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An atmosphere of reverence and dramatic ritual reminiscent of biblical times imbues Stravinsky's Symphony of Psalms, a choral triumph perfectly paired with Beethoven's unprecedented masterpiece and its iconic vocal finale — Ode to Joy. These profound, monumental works have the power to change listeners forever.

 

Program Notes
by: Steven Ledbetter

Symphony of Psalms for Orchestra and Chorus

Igor Stravinsky was born at Oranienbaum, Russia, on June 17, 1882, and died in New York on April 6, 1971. The Symphony of Psalms was commissioned to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Stravinsky composed it in France in the first eight months of 1930. The score bears the dedication, “This symphony composed to the glory of GOD is dedicated to the Boston Symphony Orchestra on the occasion of its fiftieth anniversary.” Serge Koussevitzky was to have conducted the American premiere with the Boston Symphony on December 19, 1930 (a delayed performance owing to his illness; hence the world premiere took place six days earlier in Brussels under the direction of Ernest Ansermet). In addition to four-part chorus (Stravinsky preferred, but did not insist on, children’s voices for the soprano and alto parts), the score calls for five flutes (fifth doubling piccolo), four oboes and English horn, three bassoons and contrabassoon, four horns, one small trumpet in D and four trumpets in C, three trombones and tuba, timpani, bass drum, harp, two pianos, cellos, and double basses. Duration is about 21 minutes.

Serge Koussevitzky’s decision to commission a dozen new pieces from the leading composers of the day to celebrate the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s first half-century began a tradition that continues with most of the major orchestras in the world. Boston’s 50th anniversary celebration brought a dozen new works by Hindemith, Respighi, Roussel, Copland, Hanson, and others, and the work regarded by many as Stravinsky’s greatest, the Symphony of Psalms.

Stravinsky had carte blanche in determining the form and character of his work. He wanted to create a unique form that would nonetheless be a unified whole. He had had a “psalm symphony” in mind for some time. The passages that he selected are the closing verses of Psalm 38, the opening verses of Psalm 39, and the whole of Psalm 150 in the Latin text of the Vulgate. (The Vulgate numbers most Psalms differently from translations used in the Protestant and Jewish traditions; there the texts of the first two movements come from Psalms 39 and 40, respectively. Psalm 150 has the same numbering in both systems.)

Stravinsky began with the fast sections of the last movement. The repeated eighth-note figure heard on the words “Laudate Dominum” was his very first musical idea. After finishing the fast music, Stravinsky started at the beginning. He took a motive from what he had already composed of the last movement—a pair of interlocked thirds—and derived from it the basic musical motif of the piece.
The first movement, a cry of “Hear my prayer, O Lord,” composed “in a state of religious and musical ebullience,” opens with a unique Stravinskian sonority. One can recognize the work from that single sound: a simple E-minor triad, but contrary to all of the normal practice, the note most frequently sounded is G, the third degree of the scale, which appears in four octaves on many instruments. This anticipates a special importance for G as yet unexplained.

The orchestral introduction contains long, flowing lines (anticipating the voice parts) and running sixteenth-note passages, which project the interlocked thirds. When the chorus enters, the rhythmic background slows to a steady eighth-note pattern presenting explicitly the interlocked thirds, over which the voices utter their plea, emphasizing the expressive semitone E‑F. This semitone rising and falling is an age-old emblem of lamentation and perfectly expresses the plea “Hear my prayer.” Each element functions as a self-contained block, punctuated by repetitions of that opening chord, with its curious emphasis on G. Finally, a climactic passage builds up with long choral phrases to conclude on a massive G-major triad, a powerful climax.

That G-major chord provides the direct harmonic link to the second movement, in C minor. The words represent the believer waiting for the Lord’s response. Stravinsky called the movement “an upside-down pyramid of fugues”: one fugue for the instruments stated at the outset by flutes and oboes, another for the chorus. Both are fully developed and stated against one another. The basic motive of the symphony, the interlocking thirds, here takes the form C, E-flat, B, D, with the third note moved up an octave, giving a yearning shape to the subject of the instrumental fugue.

