Second Concert of the 64th Season

George (or Georg) Frideric Handel (or Händel), that German-born British subject who wrote Italian music, was a bundle of contradictions. The varied spelling of his name reflects the mobility of artists and composers common to that period. Names were often spelled according to the practice of the country of residence. He spelled his name "Handel" on his petition for citizenship.

Handel had a complex personality. On the one hand, he was pious and sentimental to the point of crying over his own music when it dealt with the sufferings of the Lord. On the other hand, he had an uncontrollable temper that prompted associates to play practical jokes on him, sometimes resulting in violence. (A prankster once untuned all the instruments just before a concert for the Prince of Wales and Handel was so enraged that he picked up a kettledrum and threw it at the concertmaster. He was persuaded to continue the concert only after the Prince made a personal plea.)

Perhaps his personality was shaped by his difficulty in pursuing his musical interest. His father insisted that he become a lawyer, and banned all musical instruments from the house. He further forbade young George to visit any other house containing a musical instrument. George managed to smuggle a clavichord (a very quiet keyboard instrument) into an upstairs room without his father's knowledge.

Handel was an almost exact contemporary of J.S. Bach, born in the same year and dying nine years later. They had similar backgrounds, came from the same part of Germany, were both devout Protestants, but were temperamentally quite different. While Bach remained steadfastly middle class and spent his meager earnings on raising a large family, Handel was a cosmopolitan who traveled widely, made and lost fortunes, and mingled with the aristocracy and the intellectual elite.

He was overwhelmed by Italy, where he spent much time. His Italianate operas were very successful, and brought him great fame in England soon after he arrived there. In the span of less than forty years, he wrote forty-six operas, all in Italian style. When the public's interest in Italian opera began to wane, Handel began to work more in the oratorio form. His "second career" made him even more famous, and today he is known mostly for his oratorios, of which his Messiah is the most performed.

He wrote the Messiah in 1741 while in a fit of despair over the failure of two of his operas. He confined himself to his room where he wrote, almost in a frenzy, for little over three weeks to produce his most enduring work, which was an instant success. Musicologist Dr. Hugo Leichentritt says:

"Messiah is one of those mysterious marvels of great art that appear but once in a century, one of those outstanding products of genius which appeals to all lovers of music, to modest amateurs, and even to illiterate persons, as well as to severe critics of art, musicians of all styles, all epochs, and to all nations alike, irrespective of all the differences of artistic creed which in other respects may separate them."

The oratorio runs a very long time; we hear only some selections.

Leroy Anderson was born in Cambridge, Mass., in 1908, and died in Woodbury, Conn., in 1975. He is best known for his attractive melodies and jaunty rhythms in such pieces as The Syncopated Clock, and Sleighride. Anderson studied composition at Harvard with Georges Enesco and Walter Piston. He was a linguist, specializing in German and Scandinavian languages, and served with U.S. Intelligence in Iceland and the U.S. during the Second World War. In addition to the well-known pieces mentioned, he wrote a number of short works for unusual "instruments," such as the typewriter and sandpaper.

Alice Parker has written arrangements of a number of Christmas carols that have been heard in this hall before. This is the first time the orchestra has performed Masters in this Hall.

Gustav Holst was born in England in 1874 and died there in 1934. He was proficient in the playing of many instruments, but specialized in the organ (he was village organist while still in his teens). Later he played trombone in various theater orchestras, and finally in the Scottish Orchestra. He was very successful as a teacher, and did service abroad during the First World War, where he worked with the troops in Greece and Turkey.

His most popular compositions are The Planets, an orchestral suite of astrological content (or which there are over forty recordings available), and two suites for band, still popular for demonstrations of the quality of audio systems. His music is mostly late Romantic, but some of it has clearly Neo-Classical characteristics (A Fugal Concerto and A Fugal Overture).

Christmas Day is a fantasy making use of several familiar carols . . . and some not so familiar.

Rimsky-Korsakov belonged to that group of Russian nationalist composers known as "The Five," consisting of Balakirev, Cui, Borodin, and Mussorgsky. The Nationalist position was set forth by Rimsky's older contemporary, Glinka, who divided his attention between subjects of Russian history on the one hand, and legend on the other. Rimsky-Korsakov appeared to satisfy what interest he had in history by working with other composers on such projects. When it came to his own music, he was inspired almost exclusively by legend and fantasy.

One of the peculiarities of "The Five" is that they were all amateurs, earning their living (at least initially) through other means. Rimsky was a naval officer, who wrote much of Russia's first symphony while on duty with the Tsar's navy in England. Perhaps it was because they had to earn a living first, and compose second, that so many of their works had to be finished by someone else; they collaborated often with each other. Of the lot, Rimsky-Korsakov developed the most as a theorist, and his writings on orchestration are still revered.

The opera Christmas Eve was written mid-point in his career, and he often spoke of it as one of a group of three operas (the others being Mlada and Sadko), which formed a turning point in his development as an operatic composer. Sadko, for the first time (in Rimsky's opinion), combined faultlessly the textual content with the musical expression. The other two operas, he thought, were almost overpoweringly mythical.

He had based Christmas Eve on a text by Gogol . . . a text with light-hearted wit. Those elements that appealed most to Rimsky-Korsakov were the mystical or fantastic ones, which he then exaggerated. In retrospect, he thought he had made a mistake in doing that, but at the time he was so enamored of the fantastic that he got carried away.

Gogol's story concerns a village lad, Vakula, whose girlfriend agrees to marry him only if he performs what she considers to be an impossible task: To bring her the slippers of the Tsaritsa. The Devil sets up all sorts of obstacles for Vakula, but is outwitted, and the latter persuades the Tsar to give him the slippers, after which he wins his bride. The Polonaise heard today comes near the end of the opera, when Vakula is welcomed into the Tsar's palace.

Rimsky-Korsakov routinely made suites from the music of his operas. The Polonaise is from the 2nd Suite, and was actually performed in 1894, one year before the opera itself. Almost all members of "The Five" grew up as gentlemen in the country, and had ample opportunity to become familiar with folk music. The polonaise, a dance of Polish origin, became a popular form with virtually all Russian composers. It was a stately dance, commonly played at formal events, and this one has a distinctly imperial air about it.

The work begins, tutti, in grand manner, with the brass soon emphasized. Rimsky-Korsakov earlier had too great a fondness for the brass, and remarks that he and Borodin much improved Borodin's Third Symphony when the reduced the brass in that composition. Here there is justification for it, and the trumpets peal out in fanfares. The opening theme is followed by a motif already made familiar to hearers of the complete suite in the ride on the Devil's back to the palace of the Tsar. Hereafter, the two themes alternate, interrupted by a soft middle section emphasizing the woodwinds. The work ends with a dramatic accelerando of the principal theme.