From Bay Youth Orchestras Newsletter "The Byo-Graph" 
The View From the Podium 
by Greg Barnes 

On Tuesday, November 19th the Concert and Symphony Orchestras will present a dazzling array of symphonic masterpieces in "The French Tradition." The two orchestras will perform compositions from the 17th to the 20th centuries. What a long and rich tradition of great French music there is. Exactly when was music first composed in France? We can't find a fixed date, so let's start with the perspective of the fourteenth century when a new musical style, the "ars nova" influenced the music performed in the great cathedrals. Among other new features were greater rhythmic freedom. So when was the "ars antiqua," the old style? Naturally, the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. How's that for tradition? 

Of course we're talking about vocal music which preceded the blossoming of instrumental music in Renaissance and Baroque Europe. But clearly a musical tradition lasting 800 years (so far) will eventually encompass every form of musical expression, vocal and instrumental. The French tradition did just that. 

THE ORCHESTRAL BEGINNING 

The instrumental tradition in France was jump-started in Paris by Jean-Baptiste Lully, Jean-Phillipe Rameau and the Couperin family. Of the latter, Francois was the greatest in the distinguished musical lineage, thus the nickname "Couperin le Grand." Born 1668, he went on earn the title "ordinaire de la music de la chambre du Roi." (The "Roi" being no less than Louis XIV!) Writing mostly for harpsichord and organ, Couperin also introduced the string music of Corelli into France.  

He composed over 230 masterful keyboard pieces, many with picturesque and descriptive titles like La Sultane, which Darius Milhaud orchestrated over two hundred years later. Milhaud, a distinguished composer himself (born Aix-en-Provence), completed the orchestration in 1940 in California. He taught at Mills College in Oakland until 1971. The Symphony will perform this Overture and Allegro, with the colorful title La Sultane. 

The Overture is proud and regal music (thus the importance of the Sultan), with very elegant musical lines. Milhaud's scoring is brilliant, with delicious blends of rich string, woodwind and brass writing, alone and in combination. The Allegro (Joyful) is just that. 

BUT FIRST, THE CONCERT ORCHESTRA and PROGRAM MUSIC 

This concert will open with the Concert Orchestra performing two works by Camille Saint-Saens, March Militaire Francais and Danse Macabre. Saint-Saens was a brilliant prodigy, who played his first piano recital at 11 in his native Paris and entered the Conservatoire at 13. He had a very successful career as a piano and organ soloist. As a composer he was prolific for most of his 86 years (born 1835) writing symphonies, symphonic poems, concertos and several operas. 

The "French Military March" is taken from the orchestral Suite Algerienne. Saint-Saens traveled widely, including Algeria. In fact he died in Algiers in 1921. The crisp march reflects the "outre mer" or "overseas" empire in North Africa, where unsettled problems continue to plague both countries to this day. 

The symphonic poem Danse Macabre (Dance of Death) is one of the most frequently performed pieces in the orchestra repertory. Inspired by a poem by Henri Cazalis, it is a delightful example of "program music," in that the music follows the plot or "program" of the poem. Or, to put it the other way round, you can tell what the story or program is by listening to the music. There are specific musical effects which outline its program or story: 

A misty atmosphere is established. It is midnight. We know, thanks to twelve bell tones from the harp! Death is a fiddler who summons the skeletons from their graves to the dance. The call-to-the-dance is a short fanfare played by the fiddler, actually the concertmaster, who sounds together the A string and 
a deliberately mistuned E string, lowered to E flat. This A/E flat interval is a diminished fifth, or augmented fourth, also known as the tritone. Saent-Saens used it because it sounds weird and spooky, but also because of specific denotations, traceable back to the middle ages. Then the tritone was called "diabolus in musica," the"devil's music" by tradition. (The most famous example, until this, was Tartini's violin sonata entitled "The Devil's Trill." Tartini not only had the courage to compose a sonata featuring the "diabolus in musica," but the audacity to make the fiddler trill it!) 