The choral fugue enters in E-flat minor while the lower instruments take over the instrumental fugue. A climactic choral passage in octaves (“He has put in my mouth a new song”) is accompanied by strettos of the instrumental fugue leading to the movement’s conclusion on E-flat.

The last movement presents this “new song.” Though Stravinsky began working on the score with the fast music of the last movement, he could not compose the slow introductory section before writing the second movement because that introduction—Alleluia—is the answer to the prayer. The passage is extraordinarily elevated, stately music, with voices and instruments suggesting the somber joyfulness of church bells ringing for a slow procession. The fast section—rushing triplets in brass and piano—was inspired by a vision of Elijah’s fiery chariot climbing the heavens. At the end of all this energetic jubilation, the slower opening material comes back for a wonderfully intense quiet conclusion. The long phrases of the chorus carefully and repeatedly filling in the interval from E-flat down a minor third to C suggest that the conclusion will be in C minor. But as one last time the “new song”—Alleluia—is breathed out by the chorus, the orchestra calmly brings matters to a bright close by inserting E-natural—which produces the major mode—over the closing tonic C, a conclusion of overwhelming serenity in a timeless mood.

Ludwig van Beethoven Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Opus 125

Ludwig van Beethoven was baptized in Bonn, Germany, on December 17, 1770, and died in Vienna on March 26, 1827. Though one theme from this symphony appears in a sketchbook of 1815 and some sketches for the first movement were undertaken in 1817 and early 1818, Beethoven only began concentrated work on the score in 1822. It occupied him throughout the following year, and he completed it in February 1824. The first performance took place at the Kärntnertor Theater in Vienna on May 7, 1824, in an all-Beethoven concert. The deaf composer stood on the stage beating time, but the real conductor was Michael Umlauf. The score calls for two flutes and piccolo, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons and contrabassoon, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, timpani, triangle, cymbals, bass drum, strings, soprano, alto, tenor, and bass solos, and four-part mixed chorus. Duration is about 65 minutes.
Friedrich Schiller’s ode An die Freude (To Joy), written in 1785 and published the following year, spoke directly to the desire for spiritual freedom and secular reform that followed the spread of Enlightenment ideals to German-speaking countries. Its vision of world brotherhood expressed in quasi-religious terms appealed to the young and idealistic. As early as 1793 Beethoven began thinking about a musical settings because the text appealed to him strongly. Three decades elapsed before he was satisfied that he had found the way to deal with Schiller’s text, but certainly the resulting work—his final symphony—was great and sublime.

After completing his Seventh and Eighth Symphonies in 1812, Beethoven turned totally away from the symphony for five years, and only began thinking about a Ninth when he received an invitation to come to London in the winter of 1817‑18 and to bring two new symphonies with him. An attractive thought: it was just such a trip that had made Haydn a wealthy man. But in the end nothing came of it except a few sketches for two symphonies, and one of these was never finished.

He returned to his sketches in the summer of 1822, still planning a pair of symphonies. By 1823 he had settled on a single work in the key of D minor. Then he debated with himself about the ending: purely instrumental, or a choral setting of Schiller’s ode. Even after he had invented the familiar hymnlike tune of the finale, he could not decide how to introduce it after three instrumental movements. One day he was struck by the idea of having a soloist simply start, “Let us sing the song of the immortal Schiller.” In the end he settled on different wording, but the point was the same: to disavow the past and turn with a conscious welcome to something newly liberating. Once he actually started setting Schiller’s words, he treated them very freely, making cuts and repetitions as the musical development required. (The text printed here reflects the musical settings, including the repetitions.)

The planning for the first performance was complicated by the fact that Beethoven wanted to conduct the entire concert, an embarrassment on account of his deafness. In the end he stood on stage next to Michael Umlauf, ostensibly to set the tempi. He kept beating through the work, but the players had been instructed to pay attention only to Umlauf’s beat. The remainder of the program included the overture Consecration of the House and three movements of the Missa solemnis (billed as “Three Grand Hymns with Solo and Choral Voices.” because Church authorities refused permission to perform liturgical music in a theater. The music was of unprecedented difficulty. Still, the crowd in the Kärntnertor Theater on May 7, 1824, cheered energetically. The deaf composer, still turning the pages of the score and hearing the music in his mind, was unaware of it until one of the soloists pulled him by the sleeve to get his attention and pointed to the audience.

