History of the Music

By Jeff Counts

Sinfonia from Prima la musica poi le parole

Duration: 3 minutes.

THE COMPOSER – ANTONIO SALIERI (1750-1825) – Ask any reasonably-informed person who Salieri was, and they will say "didn't he kill Mozart?" If we choose to be simplistic about it, we could blame this response solely on Miloš Forman's 1984 film Amadeus with F. Murray Abraham's award-winning portrayal of Wolfgang's supposed rival and possible poisoner. But the impulse goes back much further than that. Salieri himself had to endure the murder rumors just before he died in 1825, and Pushkin wrote a play about it five years later. Rimsky-Korsakov made good use of the myth in 1897, as did British playwright Peter Shaffer, who updated and modernized Pushkin's idea in 1979. From there, after a century and a half of patient barrel aging, we got Miloš.

THE HISTORY – What little fuel does exist for the flames of this controversy comes from Mozart's letters, which allude to a certain amount of frustration over Salieri's stature and success but offer no reason to believe their relationship was anything other than one of professionally proximate competitors. In fact, a 2015 discovery of a brief cantata co-written by the two composers and another man called Cornetti aims this tale of supposed backstabbery in an entirely different direction, one of cordiality and (dare we say) respect. Salieri was a prolific creator of vocal music during his career. He wrote 45 operas in both the Italian and French styles and left behind a huge catalogue of cantatas, oratorios, and church music. As a man steeped in the traditions of musical drama, Salieri surely had opinions about what was more important in that realm, the music or the drama. His operetta Prima la musica poi le parole (literally, First the Music, Then the Words) was, in fact, a meta-narrative about backstage life at an opera house, in which the very nature of the art form was under humorous scrutiny. Richard Strauss would take up the same question in 1941 with his "opera about opera" Capriccio. Prima was "commissioned" by Emperor Joseph II for an exclusive party at his Schönbrunn Palace in 1786, and it was not the only command performance at that event. Two stages were prepared at either end of the Palace Orangerie for the contrasting works demanded by the Emperor. On one side was Salieri's Prima la musica, while on the other was a piece called Der Schauspieldirektor (The Impresario) by, you guessed it, Mozart. Mozart's piece was an expert parody of opera life too, but Salieri's was the better received on the day. By all accounts, Salieri deserved the praise, though the benefits offered by his reputation at court cannot be lightly considered in the accounting. He was a highly skilled, highly successful artist, but if not for Pushkin's and Rimsky-Korsakov's and Forman's stretched truths, we might not know him at all today.

THE WORLD – Elsewhere in 1786, the city of Reykjavik was founded, Mont Blanc was climbed for the first time, and American frontiersman Davy Crockett was born.

THE CONNECTION – This is the first Utah Symphony performance of the Sinfonia from Salieri's operetta Prima la musica poi le parole.

Piano Concerto No. 1 in B-flat Minor, Op. 23

Duration: 32 minutes in three movements.

THE COMPOSER – PIOTR ILYICH TCHAIKOVSKY (1840-1893) – As successful as he already was in late 1874, Tchaikovsky (prone to insecurity even in the best of times) was very anxious to receive the approval of eminent pianist Nikolai Rubinstein on his new concerto. He said as much in a letter to his brother that November and admitted the pressure of his expectations caused the work to proceed with "much difficulty." Tchaikovsky presented it to Rubinstein privately on Christmas Eve and the story of the pianist's immediate and rather unfriendly _dis_approval has become legendary, thanks to the composer's willingness to tell the tale, and the uncharacteristic stiffness of his backbone in the moment.

