16 November 2019, 20:00
Oosterkerk
Kleine Wittenburgerstraat 1, 1018 LS Amsterdam

Works by Beethoven, Shalygin, Kreisler and Saint-Saëns

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22 October 2019, 12:30
Thomaskerk
Pr. Irenestraat 36, 1077 WX Amsterdam

Works by Duparc, Debussy and Andriessen

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8 September 2019, 11:30
Papagenohuis
Naarderstraat 77, 1251 BG Laren

Bach – Suite for cello solo in G Major
Chopin – Ballade No. 3 in A Flat Major Op. 47
Prokofiev – Sonata for cello and piano in C major Op. 119

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24 July 2019, 20:00
Teatro Ristori
Via Teatro Ristori, 7, 37122 Verona VR

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Works by Beethoven and Schumann

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11 April 2019, 12:30
Grote Zaal, Muziekgebouw aan ‘t IJ
Piet Heinkade 1, 1019 BR Amsterdam

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3 April 2019

Gustav Mahler was the climactic and concluding figure of the Austro-German symphonic tradition, to paraphrase Taruskin. With his original compositions, Mahler convincingly claimed a position in the classical canon. In this article, the focus will be on a very different, and lesser-known, part of Mahler’s output: his arrangements of other composers’ works, which span the whole of his career. Even if they are not often discussed, their relevance is at least three-fold: firstly, they are fine examples of a practice that was very common at that time; secondly, they give us insight into Mahler’s relationship with his predecessors’ music; and thirdly, they shed light on Mahler’s views on musical interpretation and music in general.

The arrangements that Mahler wrote, can be divided into three categories according to Hansen (1996):  (1) a completion of an incomplete opera by Weber; (2) adaptations of complete operas for specific performance occasions; and (3) symphonic arrangements of purely instrumental works, mainly as adjustments to new performance practices. The main focus of this article will be on the last category, which includes Mahler’s arrangements of music ranging from Bach to Bruckner.
What is interesting about the first two categories, is that they draw attention to Mahler’s career as an opera conductor, which is overshadowed by his symphonic career. We shall discuss the first category in some detail in the next paragraph, but the second includes varied stage works ranging from Mozart’s ‘Le Nozze di Figaro’ to Wagner’s ‘Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg’. Often Mahler’s adaptations serve to improve the dramatic quality of the opera, rather than the music itself. For example, in his Figaro, with a German translation by Max Kalbeck, Mahler adds a secco recitativo in Act III to restitute a (politically sensitive) trial scene that Da Ponte had left out of Beaumarchais’ play.

Mahler’s public career as a ‘creating’ musician started with the completion of Weber’s comic opera ‘Die drei Pintos’. He had already composed ‘Das Klagende Lied’ and ‘Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen’, in addition to a collection of songs for voice and piano, but he had not published any of them, nor had they been publicly performed. In 1887, while holding the position of assistant conductor Leipzig under Nikisch, Mahler became acquainted with Captain Carl von Weber, grandson of the composer. Mahler received Weber’s sketches for ‘Die drei Pintos’ from him and took the task upon himself to complete the opera.
Although Weber had orchestrated some parts already, most of the sketches contained little more than the vocal lines. As a consequence, Mahler’s version goes far beyond an arrangement. Mahler did however also reorchestrate the part of the opera that Weber had already orchestrated himself – which can of course only have improved the overall musical unity. Warrack (1967) draws a parallel between Weber’s way of using instruments as individuals within a larger whole, and Mahler’s own manner of using the orchestra. One can indeed wonder to what extent this close study of Weber inspired the young composer who was at that time working on his First Symphony.

The category of symphonic arrangements consists mainly of Mahler’s versions of the complete Beethoven and Schumann symphonies, as well as arrangements of selected Mozart, Schubert and Bruckner symphonies, Beethoven’s Coriolan Overture and Schumann’s Manfred Overture. The primary goal of these arrangements was to uncover the hidden potential of these masterworks by adapting them to the expanded possibilities of the modern Wagnerian orchestra. This somewhat patronising view corresponds to the nineteenth-century view of history as a linear progression.
Hansen (1996) quotes a letter by Mahler which perfectly illustrates this view: Mahler describes music history as a progression from primitive ‘chamber music’ with simple emotions (joy, sadness, etc.) and a simple notation relying on performance customs, to a new era starting with Beethoven, where the transition and conflict between different emotions occupy the central positions. For the realisation of these new concepts in music, the new attitude required a more detailed notation, a more nuanced sound palette, and therefore a larger orchestra, culminating in the Wagnerian orchestra. According to the late-nineteenth-century view, using the modern orchestra for older music therefore allows for the discovery of the finest nuances of this music, which would otherwise remain hidden.

