Youth Symphony of Southern Oregon

Youth Orchestra

Franz von Suppé
Light Cavalry Overture

Franz von Suppé (1819-1895) wrote a Mass for the Franciscan church at Zara when he was only fifteen years old. As an adult, he came to serve as the musical director of various groups in Vienna, where he wrote more than sixty comic operas. Today, the overtures to these operas are the best known of his works. 

His Poet and Peasant overture (Dichter und Bauer), which premiered in August 1846, is perhaps the best known and most performed today.  It has been arranged for at least 59 different instrumental combinations.  Another popular overture from Suppé’s pen is Morning, Noon and Night in Vienna, which premiered in February 1844.

His operetta Light Cavalry premiered in Vienna in March 1866.  Like the rest of his operatic work it is all but forgotten, except for the overture.  The overture regularly is programmed by orchestras world wide, and themes from it can be heard in many other settings, including the classic cartoon scores of Carl W. Stalling.

Antonin Dvořák
Symphony No. 8 in G

Antonin Dvořák's so-called “English” Symphony is anything but.  Dvořák took his Eighth Symphony to a new publisher, the English firm of Novello.  This was precipitated by a dispute with his previous publisher, Simrock.  Johannes Brahms early on had recommended the then unknown Dvořák to Simrock, helping to establish his career. Perhaps because of the new publisher, he did conduct the Eighth Symphony in England the year after its composition at a concert of the Philharmonic Society. 

The publishing history of the Dvořák symphonies led to a little irregularity in their numbering.  Today we know of nine symphonies by Dvořák.  Number Eight was formerly known as Number Four!  Dvořák had suppressed some of his earlier works, believing them to be inferior.  He never intended for them to be published at all.

The general sound of Symphony No. 8 is in part a result of the composer's writing schedule.  He was so busy that he simply didn't have time to attend to the intricacies of orchestration to be found in his other works.  The first movement is not set in a traditional sonata-allegro form, but rather in more of a rhapsodic setting.  It is the soul of the music that makes the work important: the simple beauty of its Bohemian-inspired melodies and harmonies.  The fourth movement was quite a struggle for Dvořák.  He made ten major sketches before he settled on it!

Youth Symphony

Johannes Brahms
Symphony No. 4 in E minor

Johannes Brahms had a disquieting feeling about his Fourth Symphony as he was writing it in the summers of 1885 and 1886, referring to it as “meine neue traurige Symphonie” (my new sad symphony.)  He composed it in Mürzzuschlag, a town in the Austrian state of Styria.  South of Vienna, it was a frequent summer vacation destination for the composer.  Today it is the home of a museum dedicated to Brahms as well as being an international skiing destination.  From Mürzzuschlag, Brahms expressed his misgivings about the work in a letter to his friend the conductor Hans von Bülow, “I fear mainly that it tastes of the climate here, cherries here don’t become sweet.  You would not eat them!”  Contrary to the convention of the time, this minor-key symphony ends in minor rather than the parallel major.  Because of its contemplative and somber character, Brahms was concerned that the new work would challenge his listeners to the point of driving the symphony into obscurity.  In fact, of the four symphonies, the fourth took the longest to gain popularity.

The first movement arrives at a climax of great power after an elegiac beginning.  The tonally ambiguous first theme of the second movement creates a charged atmosphere of expanding possibilities.  The third movement is an incarnation of pure joy and provides a tremendous contrast to the rest of the symphony. 

The finale, Allegro energico e passionato, is rather unique in the symphonic literature in that it is in the continuous variation form of passacaglia in which an ostinato theme is repeated over and over in a kaleidoscope of ever-changing variations. 

Brahms consciously derived his theme from the chaconne movement in J. S. Bach’s Cantata Nach dir, Herr, verlanget mich, BWV 150.  Like the passacaglia in the Brahms symphony, the Bach chaconne is the finale of its cantata.  It is a setting of the text “Meine Tage in dem Leide Endet Gott dennoch zur Freude” (God changes my days of sorrow into joy.)  Incidentally, the last four lines of the text form the acrostic B-A-C-H. A passacaglia is traditionally a series of variations on a bass ostinato, while a chaconne is a set of variations on a harmonic progression.  The Bach chaconne from the cantata exhibits characteristics of both practices, as does the Brahms passacaglia.

Some writers have suggested that each of the four symphonies of Brahms can be viewed as the movements of a vast symphony.  In the words of Heinz Becker in his notes to the 1973 Claudio Abbado Brahms symphony collection on Deutsche Grammophon:

The dramatic Symphony in C Minor, the lyrically pastoral one in D Major, the idyllic and sensitive one in F Major, and the elegiac and balladesque one in E minor can easily be regarded in the light of a cyclic sequence of movements...

All four of the symphonies can be characterized as moving from a strong opening, through more informal inner movements, to a grand finale.  The development of his first movements uses “theme and variation” technique, what twentieth century composer Arnold Schoenberg called “developing variation” to a greater extent than any of his contemporaries.  Trombones play an important role in the final movements of both the first and fourth symphonies.  Their presence shines a beam of pure light into the orchestral texture. 

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