Program Notes for August 27th, 2022
written by RSO Principal Cellist Michael Beert
The Cowboys Overture by John Williams
John Williams
Composer: Born February 8, 1932, in Flushing, Queens, New York City
Work composed: 1972
First performances: Movie – 1972; Overture – 1980 by the Boston Pops, the composer conducting
Instrumentation: three flutes (two doubling on piccolo), two oboes, two clarinets (one doubling on E-flat clarinet), two bassoons (one doubling on contrabassoon), four horns, three trumpets, two trombones, bass trombone, tuba, timpani, percussion, harp, piano, celeste, and strings
Estimated duration: 9 minutes.
Most recent RSO performance: January 10, 2015, Steve Larsen conducting
The Cowboys Overture is taken from the 1972 movie of the same name. The movie starred John Wayne and was directed by Mark Rydell. Williams had worked for Rydell before, composing music for the film The Rievers starring Steve McQueen in 1969. Both films allowed Williams to write music that expressed a more Americana-type sound: the earlier film using folk instruments and The Cowboys borrowing heavily from the popular ballet music of Aaron Copland (Rodeo, Billy the Kid).
In The Cowboys, John Wayne is desperate in search of cowhands to bring a herd of cattle to market. He is reduced to hiring a rag-tag group of young teens to help him. Wayne is forced to defend the herd (and the children) from a group of rustlers led by Bruce Dern and in the process, becomes a teacher and mentor to these young soon-to-be men. Williams’s musical score is brilliant in his orchestration and his adapting of styles from Copland and his own mentor, Elmer Bernstein.
Up to this point, John Williams had apprenticed with some heavy hitters in Hollywood, such as Henry Mancini (Breakfast at Tiffany’s), Andre Previn (Irma La Douce and Gigi), and Elmer Bernstein (The Magnificent Seven). Williams was a gifted pianist who could improvise as well compose/arrange and was staff pianist on numerous movies and TV scores such as the hit show Peter Gunn.
John Williams had a chance in the 1960s to write music for several hit television scores before turning to movie scores in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s such as Gilligan’s Island and Lost in Space. His brilliance in adapting different styles and using them to suit the needs of film producers and directors is unparalleled in the movie industry with music scores for Superman, Indian Jones, Star Wars, and the Harry Potter series.
The Overture to the Cowboys seems to marry the styles of both Copland and Elmer Bernstein in its use of driving 16th notes coupled with longer Americana melodies found later in the piece. Click here to listen to the opening of the The Cowboys Overture.
Now compare it to the Hoedown from Copland’s Rodeo: Click here to listen to Copland’s Rodeo.
And the Main Theme of Elmer Bernstein’s Magnificent Seven: Click here to listen to the Main Theme of the Magnificent Seven.
This overture is from a very self-confident composer who had just won an Oscar for his adaption of the music for Fiddler on the Roof in the 1971 movie. In Fiddler, John Williams added additional violin cadenzas to the original score that were played by the great American violin virtuoso, Isaac Stern.
Click on image to listen to The Cowboys Overture by John Williams
Click on image to listen to Aaron Copeland’s Hoe-down from "Rodeo"
Click on image to listen to the Main Theme from Elmer Bernstein’s Magnificent Seven
Violin Concerto in D Major, Op. 35 by Erich Korngold
Composer: Born May 29, 1897, in Brno, Austria-Hungary (now Czech Republic); Died November 29, 1957, in Los Angeles, California
Work Composed: 1945
First Performance: February 15, 1947, by Jascha Heifetz and the St. Louis Symphony, Vladimir Golschmann conducting
Instrumentation: solo violin, two flutes (one doubling on piccolo), two oboes (one doubling on English horn), two clarinets, one bass clarinet, two bassoons (one doubling on contrabassoon), four horns, two trumpets, trombone, timpani, percussion, harp, celeste, and strings
Estimated duration: 25 minutes
Most recent RSO performance: November 9, 1996 with Rachel Barton Pine, Steven Larsen conducting
Erich Korngold
Korngold had always been a precocious composer of classical music from his early teens in Austria and was appointed as a teacher at the Vienna Conservatory in 1931 before moving to the United States in 1934 where he became a successful composer of film scores. Some of his more famous scores included Captain Blood, The Adventures of Robin Hood, and The Sea Hawk, each starring Errol Flynn. He wrote his Violin Concerto in 1945 in Hollywood, California.
At the end of World War II, Korngold vowed to not write for films, and instead compose serious classical music as he had done as a younger man in Europe. The first composition penned was the Violin Concerto, commissioned by the great violin virtuoso, Bronislaw Huberman. The work is dedicated to Alma Mahler, the widow of Korngold’s mentor, the great Austrian composer, Gustav Mahler.
Jascha Heifitz
Click on image to listen to Korngold’s Violin Concerto
The concerto was premiered by another great virtuoso, Jascha Heifetz, with the St. Louis Symphony and later performed in New York at Carnegie Hall. To have Heifetz champion a major work helped make it an instant hit and guaranteed its success.