The same ambition to unleash music’s full potential can be found in Mahler’s version for string orchestra of Beethoven’s String Quartet in F minor op. 95, and of Schubert’s String Quartet in D minor ‘Der Tod und das Mädchen’, however with less than perfect results. Although in terms of compositional alterations, Mahler had barely altered the notes (he only decided where to double the celli with the double basses), his Vienna performance of the Beethoven quartet in 1899 was not at all successful (in the same concert, Mahler also conducted his arrangement of Schumann’s First Symphony, which was better received). Whereas Mahler thought he was strengthening the musical message, Viennese critics attacked him for not understanding Beethoven and ignoring the dialogue between four individuals which is essential to a quartet. Alma Schindler, whom Mahler married later, also writes that “a quartet should be intimate, as it is actually house-music”, while at the same time writing that she missed the wind instruments. A simple size increase from quartet to string ensemble without the introduction of different instruments (except for the double basses) does indeed seem to stand somewhat at odds with Mahler’s own view of a large and varied orchestra as the canvas of choice for “the numerous colours of our [musical] rainbow” (quoted in Hansen, 1996, own translation).

The question which we have ignored until now, is how exactly one should then arrange older works to add the varied colours of Mahler’s metaphorical rainbow, without altering the compositions so much that they are robbed of part of their artistic essence. In 1873, Wagner wrote an influential essay on that matter, entitled ‘Zum Vortrag der neunten Symphonie Beethovens’ (On the Performance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony). In this essay, he proposed ways in which to arrange Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony in light of ‘modern’ performance practices. A further motivation for arranging Beethoven’s later music in particular, was that Beethoven’s orchestrations supposedly started suffering from the progression of his deafness.
McCaldin (1980) groups Wagner’s suggestions into different categories: firstly, the addition of notes due to technical improvements in instrument building. With the introduction of valved brass instruments, this is especially relevant for the trumpet and horn parts. No longer limited by the overtone series, these instruments could now take on a more melodic role (which also means that there are fewer characteristic brass pedal points). Secondly, Wagner proposed additional notes and doublings for the wind instruments due to the significant increase of the string section since Beethoven’s time. Thirdly, there are various degrees of actual recomposition, such as small melodic changes, or new figurations.

Mahler was certainly not the only one, nor the first, to arrange Beethoven’s music based on Wagner’s principles. Knittel (2006) suggests that Hans von Bülow may have been the first, and in any case conductors like Strauss, Weingartner (who would become Mahler’s successor at the Wiener Hofoper), Richter, Mengelberg, Toscanini, Furtwängler and Walter followed suit. However, according to McCaldin (1980), Mahler does go further than many of his colleagues, especially “in allowing the importance of musical line to take preference over harmonic detail.”
For example, in various places he frees the bassoons from performing a bass function, and instead gives them melodic material. Similarly, as mentioned above, the horns have fewer pedal points and instead more melodic lines. Although he is almost doubling the wind and brass sections, Mahler also goes far in actually deleting some of Beethoven’s material. It may seem paradoxical at first glance, but both these interventions serve to improve the musical clarity: more winds and brass are added to match the larger string section, and deletions of harmonic ‘filling-up’ material make the melodic lines stand out more.

