Third Concert of the 71st Season

Franz von Suppé is an example of one of those composers who was very successful in his own time, but known today for only a few pieces. In his case, they are mostly overtures. The Light Cavalry is one of them. An even better known work is his Poet and Peasant. (I was in a record shop in Washington, D.C., when a clerk answered the phone, turned to the manager, and asked, "Do we have the overture to The Potent Peasant?")

Suppé was born in Spalato, Dalmatia (now, Split, Croatia), to a father of Belgian origin, and a mother from Vienna. At the age of thirteen, he wrote a mass which was good enough to be revised and published some forty years later.

He spent much of his youth in Italy, where he studied law, as decreed by his father, while mingling with Italian composers, and writing his own music. Suppé was born Francesco Suppé Demelli, and is still known by that name in Italian circles. When he returned from his studies in Italy, he helped support himself by teaching Italian in Vienna. The success of his music is sometimes ascribed to his Italian gift for melody. He spoke German with an Italian accent throughout his life, and he is supposed to have admitted to having a poor understanding of some of the German libretti with which he worked. Suppé wrote some thirty light operas, and incidental music for over one hundred and eighty works.

The overture to Light Cavalry was for a two-act operetta. It opens with a bugle call and fanfare which serve as the basis for variations and lyrical writing in the style of Donizetti, whom he greatly admired, and to whom he was distantly related. At about the two-and-a-half minute mark, we hear the famous imitation of horses cantering, and then we come upon an interlude of decidedly Magyar flavor. (The operetta has a section where the cavalry marches across Hungarian fields.)

Often Suppé's works have been used for comic effect, and you might recognize parts of this work from having heard it in cartoons.

Mozart's 40th symphony is the middle one of a "trilogy" representing the summit of Mozart's symphonic production. All three symphonies (the 39th, the 40th, and the 41st, The Jupiter) were written in the span of six weeks. Few of Mozart's works were written in the minor key, although he used that key for contrast in parts of many of his compositions. The 40th is in the minor key with the major used for contrast; the opposite from his usual practice. At the time these were written, Mozart was not in a happy mood; he was extremely debt-ridden. There is no evidence that these were played in Mozart's time, and perhaps he wrote them as "stock" for the next season. To argue that the pathos expressed in this symphony owed solely to his unfortunate person condition would be to ignore the fact that the 39th is in an exuberant mood, and the 41st is positively triumphant.

This symphony (and the Jupiter to follow) is thought of as the culmination of the classical symphony. Let me briefly describe a classical symphony as it was developed by Haydn and Mozart. There are four movements, the first of which is derived from the sonata form. That form, itself, is made up of three parts: the "exposition," the "development," and the "recapitulation." The whole idea is the contrast of elements. The exposition is where the main theme, or "subject," is introduced, or "exposed." Two keys are used, five steps apart on the scale. This provides contrast. Mozart used not only two keys, but two themes. The first subject is usually bold, while the second subject is usually lighter, and more melodic. The middle part of the first movement is the development, where the composer gets to play around with the two subjects, and migrate to various keys. Think of it as a dialogue, or even a struggle between opposing forces. Finally, the two subjects return in the recapitulation, but this time in the same key, suggesting a resolution of the conflict. That whole movement is like a drama. The opening key (known thereafter as the tonic) is so well established in our minds, that whatever the composer doese in the meantime, we subconsciously expect to return to that key, and in the recapitulation, that is just what happens.

The other three movements are less prescribed. The second can also be in sonata form, but doesn't need to be. The third almost always in Mozart's day was in minuet and trio form, and the final is either in sonata form again, or in rondo. It could even be in theme-and-variations form, though not likely in Mozart's day. The final movement here is in sonata form, as described above. There is a great deal of contrapuntal (polyphonic) writing in this movement, a testimony to Mozart's respect for Bach.

One of the reasons for the high regard afforded this symphony in the minor key is that it reflects the so-called Sturm und Drang theory. Sturm und Drang is usually translated as "Storm and Stress," and refers to a literary movement based on works of Rousseau. Goethe's Die Leiden des jungen Werthers ("The Sorrows of the Young Werther") was an influential example. A number of Austrian composers began to write symphonies in the minor key which are said to be deeper, more emotional, more symbolic...in short, Romantic. So Mozart, in his 40th symphony, shows signs of the coming age of Romanticism, and specifically of Beethoven, who is the transitional figure between the two eras of Classicism and Romanticism.

We can hear a similarity between this symphony and Beethoven's 5th. The opening strains of Mozart's 40th have a rhythm of "one, two, three, one, two, three," which is repeated in a number of ways and in different keys. This is economical, but provides marvelous possibilities for development...just as the "dit, dit, dit, dah" of the Beethoven 5th does.