The Symphonic Premiere

Bohemian composer Antonín Dvořák’s music reached American shores in the late 1870s and immediately found public favor. Infused with ethnic Bohemian gestures, Dvořák’s smaller character pieces caused the greatest sensation, but critics also welcomed his symphonies as some of the most promising recent examples of the genre. By the time he arrived on US shores to direct Jeannette Thurber’s National Conservatory in September 1892, Dvořák’s protean style had come to please and disappoint listeners in equal measure. An eager public awaited the sounds of his latest symphony, which premiered in December 1893 and would ultimately change the landscape of American classical music forever.

The 1880s and 1890s

New York grew dramatically in population and musical activity in the 1880s and 1890s. Bristow was still respected and admired but now as a venerable musician who was out-of-step with current developments (he was never a Wagnerian). His performing activity diminished; he resigned from the Philharmonic Society in 1882. He joined the New York Manuscript Society, suggesting continued support for American musicians. He resumed writing songs and character pieces for piano (including “Plantation Melodies,” perhaps in response to Antonin Dvořák). He revised Rip Van Winkle and wrote the overture Jibbenainosay (1886) as well as the Mass in C (1885) and his choral symphony, Niagara (1893).

Fra bondedans til karakterstykke for klaver. Musik i et proprietærlignende miljø i mellemkrigstiden

Although squires, proprietors and larger farmers played an important cultural andpolitical role in Denmark between 1870 and 1940, only very little is know about musicin their private homes in the countryside. The article is a perspective of musical lifeon the farm Torpelund in Northwest Zealand during the interwar period. It examinesa previously unresearched aspect of Danish music culture in the 20th century on thebasis of comprehensive source studies and a contemplation of forms of music and cultureswithin that spectrum, of which the researched subject matter forms a part. Thecore of this is an in-depth analysis of the publication Gamle Danse fra Nordvestsjælland(Old Dances from Northwest Zealand), 1–3 (1923–28). It was created and used at Torpelundin a cooperation between two siblings from the farm, namely folklore collectorand columnist Christian Olsen, who collected and published the melodies, and thepianist Christiane Rützou, who put them to piano. The publication is a key to understandingthe importance of music in the environment at Torpelund.The article characterises the cultural transformation, which these dance melodiesunderwent from string and brass accompanied peasant dances that were played by thefather of the two siblings in Northwest Zeland in the 19th century to becoming pianopieces in the living rooms of the larger farms during the interwar period. With themusical analysis, the author would like to develop analytical grips on this type of repertoireused, which respect the musical characteristics of these repertoires. The studydiscusses the special nature of Christiane Rützou’s piano arrangements and comparesthem with a couple of Louis Glass’ rural pieces, which the composer and his wife performedthemselves at Torpelund. Is this dance music, educational teaching material,popular music or romantic character pieces? The answer is that Christiane Rützou’s piano arrangements merge elements from popular dance music with romantic pianomusic of the 19th century in a special way.For Christian Olsen, the dance version was part of a conservative cultural struggle,which at one and the same time desired to oppose the introduction of modern Americandancing while creating progressive, cheerful music to be used by farmers andlarger landowners. He wanted to transform the old dance music of the peasants in orderto preserve the values of the farmer and proprietary culture.

FRANÇOIS COUPERIN,MORALISTE?

ABSTRACTAt the turn of the eighteenth century Jean de La Bruyère and many contemporary authors in diverse literary genres undertook intense studies of character that moved beyond popular portraiture to level moral critiques of the social dissimulation rampant in the era. The literary works from François Couperin's personal library and his musical character studies suggest that he too was intrigued with moral issues surrounding character. While musicologists have suggested connections between the character pieces of Couperin and the character studies of La Bruyère, existing comparisons between the two do not explore the moral dimensions of both literary and musical character studies. In this article, I argue that selected musical works from Couperin's four books ofpièces de clavecinparticipated vitally in the moral discourse of the era, taking up similar subject matter to widely read moralistes such as La Bruyère but employing music to articulate social criticism. By making use of the media of music and performance, Couperin's musical portraits extend the scope and power of literary moralism, enlisting musical performance to critique the social performance of false identities.