Like his string orchestra arrangement of Beethoven’s String Quartet op. 95, Mahler’s arrangements of Beethoven’s symphonies, and of the Ninth in particular, were not well received by the Viennese press. Earlier in Hamburg, he had received great praise for his Beethoven performances, but in Vienna, many critics accused him of neither respecting nor understanding Beethoven. However, it is impossible to maintain that this negative reception was purely based on musical reasons: to start, many other conductors also played arrangements instead of the original version, and they did not receive the same amount of negative criticism. Secondly, many of Mahler’s revisions are subtle, and therefore not so easy to notice immediately, especially given that performances were a relatively rare occurrence at that time, which meant that many listeners probably heard Beethoven’s symphonies for the first time in an adapted version.
Indeed, as quoted in Knittel (2006), Alma Schindler writes: “The experts assert that Mahler made many changes to the scoring. As I only knew the work from playing it on the piano, it didn’t bother me.” In addition, some of the critics writing negative reviews were not trained musicians themselves, and some of the critics only mentioned the revisions after the second performance, which leads Pickett (1994) to the hypothesis that at least part of the criticism was based on leaked information by “disaffected” players.
According to Knittel (2006), one reason for the many attacks on Mahler, can be found in the wide-spread antisemitism in Vienna at that time. Already after Mahler’s first concert with the Vienna Philharmonic in 1898, the anti-semitic Deutsche Zeitung writes that “in a German city only a German appears qualified to interpret German music, [and this is] a condition that Mahler is just not able to fulfill.” A few months later, the Deutsche Zeitung published a sarcastic but vicious anonymous letter, probably written by orchestra members: “If Herr Mahler wants to make corrections, let him set about Mendelssohn or Rubinstein—that’s something of course the Jews will never put up with—but let him leave our Beethoven in peace.” The criticisms on Mahler’s performances of the Ninth are rarely as overtly anti-semitic, but Knittel (2006) argues that seemingly apolitical comments are still connected to antisemitism. When a critique in the Wiener Abendpost condemns Mahler’s performance for its lack of calm, “because of the nervous, continual sway in the dynamics and tempo of Mahler’s interpretation”, this can be linked with the then reigning stereotype of the Jewish people as being by nature more nervous and superficial.

What attracted less negative criticism in the Viennese press, were Mahler’s arrangements of the Schumann symphonies. One possible reason is of course that Schumann lacked Beethoven’s aura and symbolism, and that he had never lived in Vienna. A second reason is that Schumann is often labelled as a poor orchestrator, a view that Weingartner wrote about extensively as one of the first. In any case, the changes that Mahler makes to Schumann’s scores serve mainly the same goal as for the Beethoven symphonies: greater clarity and the improvement of musical lines.
However, an interesting difference is that Mahler considered his Beethoven arrangements to be for personal use in his Beethoven performances, whereas he expressed the wish to Alma Schindler for the Schumann arrangements to be published, according to Matthews (2008). It is also in his Schumann arrangements that one can arguably find Mahler’s most striking alteration: he transposes down the opening motif of Schumann’s First Symphony by a third. This was actually Schumann’s original intention, and with the advent of the valved horn and trumpet, it could finally be executed properly.

We started this article with discussing Mahler’s first published work, and we end with his last published work: Mahler’s Bach Suite from 1910, made up of two movements from Bach’s orchestral suite in B minor (BWV 1067) and two movements from the orchestral suite in D Major (BWV 1068). As Mitchell (1980) describes in considerable detail, Mahler had a great admiration for Bach’s music, and the more so as he grew older. For example, Mahler only kept scores by Bach in his summer house in Maiernigg. Indeed, he wrote about himself that his “musical thinking was never anything but polyphonic”, and also wrote that “the master of polyphony, and of polyphony alone, is Bach,” perhaps less expectedly followed by “the founder of modern polyphony is Beethoven.”
At a time when Bach’s music did not have a prominent place in the concert repertoire, Mahler’s suite was a progressive endeavour. He also insisted on realising the figured bass of the continuo part to bring Bach’s music back to life in all its richness. Mahler even played the continuo part himself in his performances with the New York Philharmonic (in the meantime, Mahler had moved from Vienna to New York City), while conducting from the ‘harpsichord’ – which was, in the absence of a suitable instrument, actually a spinet modified by Steinway & Sons.
On the other hand, an interesting ahistorical aspect of Mahler’s suite is the progression inherent in his choice of movements. Contrary to the Baroque custom of composing all movements in the same key, Mahler moves from B minor to D Major: this is a small step, but introduces an element of progressive tonality that also occurs in some of Mahler’s symphonies. In addition, only the last two movements include trombones and a drum, giving the suite an extra element of direction towards a climactic end.

The greatest lesson one can learn from Mahler’s arrangements of other composers’ music, is probably that one gets an insight in Mahler’s views as a musical interpreter. For example, he extensively adds very precise and drastic phrasing, articulation and dynamical markings. Given that most musical editions at that time were interpretative editions, this actually raises the question to what extent certain aspects of Mahler’s arrangements are just interpretative choices. It is indeed sometimes a fine line, although there is no doubt that his changes to the actual notes count as arranging. By comparing with the original score, we can actually try to uncover the reasons that led Mahler to those alterations. In this way, we also see Mahler the orchestrator at work, whereas for his symphonies, we just receive the end result.
At a broader level, we can observe a somewhat naive mixture of historical awareness and an effort to bring older music to life on the one hand, and a late-nineteenth-century self-confidence on the other hand. Instead of adding more winds and brass, it would indeed have been against the Zeitgeist to actually reduce the orchestra to the size it had in Beethoven’s time, for instance, as happens in many performances today. To put it bluntly, ‘the bigger, the better’ was still the reigning mentality.
The finality in the late-nineteenth-century belief of being able to uncover older music’s true character at last, leads to a paradoxical situation nowadays. In an age where historically informed performances are very common, performances or recordings of arrangements like Mahler’s are historicised as well. Whereas Mahler thought of them as the ideal way in which Schumann, for example, should be played, we would now rather adopt the almost postmodern view that Mahler’s arrangement is one of many possible interpretations of Schumann’s works, connected to a specific period in history.

