The Program:


Lehar: “Forget me not” (Vergissmeinnicht) -- Concert Polka for violin
Debussy: Nocturnes
Poulenc: Gloria (chorus-soprano solo)




“FORGET-ME-NOT” VERGISSMEINNICHT - CONCERT POLKA FOR VIOLIN
By Franz Lehár (1870-1948)







Franz Lehár was a leading composer of operettas and light music in the 20th century. He entered the Prague Conservatory at age twelve and studied violin with Antonin Bennewitz, composition with Zdenek Fibich, and even received guidance from Antonin Dvorák. His father was a military bandmaster, so during his military service, Franz joined the band under his father’s command. He eventually went on to become a bandmaster himself at various posts from 1890 to 1902.



His military service took him to Vienna and it was there that competing theaters began producing his operettas. In 1905, Lehár was called in to set the libretto Die lustige Witwe, or The Merry Widow, to music. This was his most successful operetta and Lehár is credited with renewing the strength of the genre. He continued producing operettas and, after WWI, he found continued acclaim through his association with tenor Richard Tauber. Lehár made film versions of his operettas, composed original film scores, and opened his own publishing house.



His music is known for its attention to melody and his ability to create interesting melodic contours and rhythms, owing much to both serious and popular music. The harmonic structure of his music demonstrates the influences of Debussy, Puccini, and Richard Strauss. Lehár was himself an excellent violinist and enjoyed finding opportunities in his operettas for violin solos.



“Forget-Me-Not” or Vergissmeinnicht is a violin solo with orchestral accompaniment. This concert polka is in a simple ternary form and the opening section begins with the violin in a monophonic duet with itself. Several times the violin plays the first part of the phrase in the high range and then answers in the lower range of the instrument. The melody continues flirtatiously with a gentle pizzicato accompaniment underneath. The contrasting middle section has more of a sentimental feel, ending in a cadenza for the soloist. The opening material returns and then this musical treat concludes very sweetly with plenty of romantic flourish.







NOCTURNES
By Claude Debussy (1862-1918)







Claude Debussy was born near Paris into a family of tradespeople with no musical background. His father dreamt of his son becoming a sailor; however, Debussy entered the Paris Conservatory at age eleven, never having attended a normal school. He spent twelve years at the conservatory, eventually winning the Prix de Rome with his cantata L’Enfant prodigue. He became a music critic, as did many of his contemporaries, writing under the pseudonym Monsieur Croche and voicing his views against certain styles, composers, and traditional genres. In 1902, Debussy’s opera Pelléas et Mélisande premiered and he finally made a name for himself as a composer.



Debussy married Rosalie “Lilly” Texier, a dressmaker, in 1899, but he abandoned her five years later for Emma Bardac, who was an amateur singer and the wife of a banker. Debussy and Texier ultimately divorced in 1905. He later married Bardac and their daughter was born shortly after the premiere of La Mer. The highly publicized scandal was held against him by the public and the press and colored the reception of his works for several years. By 1909, the first signs of his illness had appeared. By the end of 1915, he began treatments for cancer and eventually succumbed to the disease in 1918.



Debussy’s oeuvre is relatively small. He is probably best known for Prelude to L’Après-midi d’un Faune, Nocturnes for Orchestra, La Mer, Images for Orchestra, and Pelléas et Mélisande. His influences included Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Schumann, Chopin, Tchaikovsky, Mussorgsky, and Weber. Known for his harmonic palette, he revised the possibilities of orchestral tone color using ancient and oriental modes and non-traditional scales. His circle of friends included progressive Symbolist poets and writers. Debussy claimed that his most important lessons had been learned from poets and painters. He discussed music with a vocabulary borrowed from the visual arts and many of his titles are indicative of this connection. He protested being labeled an Impressionist and referred to it as “the least appropriate term” in a letter to his publisher.



In 1892 and 1893 letters to Prince André Poniatowski, Debussy mentioned a work he was calling Three Scènes au crepuscule, or Three Twilight Scenes. He was experimenting with grouping together different sections of the orchestra but this idea was eventually abandoned. The material continued to develop and the final composition was completed in 1899. Renamed Nocturnes, it was Debussy’s first orchestral work to follow the innovative Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune. Only the first two movements were heard at the premiere and the complete work was not heard until ten months later.