The flute and the xylophone announce the appearance of the skeletons et al, the dance is in full swing, becoming wilder and wilder. It's all great fun for the ghosts and the goblins when suddenly the orchestra gives a great shudder and dawn begins to break. The oboe heralds the new day with a very clear "cock-a-doodle-doo" and the dancers and Death the Fiddler slither back into their graves. But don't be afraid to applaud the Concert Orchestra for performing this very ambitious music. 

ENTER THE SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA 

After the Symphony takes the stage and plays La Sultane, Shawn Singh will exchange his violin for a soloist's role at the piano in the final movement of the Symphony on a French Mountain Air by Vincent d'Indy. This Symphony for Orchestra and Piano is sub-titled "Symphonie Cevenole" because d"Indy incorporated traditional melodies from the Cevennes region and its mountain villages into the composition. Dating from 1886, the symphony is exuberant and full of delightful traditional and original tunes. The main lyrical theme is in what must be one of the most incredible time signatures ever devised. It is 2/4-3/4 time, meaning there are two or three beats per measure. How do we know which? By playing what's there: if we find 2 beats in a measure, it is 2/4; if there are three beats, it is 3/4. Furthermore when they alternate (2/4 3/4, 2/4/ 3/4, etc.) it sounds like 5/4. Apparently the Cevenole have very sophisticated folk music! 

You need not know any of the intricacies to enjoy this happy music, however. It is fun from beginning to end, with plenty of fancy fireworks from the piano. d'Indy's life centered in Paris until his death in 1931. He was also one of the most-respected music educators in the world who revived and championed old music (Rameau, Bach, Monteverdi) an also introduced the new (Wagner, Debussy). 

A LITTLE INTERMISSION, A LITTLE IMPRESSIONISM 

Now our program turns impressionistic. Perhaps we could call impressionism "ars nova 2," issuing in another new style of composition five hundred years after the ars nova of the Renaissance. Gabriel Faure's Pavane, which begins the second half, is technically not fully in the impressionistic style. Yet it has many of the ingredients and will set the stage for Debussy's clearly impressionistic music which follows. Pavane, composed only a year after the Symphony on a French Mountain Air, is light years away in feeling. The unforgettable melody evokes deep serenity and will haunt you for days. It is delicate, yet elegant. The harmonies are adventurous and emotional. The subtle orchestration will make most of us regret that we didn't take up the flute. 

Claude Debussy redefined musical composition, using its ingredients (melody, harmony, rhythm, tone quality) in a radical new manner that required audiences of the late 19th century to listen differently and experience new sounds. Already the impressionistic painters were redefining light and image, reconstructing them differently on canvas, requiring viewers to see differently and experience new visual impressions. "Troi Nocturnes" dates from the 1890's and Nuages (Clouds) is the first of the three nocturnes. All the impressionistic elements are here: complex block chords, modal harmonies, whole-tone scales, parallel fifths, layering of sounds and textures, delicate colors and extremely sensitive orchestration. Melodies emerge as evocative wisps of sound and color here and there; lyrical, beautiful, yet seldom clearly defined, like the clouds in the title. The fluid and colorful harmonies suggest uncertain, misty images. Debussy described his aim for a "sonorous halo" of sound-color, and his palette of sound-colors was as diverse as the palettes of Renoir, Monet or Cezanne. 

THE COMPOSER'S PALETTE; PARIS INTERNATIONAL ESPOSITION, 1889 

Debussy was influenced by those painters and writers in the "City of Light" in the late nineteenth century. As the impressionist painters redefined how light and image could be transformed from canvas to eye, Debussy redefined the way melody and harmony could be transformed into the listener's imagination. He discovered new textures of musical beauty and expression, often with Oriental influences like parallel fifths and fourths (forbidden by conservatory rules since the middle ages) and whole-tone scales. (He chose a Japanese drawing for the cover of his score of "La Mer.")  

At the Paris International Exposition of 1889 he also heard gamelan music from Java (Indonesia). The gamelan orchestra with it's colorful percussion had a very important musical influence on him. Debussy was one of the truly great and original composers, breaking new musical ground that paved the way for many 20th century masters. He died in Paris in 1918, leaving a treasure of wonderful music for orchestra, piano, stage, voice and chamber ensembles. 

