The Wand of Youth, Op. 1: Selections
Sir Edward Elgar
b. Broadheath, England / June 2, 1857
d. Worcester, England / February 23, 1934
When Elgar was in his early teens, he wrote an incidental score for a nameless play that he and his siblings had devised. It was set in a perfect fantasy world, beyond the stream at the end of the garden on the family property. Dull, ill-tempered adults were barred from it, and children shared it with giants, fairies, and other mythical creatures. The young Elgars also performed the score on whatever instruments were at hand. Edward noted down the themes in a sketchbook, as he always did when ideas came to him.
In the summer of 1907, about the same time that he got down to intensive labor on his long-gestating First Symphony, he reworked some of them (as well as fragments of even older material) into an orchestral suite. He called it The Wand of Youth, sub-titled Music for a Children’s Play. It combines the best of two worlds: refreshing, innocent melodies, embellished with a 50-year-old composer’s mastery of delicate orchestration. Before the first performance, he decided to release just seven of the 13 movements. The music proved so successful that one year later, he unveiled the remaining six movements as a second Wand of Youth Suite. These concerts present selections from both volumes.
A brisk and tuneful Overture sets the stage. Then a Serenade offers delicate, gently lilting contrast. The second suite opens with a March, the rather somber and restrained nature of its outer panels softened by a sweet theme that appears mid-way through. The movement called The Little Bells darts by on sprightly, wittily scored feet, followed by the gently whimsical Moths and Butterflies. The Tame Bear, with its echoes of Russian folk music, captures the pathos of the sort of captive animal that was exhibited in public during Elgar’s day. Wild Bears brings the suite to a close in suitably exciting, almost rowdy, fashion.
Knoxville: Summer of 1915, Op. 24
Samuel Barber
b. West Chester, Penn. / March 9, 1910
d. New York, N.Y. / January 23, 1981
Barber’s stock has risen in recent years as audiences have turned their backs on arid experimental styles and returned to music expressing traditional, humanist values. He consistently demonstrated a deep understanding of the voice. He composed Knoxville: Summer of 1915 in 1947 for soprano Eleanor Steber. She was the soloist at the premiere on April 9, 1948, joining conductor Serge Koussevitzky and the Boston Symphony Orchestra.
The text comes from James Agee’s autobiographical novel, A Death in the Family. Barber wrote, “I had always admired Mr. Agee’s writing and this prose-poem particularly struck me because the summer evening he describes in his native southern town reminded me so much of similar evenings when I was a child at home. I found out, after setting this, that Mr. Agee and I are the same age, and the year he described was 1915, when we were both five. You see, it expresses a child’s feelings of loneliness, wonder, and lack of identity in that marginal world between twilight and sleep.”
He and Agee first met after Barber had composed the score. They found they had much in common. “We both had back yards where our families used to lie in the long summer evenings,” Barber wrote. “We each had an aunt who was a musician. I remember well my parents sitting on the porch, talking quietly as they rocked. And there was a trolley car with straw seats and a clanging bell called ‘The Dinky’ that traveled up and down the main street…Agee’s poem was vivid and moved me deeply, and my musical response that summer of 1947 was immediate and intense. I think I must have composed Knoxville within a few days.”
Barber’s nostalgic, neo-Romantic music meshes with the Agee’s words perfectly, vividly evoking a time when life in America seemed gentler and less complicated than it does today. It fits the text’s stream-of-consciousness flow like a glove, shifting tones quickly and closely to follow the words.
Concerto grosso in B-flat Major, Op. 6, No. 7
George Frederic Handel
b. Halle, Germany / February 23, 1685
d. London, England / April 14, 1759
The concerto grosso (grand concerto) became one of the most popular musical forms of the Baroque era. In contrast to the solo concerto, it is founded on the interplay between two groups of performers: the smaller concertino (most often made up of two violins and a cello), and the ripieno, a larger group consisting of strings and continuo. Handel’s Op. 6 is a set of 12 concerti grossi for strings. He created it quite quickly, between September 29 and October 30, 1739, primarily by borrowing heavily from his previous compositions.
Concerto No. 7 is unusual in that the concertino plays no role whatsoever; Handel used the full ensemble throughout. The concerto opens with a brief, serene Largo, more an introduction than a movement proper. This is followed by an energetic fugal Allegro; a gently melancholy Largo, e piano; a sweet Andante whose liveliness belies the tempo indication; and to conclude, a cheerfully dancing Hornpipe.
Symphony No. 100 in G Major (Military)
Joseph Haydn
b. Rohrau, Lower Austria / March 31, 1732
d. Vienna, Austria / May 31, 1809
Haydn made two visits to England. For them, he composed 12 new symphonies (Nos. 93 through 104), six for each season. The first performance of No. 100 took place on March 31, 1794. It won Haydn the greatest of all his successes in England, and remained the most frequently played symphony by any composer for at least a decade. Within a month of its debut, the press had given it the nickname Military, by which it has been known ever since.
Aside from its attractive themes and Haydn’s captivating treatment of them, the other major reason for its popularity is the appearance of percussion instruments in the second and fourth movements. These exotic sounds debuted in western art music in 1782, through Mozart’s comic opera The Abduction from the Seraglio. Haydn did not introduce them into this symphony solely for the sake of color. In the second movement they also add a touch of menace. Audiences during this symphony’s early career associated this section with the Napoleonic Wars that had just begun in Europe. One critic wrote, “(The second movement) is the advancing to battle; and the march of men, the sounding of the charge, the thundering of the onset, the clash of arms, the groans of the wounded and what may well be called the hellish roar of war increasing to a climax of horrid sublimity!”
© 2009 Don Anderson. All rights reserved.