THE HISTORY –"Clumsy…badly written…vulgar…with only two or three pages worth preserving." These were among the uncharitable assessments Nikolai Rubinstein offered upon hearing the First Piano Concerto. He even went so far as to suggest that the composer had stolen material from others. To his credit, Tchaikovsky weathered the storm of critique with dignity and, according to his letters, refused to rewrite the piece according to Rubinstein's demands, stating, "I shall not alter a single note." The dream of a Rubinstein imprimatur (not to mention a first performance) was now thoroughly dashed, so Tchaikovsky rededicated the concerto to Hans van Bülow, who played the 1875 premiere in Boston. The reaction of the audience was overwhelmingly positive and, in that bygone 18th and 19th century ovation tradition, they demanded an encore of the entire last movement on the spot. Successful European premieres were soon to follow, and it wasn't long before all the leading soloists of the day (including, yes, one Nikolai Rubinstein!) began adding it to their regular repertoire.

An overstatement of the First Concerto's current popularity would be difficult to accomplish. Other than those initial harsh comments on Christmas Eve of 1874, this music has known nothing other than the most effusive possible praise and loyalty. The stunning introduction alone, which contains one of Tchaikovsky's most enduring tunes (a tune that strangely never returns once the concerto proper has commenced), is worthy of enshrinement. Rubinstein's early objections likely centered on the historical shift he was witnessing. He knew the concerto form, then among the last bastions of Classical-era tradition, could never be the same after this. Rubinstein's eventual embrace of the work was welcomed by the composer, and Tchaikovsky did allow another pianist (Alexander Siloti) to lightly "alter" the piano part (not the formal structure) in 1888.

THE WORLD – Elsewhere in 1875, The Moldau was premiered by Smetana as was Carmen by Bizet, BYU was established (first as the Brigham Young Academy), and Matthew Webb became the first person to swim the English Channel.

THE CONNECTION – Tchaikovsky's First Piano Concerto is programmed regularly by the Utah Symphony. The most recent Masterworks performance was in 2016. Thierry Fischer conducted and Alexander Gavrylyuk was soloist.

Dance Foldings

Duration: 14 minutes

The Composer - AUGUSTA REED THOMAS (b. 1964 in New York) is nuanced, majestic, elegant, capricious, lyrical, and colorful—"it is boldly considered music that celebrates the sound of the instruments and reaffirms the vitality of orchestral music" (Philadelphia Inquirer). She is a University Professor of Composition in Music and the College at The University of Chicago. Thomas was the longest-serving Mead Composer-in-Residence with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra for conductors Daniel Barenboim and Pierre Boulez (1997–2006). Not only is Thomas one of the most active composers in the world, but she is a long-standing, exemplary citizen with an extensive history of being deeply committed to her community.

COMPOSER'S NOTE - In celebration of the diversity and the mission statement of the Royal Albert Hall on the occasion of the venue's 150th anniversary, the BBC Radio 3 commissioned Dance Foldings for orchestra for which the commission prompt was to reflect the arts and sciences as they are now. Composers were free to choose their own subject, so long as there was a clear link to the sciences or to other art forms. The musical materials of Dance Foldings for orchestra take as their starting point the metaphors, pairings, counterpoints, foldings, forms, and images inspired by the biological "ballet" of proteins being assembled and folded in our bodies. Online, one can easily find many beautiful animations which show the process of protein folding. Some resemble assembly lines, and many look like ballets; both are extremely suggestive of musical possibilities. For example, proteins are made in cells by linking together amino acids one at a time to make a linear chain, i.e., the primary structure, or unfolded protein, which is akin to a wiggling chain of beads. These chains take musical form as animated, rhythmic, and forward-moving lines of music which unfold with kaleidoscopic sonic variety. An amino acid chain gradually self-organizes into nicely lined up shorter strands of beads forming pleated sheets or helices, nestled next to each other; interconnecting strands form loops crossing over in three dimensions. Musically speaking, those three-dimensional forms are affiliated to counterpoint, harmony, flow, flux, and form. Notated on the score are indications including: "Like Chains of Amino Acids," "An Amino Acid Chain starting to fold and become a protein," "Brass Protein Foldings #1, Like jazz big band meets Stravinsky," and "Another Amino Acid Chain-making Machine." No matter what the external inspiration, music must work as music. As such, I create music that is organic and, at every level, concerned with transformations and connections, which should be played so that the interconnectivity of the different rhythmic, timbral and pitch syntaxes are made explicit and are then organically allied to one another with characterized phrasing of rhythm, color, harmony, counterpoint, tempo, breath, keeping it alive—continuously sounding spontaneous. All of this, hopefully, working toward the fundamental goal: to compose a work in which every musical parameter is nuanced and allied in one holistic gestalt. Commissioned by BBC Radio 3 and first performed by BBC National Orchestra of Wales conducted by Ryan Bancroft on August 8, 2021 at the Royal Albert Hall as part of BBC Proms 2021. Dedicated with admiration and gratitude to BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Ryan Bancroft and Lisa Tregale and to The Boston Symphony Orchestra, Andris Nelsons and Anthony Fogg. Special thanks to the Sounds of Science Commissioning Club for contributing support to this project. The US Premiere was given by the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Andris Nelsons, conducting in Boston Symphony Hall 2022. Augusta sends special thanks to Andris Nelsons and to Anthony Fogg.

