Fortepianist Kristian Bezuidenhout discusses the fortepiano, its evolution, and how the sound of the instrument influenced the music written for it.

Kristian Bezuidenhout on the Fortepiano

Brahms came late to the symphony, finishing his first at the age of 42 after 14 years of rumination. He knew that composing a symphony meant contending with the legacy of Beethoven. Brahms’s First Symphony was dubbed “Beethoven’s Tenth,” owing to the obvious echo of the vocal “Ode to Joy” from the Ninth in the purely instrumental chorale theme of Brahms’s finale. And his Third Symphony was likened to Beethoven’s Third, the “Eroica.”“What a work! What a poem!” Brahms’s confidante Clara Schumann, widow of the composer Robert, exclaimed of the Third Symphony. “Everything springs to life, everything breathes good cheer; it is really exquisite!” The leading music critic of the day, Eduard Hanslick, concurred: “Many music lovers may prefer the titanic force of the First, others the untroubled charm of the Second. But the Third strikes me as artistically the most perfect.” He admired its compactness—the Third is indeed the briefest of Brahms’s four symphonies—and its “plastic” themes, which are fluidly and flexibly developed. The opening theme of the first movement, introduced by three ascending notes in the brass and winds that form a hallmark, returns at the conclusion of the finale. In contrast to the surging, dramatic first theme in the strings, the second theme appears in the winds, with a drone accompaniment, and exudes a simple charm. The subject of the slow movement is likewise in a pastoral vein, its hymn-like texture evoking Brahms’s many works for chorus. A friendly exchange between winds and strings leads to a quick climax. A contrasting theme for clarinet and bassoon, as mysterious as the first is guileless, appears as a solemn, melancholy chant. Throughout, passages of choral singing alternate with a much lonelier line. The third movement, in simple ternary form (ABA), juxtaposes the major and minor modes. The finale begins and ends quietly but briskly: The first theme is unharmonized, played in unison as a single line, and the movement seems to take definite shape only with the strike of the kettledrum and sharp outbursts in the strings. The arching second theme in the major mode is heard initially in the low strings. Much later the movement refers back to the Andante, but the real epiphany arrives with the return of the opening hallmark in the oboes and horns. The main theme of the first movement then reappears to round off the entire work in an unexpectedly gentle guise.

Brahms came late to the symphony, finishing his first at the age of 42 after 14 years of rumination. He knew that composing a symphony meant contending with the legacy of Beethoven. Brahms’s First Symphony was dubbed “Beethoven’s Tenth,” owing to the obvious echo of the vocal “Ode to Joy” from the Ninth in the purely instrumental chorale theme of Brahms’s finale. And his Third Symphony was likened to Beethoven’s Third, the “Eroica.” “What a work! What a poem!” Brahms’s confidante Clara Schumann, widow of the composer Robert, exclaimed of the Third Symphony. “Everything springs to life, everything breathes good cheer; it is really exquisite!” The leading music critic of the day, Eduard Hanslick, concurred: “Many music lovers may prefer the titanic force of the First, others the untroubled charm of the Second. But the Third strikes me as artistically the most perfect.” He admired its compactness—the Third is indeed the briefest of Brahms’s four symphonies—and its “plastic” themes, which are fluidly and flexibly developed. The opening theme of the first movement, introduced by three ascending notes in the brass and winds that form a hallmark, returns at the conclusion of the finale. In contrast to the surging, dramatic first theme in the strings, the second theme appears in the winds, with a drone accompaniment, and exudes a simple charm. The subject of the slow movement is likewise in a pastoral vein, its hymn-like texture evoking Brahms’s many works for chorus. A friendly exchange between winds and strings leads to a quick climax. A contrasting theme for clarinet and bassoon, as mysterious as the first is guileless, appears as a solemn, melancholy chant. Throughout, passages of choral singing alternate with a much lonelier line. The third movement, in simple ternary form (ABA), juxtaposes the major and minor modes. The finale begins and ends quietly but briskly: The first theme is unharmonized, played in unison as a single line, and the movement seems to take definite shape only with the strike of the kettledrum and sharp outbursts in the strings. The arching second theme in the major mode is heard initially in the low strings. Much later the movement refers back to the Andante, but the real epiphany arrives with the return of the opening hallmark in the oboes and horns. The main theme of the first movement then reappears to round off the entire work in an unexpectedly gentle guise.

