Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun

by Claude Debussy (1862-1918)

Stéphane Mallarmé (1842-1898) was one of the great innovators in the history of French poetry. His works, which abound in complex symbols and images, sought to represent states of mind rather than ideas, express moods rather than tell stories. Mallarmé tried to capture that elusive line between dream and awakening that most of us who are not poets are well aware of but are unable to put into words.

Mallarmé’s poem L’Après-midi d’un Faune (“The Afternoon of a Faun”) was published in 1876. The first-person narrator in the poem is a faun, a mythological creature who is half man and half goat. The faun lives in the woods, near a river surrounded by reedy marshes; he is daydreaming about nymphs who may be real or mere figments of his imagination. The faun’s desire is filtered through the vagueness of its object as he recalls past dreams, which emerge from the shadows only to recede into the darkness again.

The faun plays a flute, which evokes the syrinx (the Greek panpipe); and it is quite natural that in Debussy’s music the orchestral flute is given a solo part throughout. The languid opening melody, which descends, mostly in half-steps, from C-sharp to G natural and rises back to C-sharp again (thus outlining the exotic interval of the tritone, or augmented fourth), has become famous as an example of a melodic style independent from any traditional models. As it unfolds, the orchestral accompaniment becomes more and more intense. After a short resting point, a new section starts in which the first clarinet and the first oboe temporarily take over the lead from the flute; the tempo becomes more and more animated and finally a new melody is introduced, in sharp contrast

with the chromatic flute theme that opened the piece. The new melody moves in wide intervals, and is played by all the woodwinds, plus the first horn, in unison. Finally, the first theme returns in its original tempo; following a passage that briefly brings back some of the agitation of the middle section, the music settles into a serene and peaceful idyll which prevails to the end.

The faun plays a flute, which evokes the syrinx (the Greek panpipe); and it is quite natural that in Debussy’s music

the orchestral flute is given a solo part throughout. The languid opening melody, which descends, mostly in half-steps, from C-sharp to G natural and rises back to C-sharp again (thus outlining the exotic interval of the tritone, or augmented fourth), has become famous as an example of a melodic style independent from any traditional models. As it unfolds, the orchestral accompaniment becomes more and more intense. After a short resting point, a new section starts in which the first clarinet and the first oboe temporarily take over the lead from the flute; the tempo becomes more and more animated and finally a new melody is introduced, in sharp contrast with the chromatic flute theme that opened the piece. The new melody moves in wide intervals, and is played by all the woodwinds, plus the first horn, in unison. Finally, the first theme returns in its original tempo; following a passage that briefly brings back some of the agitation of the middle section, the music settles into a serene and peaceful idyll which prevails to the end.

Violin Concerto in E minor, Op. 64

by Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847)

A cornerstone of the repertoire, the Mendelssohn violin concerto is one of the most beloved symphonic works ever written. It was written by a 35-year-old master who could look back on an international career of more than a decade and a half.

This Concerto was a gift of friendship to a musician particularly close to Mendelssohn's heart. Mendelssohn had known Ferdinand David (1810-1873) since boyhood, and shortly after he took over the directorship of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, he invited the violinist to be his concertmaster. (David was to hold this position for 37 years, serving long after Mendelssohn's death.) David shared with Mendelssohn many of the administrative duties at the orchestra. They also frequently performed chamber music together, with Mendelssohn at the piano. Mendelssohn's fondness for David can be seen in this passage from a letter written to the violinist: "I realize that there are not many musicians who pursue such a straight road in art undeviatingly as you do, or in whose active course I could feel the same intense delight that I do in yours."

One of Mendelssohn's most innovative touches comes at the very beginning of the concerto, where he dispensed with the usual orchestral exposition and introduced the solo instrument, with a soaring melody, immediately at the outset. The violin remains the center of attention throughout the entire work, with only a few tutti sections where the soloist doesn't play.