Although he most likely would have wished otherwise himself, it is indeed with the main focus on Mahler the interpreter, rather than on the original composer, that some of his arrangements continue to be performed and recorded to this day. Whatever our views on performing older music are nowadays, let alone our views on arranging older music, we can but enjoy the fact that Mahler has left us more music than we might think when just considering his original compositions.
Because they range from his early to his later years, his arrangements are connected to many phases in Mahler’s life. Because they include works from Bach to Bruckner, they give us information about Mahler’s interpretations of music from various styles and periods. And because they are arrangements for symphony orchestra, we find out about Mahler’s orchestration process. But do they sound good? That question is left for the reader to answer.

Bibliography

Franke, Veronica Mary. “Mahler’s Reorchestration of Schumann’s ‘Spring’ Symphony, Op. 38: Background, Analysis, Intentions.” Acta Musicologica Vol. 78, no. 1 (2006): 75-109.

Hansen, Mathias. Reclams Musikführer Gustav Mahler. Stuttgart: Reclam, 1996.

Kende, Götz Klaus. “Gustav Mahlers Wiener “Figaro”.” Österreichische Musikzeitschrift Vol. 26, Issue JG (1971): 295–302.

Knittel, K.M. ““Polemik Im Concertsaal”: Mahler, Beethoven, and the Viennese Critics.” 19th-Century Music Vol. 29, no. 3 (2006): 289-321.

Mahler-Werfel, Alma (selected and translated by Antony Beaumont). Diaries 1898-1902. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1997.

Matthews, David. Programme notes to the CDs “Schumann: the Complete Symphonies. Mahler Edition.” released by Decca, 2008.

McCaldin, Denis. “Mahler and Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.” Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association Vol. 107 (1980): 101-10.

Mitchell, Donald. Gustav Mahler: The Wunderhorn Years. Chronicles and Commentaries. Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1980.

Pickett, David (ed. Robin Stowell). “A Comparative Survey of Rescorings in Beethoven’s Symphonies.” Performing Beethoven. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994.

Taruskin, Richard. “Chapter 1 Reaching (for) Limits.” Music in the Early Twentieth Century, New York (USA): Oxford University Press, n.d. Retrieved 3 April 2019.

Warrack, John. “Mahler and Weber.” The Musical Times Vol. 108, no. 1488 (Feb. 1967): 120-123.

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12 August 2018, 11:00
De Drom
Paktuinen 1, 1601 GD Enkhuizen

Works by Mozart, Debussy and Liszt

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10 March 2018

George Gershwin, Aaron Copland and Elliott Carter are just a few famous American composers of the twentieth century, but who is still acquainted with their nineteenth-century precursors? In his 1931 book Our American Music, John Howard divides American music into three periods with the following metaphor (Yudkin, 2008): a Greek muse finding a wilderness in America (1620-1800), proceeding to clear the forest (1800-1860), and then building a home (from 1860 onwards). In this essay, we shall have a look at some of the composers responsible for building that metaphorical home: the Second New England School. Specifically, we shall discuss how they made the first steps towards an American style, how they viewed the question of nationalism in music, and how these views were influenced by their Boston milieu.

To explain the emergence of an American school of composition, we first need to go back in time to explore the larger nineteenth-century socio-cultural context. At the start of the nineteenth century, the United States of America were still in full territorial expansion, only incorporating the West coast around 1850. While the Americans were literally gaining ground, Howard’s sylvan metaphor is also fitting in a musical context, as the first half of the nineteenth century saw the establishment of concert societies in Boston: the clearing of the forest. The Handel and Haydn Society, for example, was co-founded by Gottlieb Graupner in 1815, a German oboist who had played under Haydn in London. These organisations were predominantly middle-class, as music was deemed inappropriate for the social elite, but this changed from the 1830s (Broyles, 1991). Their original ideals of edifying the masses were gradually abandoned, and by the Civil War (1861-1865), art music was therefore the domain of a small yet educated public.

