Behind the Music: Wind Power Program Notes

PROGRAM NOTES BY DANIEL CHETEL

In the early history of the Western music tradition there was a distinction made between two categories of instruments: the haut instruments and the bas instruments; these two terms literally mean high and low, but in this case refer more to volume than pitch. It is easy to think of them as loud and soft, but functionally their roles were often defined as outdoors and indoors.

The outdoor instruments included the early double reeds and brass that could be heard across the estate, through the forest, or were associated with outdoor activities like hunting or the marching of an army. The indoor instruments included the strings and recorders, more associated with chamber music and intimate musical experiences that took place inside the home. Of course, with any categorization, edges get blurred and traditions are bucked as musicians and composers experiment and explore. One such blurred edge is the French horn itself: as a brass instrument, the horn is capable of heralding an heroic fanfare with the trumpets, but it was included in the traditional chamber ensemble of the woodwind quintet, adeptly molding its sound to blend with and firmly support those lighter instruments.

Tonight’s program joyfully highlights the haut side of the instrumental equation with three works that celebrate the musical outdoors, with a special focus on the chameleon French horn featuring Richard Deane, Lexington native, Central Kentucky Youth Orchestra alum, and now Acting Principal Horn of the New York Philharmonic.

Jessie Montgomery is a New York-based violinist, composer, and educator who holds degrees from The Julliard School and New York University. Her work has been featured and supported by such organizations as the Sphinx Organization, American Composers Orchestra, Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, and Deer Valley Music Festival, among many others. As a violinist, she is a member of the Catalyst Quartet and a former member of the Providence String Quartet, for which she also served as resident composer. Her 2016 work Caught by the Wind was written for the Albany Symphony Orchestra’s American Music Festival while Montgomery was serving as the orchestra’s composer-educator. This work is explicitly music about the outdoors, inspired in part by a walk in upstate New York. Montgomery came across a uniquely mangled tree branch on the ground which sparked the idea of stems, branches, and the life cycles represented in the wood as an organizing inspiration for her musical counterpoint.  The second inspiration comes from the composer’s brother, who organized a unique musical tour: travelling entirely by bicycle, the musicians used the energy generated by their cycling to power their performances and thereby reduce the carbon footprint of the tour. Montgomery evokes the cyclical energy of the wheels and the wind through the musical lines and then allows their energy to dissipate as the wind moves on and passes us by.

The Horn Concerto in E-flat, Op. 11 by Austrian romantic composer Richard Strauss unapologetically celebrates the outdoor tradition of the horn by beginning with a striking fanfare before showing off the more subtle, elegant tones that this instrument has to offer. In this iconic work for the French horn, Strauss is perhaps offering us a glimpse into the evolution of the French horn itself, from the traditionally classical-era fanfares of someone like Franz Joseph Haydn (and the traditional fast-slow-fast movement structure) to the more lyrical, expressivo lines of the romantic horn that we associate with later composers like Johannes Brahms and Strauss himself. (Strauss had a unique perspective on the instrument as his father was an outstanding hornist and played in the Bavarian Court Opera Orchestra in Munich for most of his professional life.) The second-movement Andante is particularly contemplative and inward-looking and a wonderful tonal contrast to the more traditionally flamboyant outer movements.

We now think of Johannes Brahms—with his quartet of tremendous symphonies and pair of major overtures—as an essential step along the evolution of the romantic symphonic genre in Western music history, but it is good for us to keep in mind that composers like Brahms lived in a state of musical anxiety about how they would be accepted into this (often German-focused) tradition. Specifically, their major concern was Ludwig van Beethoven, who was not just an important composer but a figure who had been elevated to an almost deified status of German art and culture. Brahms was born just six years after Beethoven’s death, and he was so concerned with how his symphonic output would be received that he diverted early attempts at symphonic composition into other works. When he eventually completed his first symphony, its intensity and drama was, and still is, often compared to Beethoven’s iconic Symphony No. 5 in C minor, Op. 67, with its grueling insistence and obsessive energy. However, Brahms’ second symphonic offering, the Symphony No. 2 in D Major, Op. 73, is more aptly compared to Beethoven’s Symphony No. 6 in F Major, Op. 68, which is known as the Pastorale. In this groundbreaking, programmatic work Beethoven depicts the cheerful countryside, a calming scene by the side of a brook and thunderous storm, all elements that find their way, even if sometimes indirectly, into Brahms’s musical language.

The opening Allegro non troppo seems to begin with a stroll as we hear a distant call from the horns in a texture that evokes Brahms’s more intimate wind serenade-style of writing. The energy of this movement ebbs and flows through a sometimes fantasia-like winding path, but despite his romantic approach to the atmosphere of the work Brahms stays pretty close to the traditional sonata form of exposition, development, and recapitulation, here using the fragmented and kaleidescopic development section to provide a stormy contrast to the easier going opening.

The second movement Adagio non troppo begins with a passionate melody first introduced by the cantabile cello section. In contrast to the flowing expanse of the first movement, here Brahms’s melodies seem to have a more halting, disconnected quality, and he builds intsensity through the layering of increasingly complex rhythmic patterns that often obfuscate regular downbeats, creating a kind of uncertainty under foot. With the Allegretto grazioso Brahms seems to be creating excitement and expectation with the pizzicatos and spiky articulations in the strings and restrained melodies in the woodwinds and horns. Across this relatively brief movement, Brahms’s full exuberance only bursts forth a couple times making this one of the most charming and alluring of his symphonic movements, leaving the listener wanting more.

After such restraint, we are just twenty-two measures into the Allegro con spirito before the music explodes in sparkling excitement. The swirling energy of this finale is palpable as we scamper here and there, off on a new adventure. The contrasting development section is more introspective and meditative, concluding in a startlingly spare passage in which Brahms writes a chain of descending perfect fourths in the woodwinds and low brass. After such a richly textured movement, this simple moment is almost eerily empty and is a musical trope that future composers would return to when they wanted to evoke the profound enormity of the natural world: Gustav Mahler would use this same motive on the opening page of his Symphony No. 1 under the boldly written text “Naturlaut,” meaning “of the natural world” (in a more popular setting Dennis McCarthy would use the same musical trope to underscore the vastness of space at the beginning of his reworking of Jerry Goldsmith’s theme music for the main title of Star Trek: The Next Generation). This respite does not last for long, however, before we are thrown back into the chase. The symphony concludes with an exhilarating coda that effusively caps off this evening of outdoor celebration.