Mozart’s Jupiter Symphony Program Notes
Missy Mazzoli
Sinfonia (for Orbiting Spheres)
Missy Mazzoli was born on October 27, 1980 in Lansdale, PA. She lives in Brooklyn, NY. Sinfonia (for Orbiting Spheres) was first heard on April 8, 2014 performed by the Los Angeles Philharmonic under the direction of John Adams. The version for expanded orchestra heard tonight was first played by the Boulder (CO) Philharmonic on February 12, 2016. It is scored for 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, 2 trombones, tuba, percussion, piano, and strings. Bassoons, horns, trumpets and trombones also play kazoos at certain moments. It lasts about 9 minutes in performance.
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American composer Missy Mazzoli, born in the suburban Philadelphia town of Lansdale, PA in 1980, is a highly sought-after, bold voice in American music. Critics call her “ a once-in-a-generation magician of the orchestra” and “among the more consistently inventive and surprising composers now working.” Critics have to be cautious in print, but the composer does not have to look far to find encouraging quotes to post on her website and social media outlets. In a time when writers and performers are eager to find outstanding new voices, Mazzoli’s press is nonetheless especially enthusiastic and searching.
In recent years, Mazzoli has received major commissions from the Metropolitan Opera, the New York Philharmonic, LA Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, the JACK Quartet, the Kronos Quartet, and the Chicago Symphony, where she was recently Composer-in-Residence for three years. Her music is also heard frequently throughout Europe and Asia.
She performs regularly as a pianist with her own group, Victoire. She has received awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, ASCAP, the Fulbright Foundation, the America Music Center, the MacDowell Colony, and Yaddo, among many others.
Sinfonia (for Orbiting Spheres) was commissioned by the Los Angeles Philharmonic, which performed the premiere of the chamber orchestra version under the direction of eminent American composer John Adams on April 8, 2014. In 2016, while participating in a Music Alive Composer Residency with the Boulder Philharmonic, Missy Mazzoli expanded the work’s orchestra into what we hear at this concert. The Boulder Philharmonic premiered the full-orchestra version on February 12, 2016.
The composer writes, “Sinfonia (for Orbiting Spheres) is music in the shape of a solar system, a collection of rococo loops that twist around each other within a larger orbit. The word “sinfonia” refers to baroque works for chamber orchestra but also to the old Italian term for a hurdy-gurdy, a medieval stringed instrument with constant, wheezing drones that are cranked out under melodies played on an attached keyboard. It’s a piece that churns and roils, that inches close to the listener only to leap away at breakneck speed, in the process transforming the ensemble into a makeshift hurdy-gurdy, flung recklessly into space.”
What can you, the listener, do hearing a complicated new piece like this for the first time? You can enjoy the visual spectacle: why are some wind and brass players playing kazoos?; what instruments are the percussionists playing and which one sounds a bit like a lion roaring? (Can you see how that sound is made?) You can enjoy the aural spectacle: How does the composer make us all feel as if we’re suspended deep in space though she uses only sounds? Is that a boom box I’m hearing at one point?! You can also just be sure your phone is off, sit comfortably in your seat, and let the music wash over you, because it will! This music is gorgeous, highly imaginative and beautifully constructed. It will take you somewhere wonderful.
– Martin Webster
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Claude Debussy orch. André Caplet
Clair de lune
Claude Debussy was born on August 22, 1862 in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, France and died in Paris on March 25, 1918. André Caplet was born on November 23, 1878 in Le Havre, France and died in Neuilly-sur-Seine, France on April 22, 1925. Caplet’s orchestration of Debussy’s piano work is scored for 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, harp, and strings.
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André Caplet is now best known for his enduring friendship and collaboration with the great French composer Claude Debussy. Along with the spare and elegant orchestration of Claire de lune heard at these concerts, Caplet produced orchestral versions of several other Debussy piano works. He also helped revise several early pieces and complete some of Debussy’s final works. Much of their written correspondence survives as testament to their lively collaboration and as a record of the vitality of Parisian musical life at the turn of the Twentieth century.
Caplet himself led a life of adventure and accomplishment. Born in Le Havre, France (one source says “on a boat sailing between Le Havre and Honfleur”) in 1878, he showed early musical promise. Composition studies at the Paris Conservatory culminated in his winning the coveted prix de Rome in 1901, beating Maurice Ravel for the honor. Caplet moved to Rome to enjoy the fruits of his prize, working there but also traveling in Italy and Germany to broaden his education. In Germany, he cultivated his conducting talent, following several famous German conductors from city to city to observe as many of their performances as possible.
Before World War I, he was an important figure among the young musicians in Paris. His music was heard frequently, and he conducted premières of works by many other composers. His friendship and collaboration with Debussy blossomed. He also found time to be the lover of American modern dance pioneer Isadora Duncan. From 1910 to 1914, he traveled to Boston each year as conductor of the Boston Opera Company, introducing the latest music from France to the US.
At the start of the war, back home in France, he enlisted immediately and saw action in the trenches at Verdun. He was wounded and gassed, and eventually released from duty. While recuperating, he met a general’s daughter, Marie-Elise Perruchon, whom he eventually married. His wife, a musician as well, took an enduring interest in Caplet’s music, promoting and conducting it tirelessly after his death.
By 1919, despite never having recovered fully from his war injuries, Caplet returned to musical life in Paris, working closely with Debussy, composing on his own, and conducting many French premières. Notably, at his performance of Arnold Schoenberg’s Five Pieces for Orchestra, the police had to be summoned to control the anger of an audience unaccustomed to Schoenberg’s uncompromising musical language.
