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These copyrighted program notes are available for the edification of all concert attendees. If not otherwise noted, they are extracted from "Notes on Music" by Dr. Louise Cuyler (1906-1998). No use is permitted without the written consent of the Monterey Symphony, 2560 Garden Road, Suite 101, Monterey CA 93940. Please click on the MONTH to retrieve program notes, now in an easier-to-print format.

January 2010 - Salinas Performance Starting Times Have Changed

Monterey Symphony Program Notes Concert Three

      January 23, 2010 (2 pm Final Rehearsal & 7 pm Concert) - Sherwood Hall, Salinas
      January 24 (3 pm) & January 25, 2009 (8 pm) - Sunset Theater, Carmel
                   Max Bragado-Darman, conductor
                   Judith Ingolfsson, violin

Overture to La scala di seta
Giaocchino Rossini (1792-1868)
Composed 1812

In 1829, at the age of 38, Italian opera composer Gioachino Rossini retired from composition. He had completed 39 operas, some instrumental and religious music, and several songs. He chose to sit back and enjoy the financial successes of such brilliant works as Il barbiere di Siviglia (The Barber of Seville), William Tell, La Ceneretola (Cinderella), La gazza ladra (The Thieving Magpie), and several other operas still in the repertoire of most major opera houses around the world.

Rossini was born into a musical family in the Adriatic coastal town of Pesaro. After some complicated political intrigue and his father’s short imprisonment, the family settled in Bologna where his father, a horn player and his mother, a singer, performed in the local theaters. Rossini studied cello and quickly mastered the instrument. The young boy showed an aptitude for composing and given encouragement from his teachers. The early string works he produced show his admiration for Haydn and Mozart. Italy at this time was under the political control of Austria so knowledge of the work of these great men of Vienna was common. Rossini’s father, by the way, had supported Napoleon and the French invaders thus the jail sentence. The episode certainly contributed to Rossini’s life long affection for France.

At 18, Rossini was given the opportunity to mount his first opera, La cambiale matrimonio which took place in Venice. He then produced a succession of operas with varying degrees of success including Il signore Bruschino, Tancredi, La scala di seta (The Silken Ladder), and others. This was a period of great inventiveness for the young composer as he devised his formula for composing operas. By the age of 21, he was recognized (much to the disdain of the more established composers of the day) as the golden boy of Italian opera. He was enormously popular and commissions came flooding in. He was able to keep up with these requests through self-plagiarism and sticking to his formula which allowed the singers to improvise and display their technical prowess while development of the plot was minimal. The drama was secondary to the entertainment and bel canto, or beautiful singing. The term, coloratura, does not exclusively indicate a high soprano voice. In fact, Rossini composed many arias and ensembles for coloratura voices in all ranges: contralto, tenor, bass, baritone, as well as soprano. He eventually demanded that the singers stick to the written notes. This was the direction all music was going. Rossini’s final opera William Tell breaks away from the conventions of his former operas and introduced a new path for opera development. In 1828, Rossini retired from composing and settled in France where he finished a few religious works and some small piano pieces, but his composing ended although he lived another forty years. He died and was buried in Paris. In 1887, by request of the Italian government, his remains were entombed in the Basilica of Santa Croce in Florence.

Several of Rossini’s early operas were one act farces. The story of The Silken Ladder is quite simple. Guilia and Dorvil are secretly married, but living separately. He visits her every evening by way of a silk ladder that she drops from her bedroom window. Her guardian, Dormant wishes her to marry Blansac. Guilia wants Blansac to marry her cousin Lucilla. A talkative servant Germano stirs up confusion by partially overhearing conversations which he relates to the now jealous Dorvil. Eventually all is revealed. Blansac marries Lucilla and Dormant learns that Guilia and Dorvil are already happily married.

The Overture contains some of the most challenging wind parts in any orchestral composition. They require impeccable articulation, perfect rhythm, amazing speed, and lyrical beauty. Selections often appear in audition repertoire for oboists. Rossini’s famous crescendos are truly distinctive. This Overture contains a perfect example of one, starting slowly and quietly, gradually increasing in volume and complexity to an exciting climax. It’s also an example of a perpetual motion in music and contains in its short duration thematic development unusual for the period in which it was composed.
Joseph Truskot

Violin Concerto, Op.14
Samuel Barber (1910-1)
Composed (1939-1940)

Samuel Barber belongs to the second generation of native American 20th century composers, men who followed by a decade or two such pioneers as Aaron Copland and Howard Hanson. Thus during the musically turbulent 1930s, the young Barber was just commencing his serious life as a composer. Well documented is the fact that he found himself out of rapport with the then current and somewhat frantic search for the "new", a search in which most serious composers were then engaged. Barber himself had grown up in a stimulating, but conventional, musical environment. He was a nephew of the illustrious American contralto, Louise Homer and her composer-husband, Sidney Homer. Little wonder that Barber's early preference was for mellifluous, linear, conservative sounds.

