Program Notes

Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847)
Die Erste Walpurgisnacht (1843)

When the 11-year-old Felix Mendelssohn was first introduced to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, it began what would soon turn out to be not only a lifelong friendship, but also a mutual admiration society. Mendelssohn wrote his overture Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage based on two poems of Goethe, and used a dozen more as texts for songs and choral works. He also dedicated his Piano Quartet No. 3 to the great writer. But none pleased either man more than Mendelssohn’s setting as a cantata of Goethe’s 1799 poem Die Erste Walpurgisnacht (The First Walpurgis Night).

In Goethe’s poem, the Druids are prevented from performing their pagan spring rite on pain of death by their Christian conquerors. They decide to go ahead with the ritual, but disguise themselves as devils, witches and other horrible creatures in order to frighten off the nearby Christians who flee in terror.

Mendelssohn agonized over the work for two years before it was first performed under his own baton in December, 1832. He would revise it ten years later. In a fascinating letter, Mendelssohn asked Goethe to enlighten him on the poem’s philosophy. Goethe replied: "The principles on which this poem is based are symbolic in the highest sense of the word. For in the history of the world, it must continually recur that an ancient, tried, established, and tranquilizing order of things will be forced aside, displaced, thwarted, and, if not annihilated, at least pent up within the narrowest possible limits by rising innovations. The intermediate period, when the opposition of hatred is still possible and practicable, is forcibly represented in this poem, and the flames of a joyful and undisturbed enthusiasm once more blaze high in brilliant light."

The overture opens with the harsh, icy chill of a winter storm. The renewing freshness of spring tentatively makes its presence felt, but is quickly swept away by the winter wind. A solo horn is introduced; declaiming a rustic song intermingled with the persistent and impatient gale, which eventually comes to the fore once again more furiously than ever. Another battle with the horn ensues, but this time the woodwinds join its song, and the maelstrom slowly dies away as the beauty and joy of spring is firmly established.

The druids prepare to set the pyre ablaze, but set their ruse to frighten off their enemies. The mood set by the beautiful choral writing is one of lighthearted merriment. As they devise their scheme the music becomes conspiratorial. They start their ritual and begin to dance maniacally in their horrible costumes it rises to an infernal din in some of Mendelssohn’s most stirring music. An impassioned plea by the Druids to purify their faith is met with the now-terrified Christians fleeing for their lives. The Druids repeat their plea for faith and protection in a message of self-purification.

When Berlioz heard this work in its revised version in 1843, he exclaimed, “This is a work of many admirable features. A real masterpiece.”

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)
Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125 (1817-1823)

“I find, … that it is not to be.”

“What, Adrian, is not to be?”

“The good and noble … what we call the human, although it is good, and noble. What human beings have fought for and stormed citadels, what the ecstatics exultantly announced—that is not to be. It will be taken back. I will take it back.”

“I don’t quite understand, dear man. What will you take back?”

“The Ninth Symphony …”

Adrian Leverkuhn, the fictional composer of Thomas Mann’s wartime novel Doktor Faustus realizes, after promising his soul to the devil, that everything and everyone that he tries to love is destroyed forever. Slowly becoming insane, Leverkuhn’s consuming passion becomes the ultimate destruction of hope and redemption. The culmination of this driving force is to write a massive work that will negate, that indeed will be the opposite of, the one piece of music that he considers to be the ultimate statement of love and triumphant victory: Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.

To anyone who has ever heard the work, Mann’s observation on the importance of Beethoven’s monumental orchestral testimony is hardly surprising. It is a profound statement of everything that mankind is, and strives to achieve. We can readily relate to its pain and its struggle with the sometimes overwhelming difficulties with which life confronts us, even as we reach out to grab hold of its message of triumph.

The Ninth Symphony leads us on a journey from darkness to light, beginning with an intense statement of despair and ending with an overwhelming proclamation of joy. One of the most important studies in Beethoven scholarship has revealed that the composer had written the famous “Ode to Joy” theme in its entirety before the rest of the symphony, and experts have found snippets of this theme in various guises woven throughout the first three movements. So we realize that Beethoven’s intention from the beginning was to reveal, however subtly, that the overwhelming grief of the opening bars will, by the symphony’s end, be swallowed up in joy.

The first movement represents the desperate condition of mankind and was described by Wagner as “the light of the soul, struggling for happiness against the hostile power that tries to prevent us achieving happiness.” The movement opens ominously, and soon gives way to a dramatic crescendo and the struggle begins. There are moments of light when the joy tries to break through, but each time it ends in a battle to keep its place and is eventually swallowed up once again in a turbulent outcry. The development section is even more dramatic, urgent and complex, intensifying the struggle. It builds to an overwhelming climax finally exploding into the recapitulation. Once there, Beethoven expands and contracts the musical ideas heard at the beginning of the movement, leading us into a lengthy coda, nearly as overwhelming as the development section. In its midst emerges a tranquil theme taken up by the winds and horn, which is soon drowned out by the growing persistence of the strings. An inexorable march builds and intensifies over an ostinato bass and the movement ends with the same cry of despair with which it began.

The second movement is an extended Scherzo and here the despair is replaced with a restless energy that tells us that the anguish of the first movement is still fighting for its place. But the more jubilant second theme gives us another hint of the symphony’s triumphant end. The opening music builds to a devastating climax and suddenly, as if out of nowhere, emerges the trio. Here is unexpectedly rustic, pastoral-like music, gracefully leading us down the garden path directly into a repeat of the agitated scherzo. At its end, the scherzo graciously steps aside to let the pastoral theme of the trio come forward, only to abruptly cut it short to have the last word.

The third movement is at once so intensely beautiful that it is completely disarming and leaves behind the struggles and despair of the music that has come just before it. The movement’s two themes are subjected to delicate variation with the woodwinds often taking the lead. The music flows so effortlessly, so naturally that the listener soon forgets about the pain and sorrow from which it was born in the previous movements. A dramatic fanfare twice breaks in on the serenity, but each time the music returns to its former state of bliss and by the time we reach the final three chords which end the movement we are left wondering what all the gloom was about.

But at the opening of the finale, our sublime meditation is suddenly and violently torn from us by an outburst so menacing and terrifying as to leave us shaken. A more soothing answer is given by the cellos and double-basses. Then we are given reminiscences from each of the previous movements that serve to remind us how far we have come to get to this place. Then, for the first time, we hear it. Admittedly incomplete and from a distance, but clearly the theme of the “Ode to Joy” taken up by the woodwinds. After one final outburst from the full orchestra, the theme is taken up in its entirety by the low strings. As the music becomes increasingly brighter, it grows and builds adding layer upon layer until a climax is reached. The joy is once more suddenly swept aside as the violence of the opening passage bursts forth. But the entrance of the bass soloist settles the question for good with the plea, “O friends! Not these sounds! But let us strike up more pleasant sounds and more joyful!” The bass then leads the choir to their own idyllic climax. The joy theme becomes a march, leading the musicians inexorably forward into an exhortation from the tenor to overcome all obstacles, to which the full choir adds their own whole-hearted agreement. The orchestra then takes up the discourse, almost tentatively at first, but building and becoming more confident until the music suddenly bursts forth with the exultant hymn of joy sung by the full choir. The singers then urge brotherly love alternating between a quiet chorale and full-voiced rapture. A double fugue ensues using the main themes of the movement but suddenly stops to allow the soloists to take up the mantle once again. This brings us to a final statement of the joy theme, leading to a magnificent and breathtaking rush of blissful sound as the symphony reaches an earth-shaking climax.

Program notes by Michael Campion.