The Civil War saw the first proper mixing of people from different regions of the country, and went hand in hand with a sentimental romanticism and growing patriotism (further increased by the centennial celebrations of 1876); thirdly, private wealth of the rubber barons rose steeply after the war, creating the desire amongst the new rich for European art (Strubble, 1995) and the necessary capital for investment in the arts. With these conditions, and the existence of the music societies mentioned previously, the time was ripe to build Howard’s metaphorical home. There was already regional, demography-dependent popular music of various kinds, and entertainment music, but with a few exceptions, there were no noteworthy American composers. One such exception had been the First New England School, a group of singing-masters in Boston in the late eighteenth century (Strubble, 1995).

In addition, many musicians were European by birth, and especially often German (Levy, 1984). Due to the absence of proper higher musical education, young talents were almost forced to study in Europe. Germany was the destination of choice, with Berlin, Leipzig and Munich the most popular cities (Levy, 1984). This was also the case for John Knowles Paine (1839-1906), George Whitefield Chadwick (1854-1931), Edward MacDowell (1860-1908) and Horatio Parker (1863-1919). Together with Arthur Foote (1853-1937), who did not go to Europe, but studied with Paine, and Amy Beach (1867-1944), they form the core of a group of more or less Boston-based composers most often denoted as the Second New England School. Chadwick, who instead spoke affectionately of the “Boston Boys”, included Beach as “one of the boys” even though her gender meant she had quite a different career path from her male counterparts (Burkat, 2001).

Before discussing some aspects of their compositional style and ideals, we should mention that several of these composers were of paramount importance for the elevation of music in American society (Chase, 1955). Their music was widely played and they were highly respected, and additionally, they were instrumental in establishing rigorous musical curricula (Broyles, 1998). Paine was the first professor of music at Harvard University, Parker became the director of the School of Music at Yale University, MacDowell the head of the newly founded music department at Columbia University in New York, and Chadwick the director of the New England Conservatory (Hsu, 2012; Taruskin, n.d.). Although they had been educated in Germany, the practice of establishing music departments at universities was very much an English tradition (it is New England after all). This was both freeing, because of the erudite setting away from the masses, and constricting, because of the pressure to continue the tradition of the canon that was amplified in this learned setting, where music was studied as literature (Broyles, 1998).

Interestingly, none of these composers was of German descent, but they rather qualified as ‘WASP’, white Anglo-Saxon Protestants, like the Boston elite in general. In spite of this, their music – the first widely acknowledged American composition school – was in essence very German (and usually more Brahmsian than Wagnerian, influenced by the dominant inclinations at the German conservatories where most Americans studied (Levy, 1984)), and it was on top of their German sound that they made the first steps towards an American style. Admittedly, this means that because of this, their style does not always sound completely natural. As a second paradox, even though they are arguably responsible for the birth of American music, none of them made the development of a national idiom a priority. Indeed, Paine thought it unnecessary to develop an American school, because in his view, music was a universal language transcending borders (Yang, 2003).

At the same time, the desire for truly American music was growing. Jeannette Thurber led the American Opera Company and the National Conservatory in New York, both established in 1885. As the 400th year anniversary of Columbus’ (re)discovery of America approached, she set out to start a composition department in the National Conservatory (Clapham, 1981). After being unsuccessful in getting MacDowell to become the first director of the Conservatory, she managed to engage Dvořák from 1892 until 1895 (Taruskin, n.d.), who was warmly received by musicians and patrons alike. In addition to his teaching duties, he of course composed his ‘American’ works: the Symphony No. 9 From the New World (op. 95), the American String Quartet No. 12 (op.96), the American String Quintet No. 3 (op. 97) and the American Suite (op. 98). In his explorations, he turned to an ethnomusicological approach to distill the essence of American style in music. In 1894, for example, he organised a concert in New York with only African-American music sung by an African-American chorus (Levy, 1984).

Ultimately, Dvořák’s advice to the American musical world was that, like the Bohemians, they should use ‘indigenous’ music, both from Native Americans and Afro-Americans (who were anything but indigenous, of course), as the basis for their art music (Taruskin, n.d.). These demographies were what set the Americans most apart from the Europeans in Dvořák’s eyes, but white Americans, and especially the elite in conservative Boston, were less pleased with his advice. Whereas New York was the bustling big city with a vibrant cultural life, the true cultural capital of the USA was still Boston, the Anglo-Saxon stronghold (Taruskin, n.d.). Chadwick, for example, expressed that he was not familiar enough with Afro-American music for a definitive view, but that he “should be sorry to see … such “Negro melodies” as he had heard … become the basis of an American school of musical composition” (Yang, 2003).