What is of interest is not the form (in three movements), its musical language (that of Richard Strauss and Mahler), or its technical challenges for the violin, but its use of music that Korngold had written for his movies in Hollywood. There is a wonderful blend of both the high and lowbrow in this concerto. There are actually four different movie themes that find their way into this concerto, many of the films forgotten (Another Dawn, Jaurez, Anthony Adverse, and Prince and the Pauper) but their music lives on in this beautifully crafted work.
Symphony No. 4 in E Minor, Op. 98 by Johannes Brahms
Johannes Brahms
Composer: Born May 7, 1833, in Hamburg, Germany; Died April 3, 1897, in Vienna, Austria-Hungary (now Austria)
Work Composed: Summer of 1884
First Performance: October 25, 1885, in Meiningen, Germany, the composer conducting
Instrumentation: two flutes (one doubling on piccolo), two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, contrabassoon, four horns, two trumpets, two trombones, bass trombone, timpani, triangle, and strings.
Estimated duration: 40 minutes
Most recent RSO performance: October 3, 2015, Steven Larsen conducting
The Fourth (and final) Symphony of Johannes Brahms was composed in Mürzzuschlag, Austria in 1884 and was completed a year after his Third Symphony. It is perhaps one of the most serious and well-developed of Brahms’s works and is a great example of his love for older music while still living in the world of Romanticism. The pianist and conductor Daniel Barenboim said of his music: “Brahms liked to put new wine into old bottles.”
More than any other work of his, Brahms reached back into the past and borrowed forms and techniques from the Renaissance (1420 – 1600) and Baroque (1600 – 1750) periods. These techniques were somewhat foreign to other Romantic composers but natural to Brahms. It is said that he had one of the largest libraries of scores and music from these older periods and collected them as prized possessions.
This symphony is also one that can be considered "relational.” What is meant by this term is that all musical material is somehow developed out of previous ideas and is dependent on the organic growth of harmonic, rhythmic, and melodic content. This type of Germanic thinking is evident in the late works of Mozart, almost any late Haydn symphony, and the symphonies of Beethoven — particularly his Fifth Symphony.
In the Fourth Symphony of Brahms, melodies are manipulated in ways composers hadn't seen since the early 1500s. They are played forward, backward, compressed rhythmically, or stretched out into longer note values. The first movement in particular plays these little games that the casual listener may only pick up after numerous hearings.
The second movement is interesting in his use of old church modes, this melody being in phrygian minor or minor do-re-mi with a flatted second scale degree. The purpose of this is to create ambiguous harmony (Is it major? Is it minor?). Brahms is being progressive and experimental by reaching backwards to the Renaissance and the music of such masters as Josquin des Prez or Johannes Ockegham while creating a movement of great power and beauty.
Other progressives picked up on these techniques in the early 1900s and the results were even more experimental as in the music of Arnold Schoenberg and his followers in their 12-tone serialism techniques. Schoenberg tips his hat more than a few times to Brahms for his groundbreaking harmonic experiments. We think of Brahms as one of the "Three B's:” Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms but to Schoenberg, he thought of Brahms as a progressive in music.
The form of the third movement is one that Brahms avoided in his other symphonies, the Scherzo or “musical joke.” It is fast in tempo and there is an alternating second theme to contrast with the more march-like first theme. Brahms’s use of a triangle gives a little extra sparkle to this boisterous movement in the key of C major.
The Finale is the crowning achievement of this symphony as it uses a form usually not often used by other Romantics: Theme and Variations. It starts with a loud eight-bar chorale in the brass with a scale-like melody on top. The variations that follow either state this melody or allude to it throughout the movement. This type of repeated melodic variation technique is called a Passacaglia and it too was popular during the Renaissance and Baroque periods. Remember Barenboim's phrase "New wine from old bottles?” This is the ultimate in borrowing from the past to create music of the future.
The movement could be said to be broken into the following large sections if you get lost in which variation is playing:
Introduction/theme
Section I, E minor variations
Section II, E major variations - slower
Section III, E minor restatement of the main theme with more variations
Coda, E minor tempo/speed is increased to the end of the work
If you are interested in learning more about this great work, it would be recommended to get a score online and following along while you listen to a recording. This is one of the "biggies" in the orchestral literature along with works like the late Mozart symphonies or the symphonies, string quartets, and piano sonatas of Beethoven. These are works that over time, reap more and more benefits to the listener. You can listen to these works in the background, listen emotionally to them, or become fully engrossed on all levels: physically, emotionally, intellectually, and/or spiritually.
It is hard to put this music in the context of Brahms and his life as he was very private. His dear friend of many decades Clara Schumann, herself a wonderful pianist and composer, said of Brahms before her death in 1896, "I know him no more than when he came to us as a young man of 20." No accurate biographies of Brahms are really there to enlighten us as to his thoughts and feelings or what inspired him to write his great music. We can only guess. It is possible that the Fourth Symphony was influenced by his reading of Anthony and Cleopatra by Shakespeare. But there is nothing definitive in Brahms's notes or letters. It is easier to write about the music than the man. Context be damned. Just sit back and enjoy the ride!
Here is one of the more outstanding recordings of Brahms’s Symphony No. 4. There are few recordings by the conductor Carlos Kleiber and the few he allowed are considered magical. A story all by itself on this musical genius of a conductor.
Click on image to listen to Bramhs’s Symphony No. 4