In 1923, he caught a cold that developed quickly into pleurisy, which proved fatal. He was 46 when he died. In his last years, Caplet complained of being so busy that he had no time for his own music. Indeed, the catalogue of his works is modest, though varied. The music shows a brilliant mind alert to the possibilities of instruments and voices. He was more esthete than sensualist. The transcription of Claire de lune avoids drawing attention to itself, letting Debussy’s little gem speak clearly and without sentimentality.
– Martin Webster
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Samuel Barber
Medea’s Meditation and Dance of Vengeance, Op. 23a
Samuel Barber was born in West Chester, Pennsylvania in 1910 and died in New York City in 1981. He composed the music for his ballet score, first called Serpent Heart, then Cave of the Heart, in 1945 and 1946 on a commission from Martha Graham; the ballet was first performed at Columbia University in 1946. In 1947 Barber extracted a seven movement suite from the score, with greatly expanded orchestration, under the title Medea. In 1955 he created a highly condensed one-movement version of the suite, with further expanded instrumentation, under the new title above. This version of the music was first performed in 1956 by the New York Philharmonic under the baton of Dmitri Mitropoulos. The score calls for 3 flutes, piccolo, 3 oboes, English horn, 4 clarinets, bass clarinet, E-flat clarinet, 3 bassoons, contrabassoon, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, harp, piano, and strings.
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In 1945 Martha Graham asked Samuel Barber to compose music for a ballet loosely based on the Greek mythical figure Medea, daughter of King Aeëtes and wife of Jason, leader of the Argonauts. The story of the ballet is horrific, even by the standards of Greek myth: Jason abandons Medea to take a young princess as his wife; in a fit of jealous rage, Medea murders her own children to spite him.
Barber and Graham were interested in going beyond mere story-telling in the ballet. Barber wrote, “These mythical figures served rather to project psychological states of jealousy and vengeance which are timeless. The choreography and music were conceived on two timelevels, the ancient-mythical and the contemporary. Medea and Jason first appear as godlike, superhuman figures of the Greek tragedy. As the tension and conflict between them increase, they step out of their legendary roles from time to time and become the modern man and woman, caught in the nets of jealousy and destructive love; and at the end reassume their mythic quality.”
Barber’s original ballet music was scored for a mere thirteen instruments. When he made a concert suite from the ballet he expanded the orchestration to better exploit its dramatic possibilities. He increased the orchestration once again when he created this final, highly condensed version of the music.
This form of Medea not only concentrates the music of the original ballet, it distills its psychological subtext to its essence. The opening music is slow, brooding, and oppressive. (It is also immensely colorful.) The music grows with inexorable intensity as jealousy becomes rage and, finally, a savage madness. A magnificent and harrowing work.
– Mark Rohr
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Wolfgang Amadè Mozart
Symphony No. 41 in C Major, K. 551, “Jupiter”
Wolfgang Amadè Mozart (he never used “Amadeus” except when making a joke) was born in Salzburg, Austria in 1756 and died in Vienna in 1791. He composed this symphony in 1788, but it is unknown whether or where it may have been performed in his lifetime. The symphony calls for flute, 2 oboes, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, timpani, and strings.
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Mozart composed his great final trilogy of symphonies in the summer of 1788 when his popularity and fortunes were at a low ebb. His commissions were few, and the public had grown indifferent to his subscription concerts. The Viennese had tired of Mozart’s music—they considered him a pianist who dabbled in composition, anyway—and were more interested in superstars like Salieri and Weigl.
Like its companions, the Symphony No. 41 was composed in the span of a few weeks. Because there are no records of any performances of the three symphonies, it has been assumed that Mozart never heard them played, and some have suggested that he wrote them merely to satisfy his creative urge. Neither is likely true. As H.C. Robbins-Landon has observed, Mozart almost never wrote “for the desk drawer.” It may be that they were intended for a subscription concert that later fell through, or for his long dreamed-of plan to travel to England. In any event, it is probable that they were performed under his direction during his travels to Leipzig, Dresden, Frankfurt and other places. What is undeniably true is that they show Mozart the symphonist at the height of his powers, breathing that rarefied air that few others would ever share.
Mozart’s opening theme in the first movement is characteristically two-sided, with a martial beginning and a sweet reply. The jaunty little tune that comes at the end of the exposition is a quotation from a comic aria Mozart had composed previously, with the words: “You are a bit dense, my dear Pompeo, go and learn the ways of the world.” This theme, almost an afterthought in the exposition, becomes the center of attention in the development.
The Andante and Minuet require no elaboration; their utter perfection speaks for itself.
The four-note motto of the Finale launches a profusion of themes that are amazing in their variety and, as will be heard in the development, in their utility. Though often referred to as the “movement with the fugue,” there is no strict fugue present. There is, however, a proliferation of counterpoint that is quite astonishing. The several themes are shortened, lengthened, turned upside-down, and combined in all manner of ways with awesome mastery and craftsmanship. The wonder of it all is how the infectious musical result is in no way compromised by such mechanical matters: Mozart lets his technique set the music free.
The title “Jupiter” was not Mozart’s. It probably came from music publisher J.B. Cramer, who may be forgiven, since this was the custom in those days. When words attempt to describe such perfection as this, they cannot help but collapse in comparison. “Jupiter” was the most impressive name Cramer could think of, yet at the distance of two centuries, it seems barely adequate.
– Mark Rohr
