Fate and Earthly Pleasures

Notes by Dr. Margarita Restrepo

Cello Concerto No. 1 is part of a trilogy of concerti by Kabalevsky and is considered to be the centerpiece of the trilogy. The other pieces in the trilogy are his Violin Concerto, written in 1948, and the Third Piano Concerto, written in 1952. The three concerti were dedicated to students and young performers and were written in a style that was simple enough for a student to play yet challenging enough to advance their musicality and technique. Cello Concerto No. 1 was premiered in 1949 by Sviatoslav Knushevitsky, a Russian cellist who was a student at the time. He was accompanied by the Moscow Conservatory Youth Orchestra. This concerto follows the traditional structure of a concerto as it has three movements with a tempo progression of fast-slow-fast. The first movement is an allegro–fast and lively. As Kabalevsky’s First Cello Concerto was written for students, it is not as technically challenging as his Second Cello Concerto. It has the features of a conventional concerto, including a traditional structure and instrumentation. His use of melody and harmonic structure also followed tradition. Kabalevsky was generally praised by his audiences because of this and received a mostly positive reception to his neoclassic style.
 

Notes by Joe DiSalvatore

Lalo was born in Lille, in the northernmost part of France, on January 27, 1823. He attended the conservatoire in that city in his youth. Beginning at age 16, he studied at the Paris Conservatoire under François-Antoine Habeneck. Habeneckconducted student concerts at the conservatoire from 1806 and became the founding conductor of the Orchestre de la Société des Concerts du Conservatoire in 1828.

Lalo wrote his Cello Concerto in D minor in 1876, in collaboration with the Belgian cellist Adolphe Fischer (1847–1891). The work premiered the following year at the Cirque d’Hiver with Fischer as soloist. The first movement opens with lento, then moves into an allegro maestoso. The opening has several measures of orchestral music before the solo cello enters with an ad-lib theme that is played three times. This leads into the fast section, featuring rapid and aggressive arpeggios, and quick, relentless sixteenth notes. 

Lalo’s music is notable for its strong melodies and colorful orchestration, with a Germanic solidity that distinguishes him from other French composers of his era. Such works as the Scherzo in D Minor, one of his most colorful pieces, embody his distinctive style and strong expressive bent.

 

Notes by Dr. Michael Driscoll

We begin the story of Carmina Burana in 1803 – the year the Bavarian monastery of Benediktbeuern (located about 40 miles south of Munich) was dissolved through a political process known as secularization. Johann Christoph von Aretin, executor in the secularization of ecclesiastical property, found the Codex Buranus in the library and took it with him, eventually transferring it to the Bavarian State Library in Munich. The manuscript itself was written in 1230 by two different scribes on 119 sheets of parchment. Additional pages were added in the 14th century and the collection was eventually bound together at some point in the late Middle Ages. The Codex Buranus consists of 254 poems and dramatic texts mostly from the 11th and 12th centuries, though some are from the 13th century. They are written mostly in Latin with a few in Middle High German and some in old Franco-Provençal. Some, such as the seventh movement, “Floret silva nobilis,” are macaronic – a mixture of languages. Contrary to what one might think would be discovered in a Catholic monastery, the texts are mostly bawdy, irreverent, and satirical – often at the expense of the church. So, who wrote these pieces? Scholars believe that they are the work of goliards – young clergymen and students who had left the church or the university to become traveling entertainers and who wrote many poems that were to be sung. Indeed, many of the poems in the Codex Buranus contain early staffless notation that provides only a general idea of the shape of the intended melodies. The poems of the goliards focus on two overarching themes: depictions of the lusty lifestyle of the vagrant and satirical criticisms of society and the church – themes that are found throughout Orff’s setting.