Symphony No. 2

Duration: 37 minutes in five movements.

THE COMPOSER – CHARLES IVES (1874-1954) – Quite simply America's most iconoclastic musical artist, Charles Ives was a radically unique innovator for most of his compositional life. No voice was more distinct, no music more ahead of its time than that of Ives. Proper adulation and reward came very late for him however and, right after his graduation from Yale, he pursued a parallel career as an insurance salesman (and eventual top executive) as a means of making sure his future wife and kids would never "starve on his dissonances." This pragmatism was an abiding principal of his life, and resulted compositionally as a prediction of the found object art movement.

THE HISTORY – Symphony No. 2 dates from as early as 1900 but was not completed and fully scored until around 1910. Though he was already leaning in a more modern direction, his professors at Yale required him to write a traditionally European symphony to complete his degree. That was the Symphony No. 1 which, by every measure, met their demands nicely. For a successor work, Ives was eager to incorporate the sounds and traditions of America in ways no previous musician had yet attempted. He would grab up great armloads of existing material and assemble them into a fascinating sonic collage. Symphony No. 2 was the first large-scale work by Ives to use this scrapbooking method for its construction, and he did not limit his ingredients to American culture alone. Embedded among quotations from "Columbia, Gen of the Ocean", "America the Beautiful", and "Camptown Races" are fragments of Dvořák's "New World" Symphony, Beethoven 5, and even something from Wagner's Tristan and Isolde. What point Ives was attempting to make by juxtaposing the "high" and the "low" of musical expression is something he kept to himself, then and ever, but he often spoke of the need for art to reflect actual common life as much as the cloistered tastes of the elite among us.

The premiere of Symphony No. 2 did not occur until February of 1952. Leonard Bernstein conducted the first performance with the New York Philharmonic at Carnegie Hall but Ives himself did not attend. He had to be forced to listen to a radio broadcast of the performance and, as the story goes, he did so without comment or celebration. Not even the enthusiastic applause of the recorded audience earned a smile from the composer who, according to biographer Jan Swafford, "got up, spat in the fireplace and walked into the kitchen without a word." Perhaps this equivocal piece, caught as it was between old world history and new world innovation, was far too "soft" (Ives' own term for it) by his own mid-century standards. Perhaps he was just too proud to still be proud of it. Either way, like usual, Ives wasn't talking.

THE WORLD – Elsewhere in 1910, Halley's Comet appeared, Montenegro declared itself an independent kingdom and the Olympic, first ship of the class that included the Titanic launched.

THE CONNECTION – The most recent Masterworks series performances of Symphony No. 2 were in 2017 as part of Thierry Fischer's exploration of Ives' complete symphonic cycle.