Dvořák’s advice did not go totally unheeded, though. However, it was toned down and recast in a safer way. Especially Chadwick and MacDowell ventured further in the search for an American style. Interestingly, both composers have signs of this before Dvořák’s arrival, although nationalism in music was never their priority. MacDowell, for example, first considered writing a tone poem about the fictional Native American hero Hiawatha in 1887 whilst he was in Germany (Crawford, 1996). However, Hiawatha was invented by New Englander Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, one of the Fireside Poets, who formed the poetical counterpart to the Second New England School. Later, MacDowell wrote his Second Indian Suite op. 48, which he completed before Dvořák’s arrival but of which he delayed the premiere until 1896.

MacDowell viewed musical nationalism as a way to celebrate the innate virtue of a country. As such, it is unsurprising that he was more drawn to Native American than to Afro-American material: understandably, he wanted to recreate a heroic past of ‘noble savages’, rather than to touch upon the issue of slavery. His engagement with Native American material was also always from a distance: he never went to look for indigenous music like Bartók did in the Carpathian Basin, and he referred specifically to the past, rather than to the present, which would have meant touching upon the threatened situation of Native Americans. It must also be mentioned that MacDowell certainly did not stand alone, and the first decade of the twentieth century saw the emergence of a whole Indianist movement (Horowitz, 2001).

Of the composers in the Second New England School, Chadwick’s music is arguably closest to Dvořák’s. His fourth String Quartet, for example, seems to have been directly inspired by Dvořák’s American String Quartet op. 96, and was premiered by the same quartet, the Kneisel Quartet. However, even before Dvořák set foot in America, critics denoted his music as being American. Recurrently, Chadwick uses pentatonic material, for example in the scherzo movements of his first and second symphonies, both written before Dvořák’s From The New World with its famous pentatonic theme in the Largo (of course, pentatonic material is not exclusively American, but rather gives a folkish flair). Ledbetter writes about a “recognizable American style characterised by the unique rhythms of Anglo-American psalmody, Afro-Caribbean dance syncopations, parallel voice-leading (4thslandl5ths), and virtuoso orchestration.” (Ledbetter, 2001)

Furthermore, MacDowell, Chadwick and Beach shared an interest in Anglo-Celtic subjects (Strubble 1995; Yang, 2003). Beach did not draw very much inspiration from Native Americans (although she wrote some pieces on Inuit material, i.e. Natives but with added geographical distance (McLucas, 2010)) or from Afro-Americans (she also called jazz vulgar and debasing (Horowitz, 2001)). Taruskin interprets this as a response to Dvořák: he interprets Beach’s music as an indication that not only soil, but also blood is important, by making the link with the white settlers back to Europe and, in particular, Great Britain. Indeed, how could there be a geographically based folk music in such a young, heterogeneous nation? However, like in the case of MacDowell and the Native Americans, Beach was only interested in the ancient Celts, rather than, for example, the new wave of Irish immigrants in the 1840s. This is consistent with the general attitude in Boston vis-a-vis these newcomers, who were viewed as a threat to Boston’s liberal democracy.

Some of the music produced by composers in the Second New England School clearly surpasses nineteenth-century German conservatory style. Why then are these composers so unknown and why is their music almost never performed? Part of the reason for that is to be found in the schism that came immediately after them. First of all, Germanophilia turned into Germanophobia after the First World War, and was superseded by Francophilia. American students like Aaron Copland, Virgil Thomson and Roy Harris, now flocked to Paris instead of to Germany, and especially to Nadia Boulanger’s class (Levy, 1984).

It was also partly through this French influence that jazz, already admired by the impressionists, properly entered American art music. Finally, not Native American, but Afro-American influences started to dominate the American style. After the initial cool reception of his advice, this is also a partial vindication of Dvořák, although in order to connect with all demographies, Afro-American material first had to be transformed into jazz idioms. The new political and cultural outlook, together with the active rebellion of the new generation of composers (including the slightly older Ives, who was a student of Parker’s) quickly meant that the Second New England School was viewed as academic, old-fashioned and musty, a bad reputation from which they still have not recovered a century later.