The Violin Concerto was a product of Barber's early career; it was written at the very start of World War II, partly while the young composer was still living in Switzerland. It was commissioned by a wealthy American businessman, as a gift for his protégé, an aspiring young violinist. The turbulent progress of this commission became a veritable comedy of errors, the details of which were related with much relish, especially in the more avant-garde press. Eventually, however, the Concerto came to the attention of the serious musical establishment. The première took place on February 7, 1941. The soloist was the American violinist, Albert Spalding; Eugene Ormandy conducted the Philadelphia Orchestra.

Today, fifty years after its writing, Barber's only Violin Concerto impresses one as a glowing, rhapsodic composition and one well-suited to the violin, although Barber himself was not a string player. This opinion conflicts, of course, with many expressed fifty years ago, when any music not cacophonous, or not propounding some new system was deemed unworthy of serious consideration. This Violin Concerto is just beginning to achieve its deserved place in the repertoire for the instrument and will, one hopes, find a secure niche in the all-too-meager roster of string concertos.

1. Allegro molto moderato

The first movement Allegro molto moderato opens, without preliminaries, with the fervent first theme, stated by the solo violin. There is effective contrast between the very high and the lowest registers of the violin. Much of the melodic structure is replete with wide "yearning" intervals, or has principal tones stressed by approach from an adjacent string. In the simple sonata design that informs the movement, a second principal theme is shared by clarinet and a spiccato bowing from the soloist. After a free development, there follow recapitulation of both principal themes, a recitative-cadenza in the solo violin, and a quiet close.

2. Andante sostenuto

The second movement, Andante sostenuto, is in the simple lyric style made familiar in Barber's well-liked Adagio for Strings. The soloist is treated as part of the ensemble rather than as an exploited extra.

3. Presto in moto perpetuo

The finale, in an abrupt change of style, shows Barber as he was to become in future years, when he partly discarded his early conservatism. It is marked Presto in moto perpetuo and its style, that of a perpetual motion, may have been suggested by the concertos of such virtuoso-composers as Wieniawski and Ernst.

Louise Cuyler

Symphony No.1 in C major, Op.21
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)
Composed (1800)

More so than with any other musical genre, Beethoven broke new ground with his concept of a symphony. Even his first offering in the genre which dates from 1800 showed he was taking the art form to a new level. Sketches of its finale where found dating to 1795 when Beethoven was studying counterpoint with his longest lasting teacher Albrechtberger. Beethoven dismissed most of the “rules” he was given as incorrect.

Ludwig van Beethoven was born in Bonn, Germany on December 16, 1770. He spent his childhood in poverty under the despotic rule of his drunken father who saw in his musical son another Mozart. Herr Beethoven, unlike Leopold Mozart, hadn’t any skills as an impresario.
Beethoven’s first teacher, Christian Gottlob Neefe was the court organist and a sympathetic guide for the young prodigy who quickly absorbed all Neefe had to offer. Neefe succeeded in transforming the boy into an outstanding musician. At 14, he was Neefe’s assistant as court organist. At 15, he took over his teacher’s position as cembalist at the Opera. At 17, he took Neefe’s advice and visited Vienna where he deeply impressed Mozart with his improvisational powers. He returned to Bonn to work at court and give private lessons. Some of Bonn’s leading families became his patrons. When Haydn passed through Bonn, he praised the young Beethoven’s powers. At the age of 22, he moved permanently to Vienna and began a notable career as a pianist.

A patron had written him a letter of recommendation to give to Haydn with whom Beethoven wished to study composition. Once together, however, it was clear this relationship wouldn’t work. Their temperaments and personalities were worlds apart. Haydn was gentlemanly and good natured. Beethoven was moody and crude. Their ideas about music also differed greatly. Haydn’s compositional refinement was based on sound principals and theories. Beethoven wished to show off his remarkable techniques and include in his compositions his dark emotions no matter how they might affect a musical form. Haydn was content to enter the music salon through the back door. Beethoven stormed through the front gate.

For teachers, Beethoven chose Albrechtsberger and Salieri, although he didn’t stay very long with them either. Vienna’s first attraction to Beethoven was aroused not by his compositions but by his daring piano virtuosity. Soon Beethoven was winning all the competitions. Patrons, eager to enhance their own social standing by associating with the city’s finest musical talent, began to shower him with ostentatious gifts. Within three years, Beethoven’s pianistic prowess spread beyond Vienna and he set out on a series of musical tours. He composed works which would call attention to his performing skills and used these tours to introduce these compositions. He gradually built a reputation as a composer as well as a pianist.

The April 1800 performance of the First Symphony also included a symphony by Mozart, an aria and a duet from Haydn’s Creation, a piano concerto and the septet by Beethoven, and improvisations by Beethoven at the piano.

Many scholars have conducted thorough analyses of this work. All agree it is Beethoven’s most classical in form with several important breaks from the past. The opening of the first movement is considered to be a musical joke. The Symphony is in the key of C major. However Beethoven opens the work with a slow passage in F major, modulates to G major and avoids C major until the first full chord marked, Allegro. This is itself a statement against the musical theory he was taught by inferior composers. The third movement in classical symphonies was usually a minuet. Beethoven indicates a fast tempo much closer to what he would label scherzo in his later works.

Joseph Truskot