Third Concert of the 77th Season

The origin of this work is not fully known. It previously was considered as being by an anonymous seventeenth century German, but modern scholars attribute it to Georg Daniel Speer, a German composer from Breslau. It was from a collection of pieces published in 1684 under the title of Die Bankelsangerlieder. This German term means "bench singer," and refers to itinerant entertainers who would perform in local taverns while standing on a bench.

In the 1680s, Speer was extremely prolific, publishing books on performance, including examples of his own music as study pieces. He was a church musician as well as a teacher, and he took a keen interest in local politics, publishing a tract which landed him in jail for a short time.

In 1664, several autobiographical novels were published anonymously, but thought to be by Speer. During his travels in south-eastern Europe, he absorbed a great deal of knowledge of musical performances of the time. Probably the most famous of his works is this sonata. it is not a sonata in the modern sense of the word, but simply a work played, rather than sung. There were two sorts of music at that time, and their names were derived from the Italian, sonare (to play), and cantare (to sing). These early sonatas eventually evolved into the highly-structured sonatas we now know from the Classical era.

This work, probably by Speer, but usually played in arrangements by various more recent composers, is for a wind quintet, and provides a great opportunity for antiphonal playing.

A Note from the composer: In visual art, a vanishing point is the distant point at which receding parallel lines appear to converge, bringing about a sense of both recession and emergence -- the end of the road and also its beginning. This piece is a reflection on the beauty evoked by contradiction, opposition and juxtaposition.

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Despite his problems during the Nazi years, Richard Strauss became popular with audiences, and in the U.S. and Canada his music remained the most performed by symphony orchestras in this century. In terms of available recordings, he is in the top ten composers born after 1860.

So what problems did he face during the war years? During my college years, my best friend, who was extremely knowledgeable about music, was cool to that of Strauss, though I admired it. His reason was that Strauss had been too cozy with the Nazis. Hitler loved the music of Wagner. Strauss loved the music of Wagner, and thought of himself as Wagner's logical successor. So?

Post-war scholarship has revealed the truth about this. Strauss never joined the Nazi Party and often went against the Party's attempts to suppress the music of Mahler and Debussy. But a serious claim against Strauss was what happened in November of 1933, when he was nominated by Goebbels to be President of the Reichsmusikkammer. Goebbels did that without consulting Strauss. That appointment ended when the Gestapo intercepted a letter from Strauss to his Jewish friend and colleague, Stephen Zweig, ridiculing the Party's claims to "Aryan purity." The letter was sent to Hitler, and Strauss lost that position. It was lucky that Hitler liked his music, or he would have been in greater trouble and unable to protect his Jewish daughter-in-law and his Jewish grandchildren. He saved them several times from the concentration camps through his fame and connections. By now, it seems apparent that Strauss was unfairly accused of having Nazi sympathies.

Richard Strauss was the son of Franz Strauss, the principal horn player of the Court Opera in Munich, so Richard grew up in a musical world, but in a very conservative musical world. It is ironic that after an early period of infatuation with the works of Mozart, Schubert, and Mendelssohn, all approved of by his father, Richard then developed an obsession with the music of Wagner, which his father could not abide, refusing even to let Richard acquire any Wagnerian music. In spite of his disagreement with his father over "modern music," Richard learned a great deal from his father, shown most notable in his love of the brass.

The Serenade was written when Strauss was only sixteen years old. Its beautiful melodies and lyricism reflect the young Richard's love of the classics. It is one movement sonata form, and shows that he was still under the influence of his father.

Toward the end of his life, Strauss said of himself, "I may not be a first-rate composer, but I am a first-class, second-rate composer."

Peter Warlock was a man of great talent, but little self-discipline. He seemed to possess two personalities. On the one hand, he was quiet and introspective, and on the other, boisterous and given to scandalous excess. He wrote much musical criticism, some of which was highly controversial, so he changed publishers often.

Warlock had an interest in the Occult, which is why he changed his name from Philip Haseltine to Peter Warlock, a word meaning Sorcerer. He continued to use both names throughout his life, but reserved his pseudonym, Warlock, for all of his published music, and continued to write critical papers and biographies under his birth name, Haseltine. Among such literary works is a thorough book on Frederick Delius, whom he had met while they were students at Eton.

Warlock is best-known for his vocal music, much of which has based on English folk-songs, but also reached back to ancient times. He was an authority on early music. His Capriol Suite was based on dances of the sixteenth century, quoted in a treatise by Thoinot Arbeau, a French priest whose real name was Jehan Tabouret. One wonders if that name-change played a role in Haseltine's decision to take on a pseudonym. Under the name Peter Warlock, Haseltine published three versions of this dance suite; one for piano duet, one for strings, and a third for full orchestra. The best-known version is for strings, and that is the version we hear today.

The suite consists of six dances, which tell a story ... sort of. "Capriol" is the name of a lawyer who wished to learn to dance, and the suite is in the form of a dialogue between the lawyer and Arbeau, himself. The six dances are:

1. Basse-Danse, Allegro moderato, D minor -- (Basse-Danse means "Low dance," in which dancers glide across the floor without leaping.)

2. Pavane, Allegretto, ma un poco lento, G minor -- (Normally, a slow processional dance, this one is livelier than usual.)

3. Tordion, Con moto, G minor -- (From the French word, tordre, for "twist.")

4. Branslees, Presto, G minor -- (Bransles, Pronounced "BRAHN-sel," is a basic dance of the period. The word means "Brawl," for the side-to-side and back-to-front movements of the couples.)

5. Pieds-en-l'air, Andante tranquillo, G major -- ("Dancing on air," where dancers use a very light step, just short of leaping.)

6. Mattachins (Sword Dance), Allegro con brio, F major -- (From the Spanish matachines, dancers in a mock sword-fight. In the Americas, it is a reference to the war between the Christians and the Moors in Spain, led by St. James.)