Oriental music heard at the 1889 Exposition also had an important influence on Maurice Ravel's harmonies and orchestration. This will be vividly apparent in the "Empress of the Pagodas," the middle of three pieces from the Mother Goose Suite which will be next on the November concert. Although the composer called it a "Suite for Children," (It was written for two very young pianists and orchestrated later.) this is very mature music. More properly it is a suite about children, based on a book of fairy tales by Pericault. BYSO will also play "Tom Thumb" and "The Magic Garden" from the Suite. In the first story, Tom goes for a walk in the forest leaving a trail of crumbs to find his way back. Unfortunately, a hungry bird finds another use for the crumbs! This is impressionistic music with a program, at its most delicate, beautiful and sensitive. Two solo violins are the birds, while woodwinds and strings take us on the walk. The suite ends with "The Magic Garden" sometimes translated as "The Fairy Garden." This is truly enchanted music, climbing to peaks of deep intensity only to begin again and take us to even more beautiful heights.  

Bolero made Ravel world-famous. Inventive and original, he used musical devices like jazz in addition to orientalism. Much of his music was intended for the ballet. Ravel grew up and lived mostly in Paris until his death there in 1937.  

THE SYMPHONY IS TRANSFORMED INTO A POWERFUL LOCOMOTIVE 

"I have always had a passion for locomotives. To me they are living beings whom I love as others love women or horses." Perhaps only a Frenchman could have written these words. Arthur Honneger went on to further describe the epoch-setting composition Pacific 231. "In (the music) I have not aimed to imitate the noise of an engine, but rather to express in terms of music a visual impression and physical enjoyment. The piece opens with an 'objective' contemplation, the quiet breathing of the engine at rest, the straining at starting, the gradual increasing speed - and finally reaches the lyrical state of a fast train, three-hundred tons of weight thundering through the silence of the night at a mile a minute. The subject of my composition was an engine of the 'Pacific" type number 231 used for heavy loads and built for great speed." ("231" designates the groupings of wheels, 2 together, then 3,then 1, on the American Pacific locomotives.) 

Honegger was born in Le Havre in 1892, studied in Zurich and returned to Paris in 1913. (His orchestration teacher was d'Indy.) He soon became identified with "le six," a group of six composers prominent in the city at the time. Pacific 231 was first performed at the Paris Opera House in 1923 under Serge Koussevitzky, who later became a legend at the helm of the Boston Symphony. In the interview quoted above, Honegger says he aimed to "express in terms of music a visual impression." Is this the same as 'Impressionism?' I think probably so, although some look at the piece from another perspective, as an example of "music concrete," music that sounds like "concrete or "real" things, non-musical sounds. But the composer rules this out when he says he has "not aimed to imitate the noise of an engine..." And yet it does sound like a locomotive! But I hear more of the energy, the power and the speed of the locomotive than the engine itself. Another writer called it a musical representation of accelerated motion. At the beginning there is only potential energy. Beginning with one note to a bar, then two, three, four, five and six, soon it is high-speed kinetic energy, full of passion for the energy of motion and power, velocity and mass. At the end it comes to rest, but proudly victorious with the final note, a tremendous unison C sharp throughout the orchestra. 

Pacific 231 is dissonant music, except for the last note. But the dissonance is just one tool Honegger uses to bring the energy of the locomotive alive to the listener. Any composer or arranger can make an orchestra sound like a locomotive, but only a masterful composer can create pure energy, motion and power.  

IN THE MIND'S EYE 

The thread of visual impression (Honegger's words) runs through all the music on this concert. From La Sultane to Pacific 231 these composers wrote in vastly different eras across four centuries, from "The Sun King" through the Revolution through the modern industrial age. And each composer's individual style is unique. Yet all share a phenomenal gift for creating music which makes your imagination leap to life and allows you to "see" the music in your mind's eye. This is not music to be taken literally. It is music which frees the emotions to take wings and lets the imagination soar; from the mountains and the railways of the French countryside across the continents to the Orient, from the demons climbing out of their graves to the delicate and ephemeral clouds in the heavens above.  