Fanny Hensel's Op. 6, No. 1 and the Art of Musical Reminiscence

At first glance, Fanny Hensel's Andante espressivo in A♭ major – the first of the Vier Lieder für das Pianoforte op. 6, published in June 1847 just weeks after her death – impresses as a concise example of a textless, nocturne-like song cut from the cloth of her short piano character pieces and occasionally, but just occasionally, reminiscent of her brother's more celebrated Lieder ohne Worte. The 61 bars of the Andante show the gifts of an accomplished songwriter as they unfold an uninterrupted, ‘singing’ soprano melody, at times euphonious and lyrical, at times poignant and passionate, above a gently rippling accompaniment of arpeggiated triplets. The basic structure of the composition is clear enough. We hear in succession: 1) the melody in the tonic and a modulation (10 bars) to 2) a statement on the dominant (13 bars); 3) a retransition and dominant pedal point (9 bars) leading to 4) the return of the opening in the tonic (16 bars), further supported by 5) a coda, drawn once again from the melody (13 bars). The compositional plan is thus one of statement, departure and return, a familiar sequence Hensel employed in the majority of her short piano pieces, and yet a deceptively simple strategy that afforded her considerable latitude, within the circumscribed, epigrammatic realm of the piano miniature, to explore a wide emotional range of colours, textures and musico-poetic ideas.

A Vocabulary of Ethnic Perception: Content Analysis of the American Stage Irishman, 1820–1860

“The Americans,” observed a European expatriate in 1837, “do not laugh at honest bluntness, or good-natured simplicity.… If Jonathan is to laugh, he must have a point given him, or, in other words, he must laugh to some purpose.” To Vienna-born Francis Grund, contemporary comic melodrama and its first cousin minstrelsy demonstrated beyond all doubt that his adoptive countrymen were decidedly “fond of laughing at the expense of their neighbors.” “English, French, Dutch, and German,” he noted, “are in turn made to suffer the stings of American wit.… The Irish, of late, has [sic] become very popular.” Grund's commentary reflected both the frequency with which ethnic characters of all sorts were portrayed upon the mid-nineteenth century American stage and, in particular, the emerging public taste for the stage Irishman. A tourists' guidebook to New York City published in 1850 pointed out that six of its seven principal theaters had been turned over to the “burlesque and broad fun” of melodrama and minstrelsy and to Irish character pieces especially. Twice during the 1830s, the British actor Tyrone Power conducted triumphal tours of the United States by relying upon a repertoire of Irish parts.

Sonata Structures in Early Britten

Until Britten returned from America in 1942 it would have seemed reasonable, despite the sensitivity he had revealed in setting texts as unexpected and heterogeneous as those of Auden, Rimbaud and Michelangelo, to assume that instrumental composition was to form the core of his work. He had first made his mark in the chamber media, though his Opus 1 perhaps also represented as close an approach to the orchestra as was judicious at a time when opportunities of performance did not easily come the way of an unknown young composer. Structurally these first two works, the Sinfonietta and the Phantasy for oboe quartet, demonstrated notably original modifications of the sonata thesis. The first of his own orchestral textures the composer heard were those of the symphonic cycle, Our Hunting Fathers, but the ‘symphonic’ qualities were those which should control, not determine the nature of, material conceived in response to potent verbal stimuli. The Frank Bridge Variations were individually brilliant character pieces and together a virtuoso display of thematic derivation, and Britten's command of such techniques was to prove no less apt in the Diversions for piano (left hand) and orchestra. But meanwhile the Piano Concerto had also drawn characters more effectively than consequences, and the Violin Concerto, though more creatively at odds with traditional sonata procedure in its first movement, had pointedly thrust the greatest expressive burden on to a final variation structure. Only with the Sinfonia da Requiem and the First Quartet did Britten fully recapture the convincing individuality of sonata practice he had shown in his first two scores.