program notes {
to one of the most inane little tunes ever
penned is as good an example of comedy
in music as anything by Peter Schickele
(aka P.D.Q. Bach).
This overture plus nine other numbers
was created in a bout of high-speed composing during the late summer of 1811
along with the overture and incidental
music for The Ruins of Athens. Both King
Stephen or Hungary’s First Benefactor (to
give the full title) and The Ruins of Athens
were brief festival plays written by August
von Kotzebue to celebrate the opening of
the new theater in Pest, Hungary that autumn. Both plays paid obsequious tribute
to the Austrian Emperor Franz I, who was
also emperor of Hungary. Canonized as
a saint in 1803, Stephen was Hungary’s
national hero, crowned king in 1000 A.D.
and subsequently converting his people to
Christianity. The subtitle “Hungary’s First
Benefactor” implied that Franz I, who
would be attending the performance, was
the country’s modern benefactor.
Beethoven obviously did not take this
commission as an opportunity for musical
profundity. Vacationing at the Bohemian
health spa of Teplitz, he was enjoying one
of the happiest summers of his life, and
the Overture’s music reflects that mood.
He seemed to be mocking his own heroic
style with those fateful opening chords.
And as the music warms to Presto, a fiery
syncopated tune in the Hungarian style
takes the stage. Without development or
emotional complexities, the music sails on
to a bombastic finish, topped off with a
crowd-pleasing drum roll.
The Storm
Franz Joseph Haydn
Born in Rohrau, Austria, March 31, 1732;
died in Vienna, May 31, 1809
In the winter of 1792, Joseph Haydn was
the toast of London; he was progressively
unveiling his superb London Symphonies in packed concerts organized by
the German-English impresario Johann
Peter Salomon. But in its January 27,
1792 issue, a critic for The Oracle decided
to rain on his parade: “HAYDN, though
in instrumental compositions so various
and original, has yet but slender merit as
a Writer for the Voice.”
Now Haydn had not yet written his
magnificent The Creation, but he had
composed many operas and mass settings
and felt this was an unjust slander of his
abilities. In response, he chose an English
text, “The Storm” by Peter Pindar (pen
name of John Wolcot), set it for orchestra
and chorus, and presented it at Salomon’s
next concert of February 24th. The text
was a canny choice, for, throughout the
18th century, the English loved musical
portrayals of Nature at her most extreme.
The success of this new choral work was a
better riposte than any letter to the editor.
This extremely colorful music is in two
contrasting moods and keys: D minor
for the furious depiction of the storm
menacing the people, D Major for their
slower-paced prayer for the return of calm
weather. When Haydn returned to Austria,
he substituted a German text and enlivened the orchestration, as we will hear,
with imposing trumpets and timpani.
The text was a canny choice,
for the English loved
musical portrayals of Nature
at her most extreme.
Opferlied, opus 121b
Ludwig van Beethoven
Along with Goethe, Friedrich von Matthisson (1761–1831) was Beethoven’s
favorite poet and the only one to whom he
dedicated a song, his beautiful “Adelaide.”
One of Matthisson’s poems seems to have
held special meaning for the composer,
the “Opferlied” or “Sacrificial Song,” for
he set it four times over the course of his
career. In this classical verse, a youth is
sacrificing to Zeus in an oak grove; he
asks the god to grant him, both now and
in his old age, beautiful things because he
is good. Beethoven wro H]