We hope you attend this concert. And, don't forget to bring your imagination! You'll need it for this wonderful music in "The French Tradition." 

CURIOUS ABOUT IMPRESSIONISM? 

Here is more about impressionism and the expressive similarities between painting and music. I also suggest a visit to the Impressionism rooms at the Chrysler Museum of Art, where you will find excellent examples by Renoir, Seurat, Monet and others. Specifically, the term Impressionism was first coined by an art critic referring to Monet's painting "Sunrise, An Impression." The painting was supposed to reflect an impression to the inner eye, without precise, clearly outlined images. Look up close to the canvases at the Chrysler, and then back away to see how the eye reconstructs the image from the 'points of color.' In the meantime, read on: 

EINSTEIN BENT SPACE and TIME; VAN GOGH CAN BEND A FEW STARS! 

The following is excerpted from: Einstein's Space & Van Gogh's Sky (Physical Reality and Beyond) by LeShan & Margenau) 

"The artists search for meaning, values, and organization of the cosmos is not chaotic or random, in each period of the development of a culture it is limited in its possibilities and regulated by several factors. First, just like scientists, artists are limited by the technical methods they have available. Scientists could not study bacteria before the invention of the microscope, and artists are similarly limited. Painters in western culture today have many more artistic inventions available to them than had the painters of the Renaissance, and therefore they have many more possibilities available for shaping the canvas. [As composers today have new and improved instruments and a wider palette of harmonies and orchestral colors. GB]  

The possibilities open to the artists are also limited by the cultural viewpoint within which they live. Each culture makes certain approaches to the infinite possible. It makes other approaches impossible or incomprehensible. Of those attempts at the organization of reality made by its artists each culture selects some as "successful" and rejects others. What the culture selects then helps shape that culture. The deeply reciprocal nature of the culture and the constructions of reality used, the constant feedback and corrections between 'nature' and 'consciousness,' can be seen perhaps most clearly in this relationship between artists and society. Out of the variety of coherent possibilities that exist within the limits of his cultural world-picture and the artistic inventions known to him, the artist chooses a construction of reality and writes, composes or paints within it. The society chooses which of its artists to pay attention to, and then the artist's conception becomes a factor in shaping society.  

The pre-classical Greek society chose Homer as its major artist. Homer then had a profound influence and helped build classical Greek society. We do not yet know enough of the factors involved that make a society choose one or another artistic conception. Once one is chosen, however, it appears to be foretelling the future of that society because it is helping to form it. [Other possible examples might be Beethoven in Napoleonic Europe, Wordsworth and Shelly in 19th century England and certainly the impressionists in the pre-World War I Europe and the U.S. GB] 

The method of science is to search and establish perceptual reality-what is perceived as outside of our inner experiences-and to describe it so that we can perceive something new and then change. The method of art is to change our inner experience so that we then perceive the perceptual world (and our inner experience) differently. 

Roger Fry has discussed in detail the parallel between the scientific thrust of the Renaissance (to understand the world) and the major thrust of the artists of the period (to reproduce it exactly). [After Giotto and Mantegna rediscovered perspective. GB] For five centuries Western art was largely concerned with this problem '...either by an accurate imitation of an exact scene or by constructing a picture according to those optical laws to which our vision inevitably conforms.'"[Also introducing the concept that nature was beautiful. GB]  

But in the late 19th century: "The aim of five centuries of European (painters') effort is openly abandoned. The actual appearance of the visible world is no longer of primary importance. The artist seeks something underneath appearances..." Reed: Art Now  

"A few years ago there was an exhibit of....the impressionistic painters who made such an impact on the Paris of their time by showing a new picture of reality, a new way of seeing what is all around us, that they were dubbed "The Wild Beasts.' Deeply affected by the exhibit I realized that I could now see the world in a way that was new for me. I could look at a crowd of people, or at people and buildings and see them as if they were a Seurat painting. I had gained something new and learned something about myself and my potential ways of organizing and perceiving the world."  
LeShan & Margenau in Einstein's Space & Van Gogh's Sky 

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