The first collected edition of the Codex Buranus was published in 1847 by the philologist Johann Andreas Schmeller under the title Carmina Burana, which is Latin for “Songs of Beuern” (“Beuern” is short for Benediktbeuern). The fourth edition of 1904 was found by Orff in 1934 at a used bookstore. Orff was immediately captured by the poetry, recounting, 

"On opening it I immediately found, on the front page, the long-famous picture of “Fortune with her wheel,” and under it the lines “O Fortuna / velut luna / statu variabilis /…” Picture and words seized hold of me. Although for the moment I was acquainted only along general lines with the contents of the collection of poems, a new work, a stage work with singing and dancing choruses… at once came into my mind."

The very same day, Orff sketched the first movement of Carmina Burana and within a few days had sketched out what would become the second and fifth movements. With the help of Michel Hofmann, a young law student and Latin and Greek enthusiast, Orff chose twenty-four poems that would form the basis of Carmina Burana. Orff organized the poems, mostly written in Latin with some in Middle High German and old Franco-Provençal, into five grand scenes and orchestrated it for mixed chorus; soprano, tenor, and baritone soloists; children’s choir; and an unusually large orchestra consisting of two pianos, a full array of percussion instruments, large wind and brass sections, along with a full complement of strings. The large orchestration provides a dramatic sound world with rich tone colors and sometimes massive volume, providing a strong rhythmic accompaniment that complements the almost tribal nature of much of the work. The first performance with scenery and dance was at the Frankfurt Opera House in 1937, as the piece was originally conceived for the stage as Carmina Burana (Songs of Beuern: Secular songs for singers and choruses to be sung together with instruments and magical images).

The opening movement, “O Fortuna,” which describes the fickle nature of fate, returns to conclude the entire work. Of the music, noted choral scholar Dennis Shrock in his Choral Repertoire (2009) describes it thus: 

Although Orff was a composer trained in the 20th century, his goal was to use catchy melodies and repetitive forms to recreate the boisterous music of the lively goliards.

Born in St. Petersburg, Kabalevsky entered the Moscow Conservatory in 1925. He soon began a lifelong career as a teacher of music. His nursery rhymes for children and his output of study pieces for young pianists and other instrumentalists made him the most familiar composer to anyone who grew up in the USSR (today’s Russia)

Some of his most well-known music includes five operas, four symphonies, eight concerti, as well as numerous quartets and sonatas. In Russia, Kabalevsky is most remembered for his trio of concerti for cello, violin, and piano.

Lalo was born into a military family of Spanish descent. Against his father’s wishes, he moved to Paris to study violin and composition at the Conservatoire de Paris.
 

He gained success with his composition Symphonie Espagnole for violin and orchestra and with his cello concerto. His chamber works include a string quartet, three piano trios, and several violin sonatas.

Born in Munich, where he spent his entire life, Orff was largely a self-taught composer and music educator. He began studying the piano, the organ, and the cello at the age of five. At seventeen, he enrolled at the Akademie der Tonkunst (Academy of Music), where he developed an interest in music of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In 1924, along with educator Dorothee Günther, he co-founded the Güntherschule in Munich, a school that taught gymnastics, rhythmic movement, music, and dance to women. There he developed his concept of “elemental music.” This work eventually evolved into his Schulwerk – an approach to music education for children that combines movement, singing, playing, and improvisation. The Orff-Schulwerk approach is still widely studied and employed by music educators around the world. 

Considerable debate has revolved around Orff’s relationship with German fascism and the Nazi Party. Orff, however, was not a member of the Nazi Party at any time, and no evidence suggests that he entertained feelings of ideological sympathy for the Nazi Party. From 1950–1960, he held a chair of composition at the Hochschule für Musik in Munich. Orff was married four times and had just one child. Orff’s first success as a composer came with the 1937 première of Carmina Burana. The success of Carmina Burana led to Catulli carmina (1943) and Trionfo di Afrodite (1953), which together form a trilogy with Carmina Burana. His other works include an Easter cantata, Comoedia de Christi Resurrectione (1956); a nativity play, Ludus de nato infante mirificus (1960); and a trilogy of music dramas, Antigonae (1949), Oedipus der Tyrann (1959), and Prometheus (1966).