Only time will tell if this will ever change, but at least it should be clear that the Second New England School was a crucial phase in the development of American music. Leonard Bernstein dubbed it the kindergarten period of American music (Bernstein, 1958), and since we all know how formative these years are for children, let us certainly interpret this in the positive way. “You can’t be nationalistic on purpose,” Bernstein added, and maybe that was also one of these composers’ strengths: without forcing an American idiom, they gently opened the musical gate through which Bernstein would later walk himself.

Bibliography

Bernstein, Leonard. 1958. “Young People’s Concerts: What is American Music?” Broadcast on 1 Feb 1958 on CBS Television.

Block, Adrienne Fried, and E. Douglas Bomberger. 2013. “Beach [Cheney], Amy Marcy.” Grove Music Online. Oxford University Press. Retrieved 11 Feb 2018.

Broyles, Michael. 1991. “Music and Class Structure in Antebellum Boston.” Journal of the American Musicological Society 44, no. 3 (Autumn): 451-493.

Broyles, Michael. 1998. “Art Music from 1860 to 1920.” In David Nicholls (ed.). The Cambridge History of American Music. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Burkat, Leonard, Pamela Fox, and Joseph Horowitz. 2001. “Boston (i).” Grove Music Online. Oxford University Press. Retrieved 28 Jan 2018.

Chase, Gilbert. 1955. America’s Music: From the Pilgrims to the Present. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Clapham, John. 1981. “Dvořák on the American Scene.” 19th-Century Music 5, no. 1 (Summer): 16-23.

Crawford, Richard. 1996. “Musical Nationalism and an American Tone Poet.” Journal of the American Musicological Society 49, no. 3 (Autumn): 528-560.

Fox, Pamela (reviewer). 1994. “Review: Rebellious Tradition and Boston’s Musical Spirit of Place: Elitism, Populism, and Lives Apart.” The Musical Quarterly 78, no. 2 (Summer): 220-245.

Horowitz, Joseph. 2001. “Reclaiming the Past: Musical Boston Reconsidered.” American Music 19, no. 1 (Spring): 18-38.

Hsu, Juiling. 2012. Piano Chamber Music of the Second New England School: A Study Guide. Doctoral Dissertation, Arizona State University.

Ledbetter, Steven, and Victor Fell Yellin. 2001. “Chadwick, George Whitefield.” Grove Music Online. Oxford University Press. Retrieved 11 Feb 2018.

Levy, Howard. 1984. “The Search for Identity in American Music, 1890-1920.” American Music 2, no. 2 (Summer): 70-81.

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19 November 2017

The decades surrounding 1800 were marked by instability, both politically and musically. Politically, some ideals of the Enlightenment were halted by the Napoleonic wars and the conservative outcome of the Congress of Vienna. Musically, consider these three seemingly contradictory statements: (1) although one element separating the Classical period from the Baroque is the minor role of counterpoint, it was precisely a resurgence in contrapuntal writing that contributed to the apogee of the Classical period with Haydn and Mozart; (2) in his writings on Romanticism in music, Hoffmann readily labelled Haydn and Mozart, alongside Beethoven of course, as Romantics; (3) a generation later, Schumann labels his own music, as well as that of Chopin, Mendelssohn and Hiller, as being closer to Bach than to Mozart. 

These three statements indicate an interplay of concepts that goes beyond a simplistic characterization of the Baroque, Classical and Romantic periods. In this essay, we shall illustrate one musical aspect of this disruptive period, which marked the start of musical Romanticism, by studying how Beethoven uses tradition, specifically counterpoint, as progression. Whereas the Congress of Vienna’s conservatism purposed containment, late Beethoven’s return to counterpoint served Romantic ideals of expressive individuality. 

To start, Beethoven’s admiration for composers like Händel, Bach, and Palestrina, can explain his fascination for counterpoint. Several letters to publishers show his eagerness to receive more scores to study, and in his diary, he writes how the portraits of Händel, Bach, Gluck, Mozart and Haydn in his room increase his endurance. Of Bach, he once remarked that his name should actually be Meer (i.e. Sea instead of Brook), and he called him the father of harmony. Beethoven had already played extensively from Das Wohltemperierte Klavier in Bonn, but in Vienna, like Mozart before, he attended evenings at the house of Baron van Swieten, where he could discover music by Bach, Händel and others. 

