper Pravda criticized the work severely. In an unsigned article—understood by most people to mean that Stalin himself was the author—the opera was decried as “fidgety, screaming, neurotic, coarse, primitive, and vulgar.” The article, “Chaos Instead of Music,” was directed to Shostakovich, but composers and other artists suspected that the warning was intended for a broader audience. The Union of Soviet Composers met to discuss the appropriate course of music. More personally for Shostakovich, people moved away from him and his music became a target for those seeking favor with the government. Stalin’s purges of dissidents, in which people were sent to remote places and often executed, had begun, and many citizens feared for their lives.
Yet, Shostakovich finished composing his symphony and moved forward with plans for its premiere on December 11, 1936. He gave some performances of the piano reduction to his friends during the year. Rehearsals were underway when the piece was withdrawn the day before its scheduled premiere.
The reasons behind the withdrawal are still unclear, although many have been proposed. Some say that the conductor was inadequate, while others say that the conductor deliberately made mistakes in order to distance himself from the politically-disdained Shostakovich. Others attributed the withdrawal to poor playing on the part of the orchestra members. Another opinion is that there was official pressure to withdraw the work. Yet another view held that Shostakovich feared that the symphony’s allusions to other musical works could be open to misinterpretation.
At the time, Shostakovich spoke disparagingly of the work, calling its structure flawed. He disavowed the piece and moved on to other projects. His next symphony, the Fifth, followed in 1937 and was dubbed “the creative reply of a Soviet artist to justified criticism.” The Fifth Symphony pleased the government, and Shostakovich was back in favor. The Fourth Symphony disappeared from the public eye, although there is evidence that Shostakovich gave occasional private performances of the piano reduction.
Following Stalin’s death in 1953, attitudes changed, and the controls on artistic expression loosened gradually. Slightly more than twenty-five years after the scheduled premiere, Shostakovich’s Fourth Symphony was performed in Moscow on December 30, 1961. The orchestral score had been lost during this time, but a librarian found the parts and used those to reconstruct the score. Shostakovich asked to review the score before rehearsals began and gave full approval, saying that nothing needed to be changed.
Scholars debate the meaning of Shostakovich’s public utterances. Did his criticism of the piece represent his genuine thoughts, or was he merely trying to placate the authorities? Perhaps he was ambivalent to the words expressed about the piece because he believed in the intrinsic value of the composition. At any rate, he said in a 1974 interview that looked back on the Pravda assault on his music, “The authorities tried everything they knew to get me to repent and expiate my sins. But I refused. I was young then, and had my physical strength. Instead of repenting, I wrote my Fourth Symphony.”
Where Shostakovich’s Second and Third Symphonies experimented with form and subject, the Fourth Symphony marked a return to tradition. This three-movement work uses a sonata form for its first movement and later incorporates a funeral march, a fugato, a waltz, and other familiar genres. The influence of Gustav Mahler (Austrian composer, 1860–1911) can be heard throughout the symphony in the orchestration, in the motives, in the scope of the movements and their multiple climaxes, in the design of the second movement, and especially in the funeral march that begins the last movement. (This is a gloss on the slow movement of Mahler’s Symphony No. 1, which begins with timpani strokes accompanying a solo double bass and then bassoon.) One contemporary remembered that the score of Mahler’s Seventh Symphony was on Shostakovich’s piano during the period of composition, and another scholar notes that Shostakovich had copied out passages from Mahler’s Third Symphony in order to study the orchestration. More subtle quotes in the piece are from Mussorgsky, Tchaikovsky, and even Stravinsky!
A shrill orchestral shriek precedes an ominous, unrelenting march to open the symphony. While quieter themes appear, the mood remains disturbed throughout the first movement. The march reappears later in the movement. The following Moderato con moto begins with a string fugato. The first of the winds to enter is the E-flat clarinet, opening the door for the rest of the woodwinds. The end of this movement is riveting, and conductor Simon Rattle describes it as music for automatons. Dominated by castanets, woodblock and drum, the rhythms are very mechanistic, and the other orchestral colors contribute to the chilling effect. The finale is in two parts, starting with the funeral march (present in symphonic music at least since Beethoven’s Third Symphony) and then moving seamlessly and inevitably into an Allegro. The Allegro continues to build in tempo, turning into a maniacal scherzo and pulling in other popular genres. The concluding section is an anthem with haunting dissonances that fades into exquisitely ethereal glimmers.
Pauline Fairclough summarizes Shostakovich’s piece, “Like any musical work, the Fourth Symphony does not ‘narrate’ anything that can be verbally expressed. But the musical fabric itself does “narrate” in the sense that its relationship with the formal structures and norms of musical language that contain it is an especially fraught one.… I believe that Shostakovich intended the Fourth Symphony to show that an abstract symphony could engage with musical language and form to become far more than the sum of its parts: to communicate, however abstractly, something vital about his own society and what it means to be a human being.”
Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 4 is scored for 2 piccolos, 4 flutes, 4 oboes (4th doubling English horn), E-flat clarinet, 4 clarinets, bass clarinet, 3 bassoons, contrabassoon, 8 horns, 4 trumpets, 3 trombones, 2 tubas, timpani (two players), triangle, castanets, wood drum, suspended cymbals, cymbals, bass drum, tam-tam, xylophone, bells, celesta, 2 harps, and strings.
This is the first performance by the Louisville Orchestra of this seventy-minute work.
Click Here to hear some of the various themes found in Shostakovich's Symphony No. 4.