Nocturnes is a collection of three symphonic poems utilizing fairly standard orchestral forces with the addition of a second harp and a women’s chorus to wordlessly play the role of the Sirens in the final movement. Debussy explained the program as



“Nuages renders the immutable aspect of the sky and the slow, solemn motion of the clouds, fading away in grey tones lightly tinged with white. Fêtes gives us the vibrating atmosphere with sudden flashes of light. There is also the episode of the procession (a dazzling fantastic vision) which passes through the festive scene and becomes merged with it. But the background remains persistently the same: the festival, with its blending of music and luminous dust, participating in the cosmic rhythm. Sirènes depicts the sea and its countless rhythms and presently, among the waves silvered by moonlight, is heard the mysterious song of the Sirens as they laugh and pass on.”







GLORIA
By Francis Poulenc (1899-1963)







Born into a wealthy Parisian family in 1899, Francis Poulenc demonstrated an early talent for music, starting piano lessons with his mother at the age of five. Enrollment at the Paris Conservatoire never came about due to his parents’ deaths, but Ricardo Viñes was his teacher and mentor, helping him to decide on a career as a composer and pianist. Poulenc’s public debut and first major success came in 1917 with Rapsodie nègre for baritone and chamber ensemble. He was also fortunate to have Igor Stravinsky help to get his first works published.



Poulenc found himself part of the “Groupe des Six” along with fellow composers Milhaud, Auric, Honegger, Tailleferre and Durey. Their works were frequently performed on concerts at the art studio of painter Emile Lejeune; Henri Collet coined the name in a 1920 review. These composers tended to rebel against the German musical tradition, instead favoring the style of Satie and Cocteau.



In 1921, Poulenc felt he needed more musical instruction and so he became the pupil of Charles Koechlin, a French composer, teacher, and musicologist. While still a student he was chosen for a commission for the Ballet Russe, creating Les biches, which was successfully premiered in 1924 in Monte Carlo. Deciding to pursue a performing career, he formed a duo with baritone Pierre Bernac. This association lasted from 1934 until 1959 and Poulenc composed approximately 90 mélodies for their recitals.



The death of his friend, French composer and music critic Pierre-Octave Ferroud, in a car accident in Hungary deeply affected Poulenc. Ferroud had been an important supporter of young French composers and of the performance of new music. Because of this tragedy, Poulenc revived his Catholic faith in 1936 and began regularly composing religious works.



He made his first concert tour of the U.S. in 1948 and returned regularly until 1960. He died suddenly of a heart attack in 1963. Poulenc wrote in almost every medium and his compositional output includes piano music, chamber music, orchestral works, ballets, film scores, opera, choral works, and solo vocal music.



Gloria has become one of the most popular of Poulenc’s larger works. It was composed in 1959-60 as a commission for the Koussevitzky Foundation in memory of Natalie and Sergei Koussevitzky, who was the conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. The foundation first asked for a symphony, then an organ concerto, and finally proposed a work of the composer’s choosing when neither of the first two ideas suited Poulenc. He came up with the Gloria for soprano soloist, chorus and orchestra and requested Pierre Bernac’s assistance with the text.



A Gloria is part of the ordinary of the Catholic Mass. The text remains the same for every worship service and does not change with dictates of the church calendar. The text for the work originates from this source. The harmonies and rhythms are reminiscent of Stravinsky and most sections have instrumental introductions.



The Gloria begins with powerful music from the orchestra punctuated by brass fanfares followed with layered entrances by the chorus. This commanding sound continues all the way to the surprisingly abrupt end of the movement. Laudamus Te is an upbeat, joyful movement of praises presented with a dance-like feel. After a soloistic instrumental opening, the soprano begins the slow Domine Deus, which is more serious and heavier in tone than the previous movement. Domine Fili Unigenite is another joyful sounding movement. The primary orchestral melody is passed back and forth from one section to another in between the chorus entrances until the movement comes to a sudden close. The slow Domine Deus Agnus Dei opens with a mysterious introduction and features the soprano along with the chorus in a prayer for mercy. Qui Sedes Ad Dexteram Patris begins with emphatic a cappella choral statements punctuated by the orchestra echoing the opening of the entire work. This movement is a continuation of the prayer for mercy and the long conclusion to the work begins with the soprano’s Amen.







Notes by Kristin Hauser
March 22, 2009