In another striking departure from the norms, the movements of the concerto are played without a pause. After the first movement, a single note held by a solo bassoon provides a link to the beautiful Andante, and a brief melodic passage serves as a bridge between the second and third movements. The various moods and sentiments—those of the passionate first, the lyrical second, and the graceful third movements—all flow directly from one another, instead of appearing as separate entities.

The written-out cadenza of the first movement (which may be, at least in part, by David), is also more strongly integrated into the movement than was the case in earlier concertos. Mendelssohn moved it from its traditional place at the end of the movement to the middle, making it grow organically out of the development section and resolve just as naturally in the recapitulation. Nor does the cadenza end when the orchestra re-enters; it continues while the flute, the oboe, and the first violins play the main theme—another example of the kind of seamless transition between sections that was so important to Mendelssohn. The charge, often repeated in the past, that Mendelssohn was a conservative whose music contains no significant innovations, rests on a serious misconception.

In another striking departure from the norms, the movements of the concerto are played without a pause. After the first movement, a single note held by a solo

bassoon provides a link to the beautiful Andante, and a brief melodic passage serves as a bridge between the second and third movements. The various moods and sentiments—those of the passionate first, the lyrical second, and the graceful third movements—all flow directly from one another, instead of appearing as separate entities. The written-out cadenza of the first movement (which may be, at least in part, by David), is also more strongly integrated into the movement than was the case in earlier concertos. Mendelssohn moved it from its traditional place at the end of the movement to the middle, making it grow organically out of the development section and resolve just as naturally in the recapitulation. Nor does the cadenza end when the orchestra re-enters; it continues while the flute, the oboe, and the first violins play the main theme—another example of the kind of seamless transition between sections that was so important to Mendelssohn. The charge, often repeated in the past, that Mendelssohn was a conservative whose music contains no significant innovations, rests on a serious misconception.

Symphony No. 6 in F major, "Pastoral"

by Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)

Many musicians and writers on music in the eighteenth century were preoccupied with music’s expressive and representative powers. Time and again, composers attempted to demonstrate that music was able, even without the help of words, to depict specific feelings and emotions and even to narrate a sequence of events. One Justin Heinrich Knecht advertised his 1784 symphony, Musical Portrait of Nature, in a music journal on the very same page on which the notice for the 14-year-old Beethoven’s first published works (three piano sonatas) appeared. Knecht’s program, with its shepherds, streams, birds, thunderstorms, and clearing of the sky, is so similar to what Beethoven would have in his “Pastoral” that it is almost certain Beethoven knew Knecht’s work.

Beethoven not only loved nature but, as many of his friends attested, worshipped it. Haydn and Mozart were not known for roaming the Austrian countryside; Beethoven, for his part, spent long and happy hours in the woods. He often retreated from Vienna to outlying areas where he admired Nature with a capital N as a true spiritual child of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the German Sturm und Drang (“storm and stress”) movement.

The idea of nature in the symphony acquires a special resonance when one thinks of the “Heiligenstadt Testament,” the tragic document in which Beethoven first wrote about his encroaching deafness in 1802, six years before the “Pastorale.” “What a humiliation for me when someone standing next to me heard a flute in the distance and I heard nothing, or someone heard a shepherd singing and again I heard nothing.” The love for the sounds of nature becomes inseparable from the pain of not being able to hear them.

The Sixth Symphony, composed almost simultaneously with the Fifth, then, has more in common with that work than one might think. One similarity between the two works is the linkage of the last movements. Just as the Fifth Symphony’s gloomy C-minor Allegro is connected to the finale without a pause, the last three movements of the “Pastoral,” the country dance, the storm, and the thanksgiving song, form an uninterrupted sequence, and in both cases, an earlier conflict seamlessly segues into a positive resolution.

Yet for all the programmatic motives, the symphony, as Beethoven himself pointed out, is ‟more an expression of feeling than painting.” He may have been responsive to extra-musical inspirations, yet he was, first and foremost, a musician. And he was never a more “absolute” musician than he was in his programmatic Sixth Symphony.