Händel really struck a chord: before 1809, Beethoven called Mozart the greatest composer, but after discovering Händel’s music, Mozart is relegated to the second place. Harp builder Stumpff recounts a visit when Beethoven knelt down to show his admiration for Händel, whom he called the most classical and thorough of all composers. It was also Stumpff who famously sent Beethoven Händel’s collected works in 1827, which pleased Beethoven immensely. He kept them close to his bed, and enthusiastically mentioned them to visitors. Mendelssohn even considered Beethoven’s musical spirit to be most similar to Händel’s – all the more remarkable since Beethoven discovered Händel quite late, around the age of forty. 

Arriving now at the examination of Beethoven’s contrapuntal studies, we can divide them into three waves, the last of which will bring us back to the old masters he admired. The first wave is when Beethoven arrived in Vienna for the second time in 1792 and took lessons with Haydn and, later, Albrechtsberger. Although Count Waldstein wrote about Beethoven receiving Mozart’s spirit from Haydn’s hands, it was really also Fuxian counterpoint that occupied Beethoven. 

Whereas in the 1790s, counterpoint was part of a curriculum Beethoven thought desirable after a lack of formal training in Bonn, the second wave in the summer of 1809 is more distinctive. In 1808, he held a four-hour long Akademie, encompassing all genres, which arguably marked the end of an artistic phase. After that, 1809 became a gloomy year, with the second occupation of Vienna in five years, and the deaths of his physician Johann Schmidt and notably his two counterpoint teachers, Albrechtsberger and Haydn. Whether gloomy circumstances led him back to the old and stable art of counterpoint, or wether a sense of artistic liberation accompanied his grief, is perhaps hard to say, but it is at least not very surprising that the first work he wrote after restudying counterpoint was a string quartet (op. 74). Although the genre had been contrapuntal in the more general sense since the 1780s, the present author detects an influence of strict species counterpoint in the rhythmical organisation of the first movement of op. 74, with clear slow and fast voices. 

The third wave of Beethoven’s contrapuntal studies, occurs when Beethoven returned to studying Palestrina, Bach and Händel in 1815, and brings us to the core of the tension between looking backwards and forwards. By now totally deaf, Beethoven’s success in concerts was dwindling, prompting negative comments from his side about younger, more popular musicians, most notably Moscheles and Rossini. Additionally, Beethoven had become disillusioned with current societal inclinations, and pessimistic about politics. Just like in the political sphere, revolutionary ideals were counterbalanced by policies of restoration after the Congress of Vienna, and a longing by some for the stability of the Ancien Régime, so fugues, imitative counterpoint and canons start popping up everywhere in Beethoven’s music. He pays tribute to Händel directly in Die Weihe des Hauses, and sketched an overture on the B-A-C-H motif. There are the famous fugues like in the Hammerklavier sonata, or the Grosse Fuge, but also fugues in more unexpected places, such as the finale of the fifth cello sonata (op. 102 nr. 2) or the first movement of the string quartet op. 131. 

The crucial point is that Beethoven is not just being retrospective. On the contrary, his idiosyncratic use of contrapuntal techniques serves as a way to break free from the bounds of classical conventions, even to the point of slightly obscuring tonality, although his goal is to imbed fugal techniques within the sonata form. Indeed, even though he is reapplying old styles, his music does not sound archaic, but in many places precisely more experimental, because he loosens these objective, rigorous contrapuntal styles with subjective and improvisatory elements, which combine to give his music a sense of timelessness. In works like the piano sonata op. 111, counterpoint is one of Beethoven’s means to convey the sublime and the infinite through music. 

In summary, counterpoint was a recurring interest of Beethoven’s during his whole life, sometimes even bordering on the obsessive. What distinguishes his late use of counterpoint from that of predecessors like Haydn and Mozart, is how he reapplies its old techniques in a novel way, in effect freeing them, as a way to realise his own Romantic ideals in music.

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Caeyers, Jan. 2009. Beethoven – Een Biografie. Amsterdam: De Bezige Bij. 

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Kerman, Joseph, et al. “Beethoven, Ludwig van.” Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online. Oxford University Press, accessed 9 November 2017. 

Kramer, Richard. 1987. “Gradus ad Parnassum: Beethoven, Schubert, and the Romance of Counterpoint.” 19th-Century Music 11, no. 2 (Autumn): 107-120. 

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MacArdle, Donald. 1960. “Beethoven and Handel.” Music & Letters 41, no. 1 (January): 33-37 Mann, Alfred. 1970. “Beethoven’s Contrapuntal Studies with Haydn.” The Musical Quarterly 56, no. 4 (October; special issue celebrating the bicentennial of the birth of Beethoven): 711-726. 

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van der Zanden, Jos. 1997. Beethoven in Zijn Brieven. Haarlem: Gottmer. 

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