Like the Fifth Symphony, Beethoven’s Ninth moves from tragedy to triumph, marked by progression from the minor-key opening to a close firmly in the major. The Fifth seems to be the triumph of an individual hero, while the Ninth becomes a universal triumph for human aspiration. Beethoven’s musical architecture strongly reinforces Schiller’s message.

For the first three movements the symphony remains locked in the realm of D minor and its closely related keys F and B-flat (pitches that are part of the D-minor scale). Only near the end of the last movement does he finally oust F and B-flat in favor of F-sharp and B-natural, notes characterizing the scale of D major. On paper this sounds like pure theory, but in actual sound it achieves unparalleled force. Rarely in all of music has the simple relationship between major and minor modes generated greater power or sheer excitement.

The first theme gradually appears out of a mysterious introduction hinting at indescribable vastness. No orchestral beginning was more influential in the nineteenth century, though no composer ever surpassed Beethoven in the suggestive power of this one. Throughout the lengthy first movement, Beethoven never allows us to stray for long from powerful reminders that this music is in a minor key.
The demonic scherzo of the second movement, too, fiercely reiterates the minor-mode feeling of the first movement. For a moment in the middle section, Beethoven projects pure human joy in the work’s first extensive passage in D major, but it is canceled by the return of the scherzo.

The richly evocative lyricism of the third movement sings a pensive song in B-flat, alternating with a second, slightly faster theme in D major. But on every occasion the second theme ends up slipping helplessly back to the first key, though the variations become ever more lush and sweetly consoling. In spite of their sheer beauty, they cannot reach the world of D major.

The first sound of the finale is a “fanfare of terror” introducing Beethoven’s public search for a way to turn minor-key darkness into a firm major-key conclusion. Cellos and double basses sing an operatic-style recitative calling up and rejecting themes from each of the earlier movements. Finally a new idea appears, simple, singable, hymnlike, emphatically in D major (its melody circles around F-sharp, the characteristic third step of the D-major scale). The orchestra welcomes it with a set of variations. Real progress seems to be underway when this theme, too, is swept away by a renewed “fanfare of terror,” brutal and consciously ugly, containing almost every note of the D minor scale!

Here, at last, the baritone intervenes with Beethoven’s introduction to Schiller’s poem. The soloist, echoed by the chorus, sings confidently in D major, and all seems well through three stanzas of Schiller’s poem.

But one more crisis remains. At the end of the third stanza (on the words “vor Gott”—“before God”), Beethoven undercuts his modulation to the expected dominant key and throws the following passage into B-flat—again threatening that the minor mode may prevail. The “Turkish” march of the tenor’s solo is actually the “Ode to joy” theme varied in rhythm and turned into a heroic aria.

An extended orchestral development follows with major and minor engaged in a last-ditch combat. Finally the orchestra settles on a dotted rhythm repeating the note F-sharp through three octaves—the single note that most strikingly emphasizes the main theme and its major-mode harmony. After two tentative beginnings in the “wrong” key, the composer changes a single note in the bass part and suddenly “realizes” that this music is, emphatically, in D major. The chorus returns in one of the most thrilling moments in all of music. From here on out, everything we hear—the prayerful invocation of a “loving Father” who “must live above the stars” and who makes all men brothers, the vigorous double fugue, the soloists’ last quietly sustained singing—all this is in D major or its closely related major keys, effectively sweeping away the earlier conflict and struggle. Then, gradually pulling itself together out of a grand pause, the orchestra cues the chorus for a final outburst of ecstatic joy, asserting Beethoven’s sturdy, confident answer to the questions posed by the symphony’s opening almost an hour earlier.

 

 

 

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