Brahms Symphony No. 3 

For fans of lurid operatic drama, Wozzeck (1914–1922) is one of the greatest stage works of the 20th century. Students of music cannot help but encounter it, since it is one of the most cleverly structured works in the canon. It compiles the musical styles of the present and the past, from simple choral writing to grotesque speech singing, chromatic jabbering, classical forms, and fragments of ragtime.The plot of this mélange seems to take place in a nightmare. The main character at one point tells us that the Earth is like a skull; it is an important clue that tells us that the drama unfolds inside the mind of someone who is trapped in a world run amok. Based on a play by Georg Büchner that was in turn based on a true tale, Wozzeck concerns a despised, destitute ex-soldier, a barber and wigmaker by trade who stabs to death his unfaithful mistress. At his trial, the defense pleads madness and an expert is appointed to investigate his psychotic break. He is declared sane, however, and executed. Those are the events of the play, which Berg at once condensed and embellished, depicting the medical experiments to which Wozzeck is subject in black comic details, and changing the ending from an execution to a suicide. After the abused anti-hero murders his mistress (an event precipitated by a beating he receives from his mistress’s new lover), Wozzeck drowns himself beneath a blood-red moon. The orchestral interlude that follows is apocalyptic. Act I, which is the exposition of the drama, comprises five character pieces, a suite, a rhapsody, a march and lullaby, a passacaglia, and a rondo. We know these and other details of the score not from music theorists, but because Berg helpfully wrote an essay describing the structure of the opera and the challenges he faced in sustaining a drama with non-tonal music. Each section is associated with specific characters in the opera, offering a sense of their relationship to Wozzeck while also revealing something of their mental state. The repeated bass line that characterizes a passacaglia, for example, is perfect for representing obsessive compulsion. Act 2 mimics the structure of a five-movement symphony, and here Wozzeck’s plight is exposed in all of its horribleness. Act 3 offers five “inventions” based on a single musical device: a theme, a single pitch, a rhythm, a chord, a key, and a pitch length. Perhaps the final scene is most gruesome of all. Wozzeck’s son is on a rocking horse, mechanically shifting his weight back and forth as he absorbs the news that both his father and mother are dead. The music at the start of the scene derives, obscenely, from “Ring Around the Rosie.” It grinds to a halt on a rocking tritone, modernism’s favorite dissonant interval, but also an emblem of the demonic. Berg wrote of Wozzeck the man: “There is a bit of me in this character, since I have been spending these war years just as dependent on people I hate, have been in chains, sick, captive, resigned, in fact humiliated.” The strict structures of his music seek out a solution to the challenge of organizing post-tonal music, but they also issue a call for order in a war-torn world seemingly gone mad.

For fans of lurid operatic drama, Wozzeck (1914–1922) is one of the greatest stage works of the 20th century. Students of music cannot help but encounter it, since it is one of the most cleverly structured works in the canon. It compiles the musical styles of the present and the past, from simple choral writing to grotesque speech singing, chromatic jabbering, classical forms, and fragments of ragtime. The plot of this mélange seems to take place in a nightmare. The main character at one point tells us that the Earth is like a skull; it is an important clue that tells us that the drama unfolds inside the mind of someone who is trapped in a world run amok. Based on a play by Georg Büchner that was in turn based on a true tale, Wozzeck concerns a despised, destitute ex-soldier, a barber and wigmaker by trade who stabs to death his unfaithful mistress. At his trial, the defense pleads madness and an expert is appointed to investigate his psychotic break. He is declared sane, however, and executed. Those are the events of the play, which Berg at once condensed and embellished, depicting the medical experiments to which Wozzeck is subject in black comic details, and changing the ending from an execution to a suicide. After the abused anti-hero murders his mistress (an event precipitated by a beating he receives from his mistress’s new lover), Wozzeck drowns himself beneath a blood-red moon. The orchestral interlude that follows is apocalyptic. Act I, which is the exposition of the drama, comprises five character pieces, a suite, a rhapsody, a march and lullaby, a passacaglia, and a rondo. We know these and other details of the score not from music theorists, but because Berg helpfully wrote an essay describing the structure of the opera and the challenges he faced in sustaining a drama with non-tonal music. Each section is associated with specific characters in the opera, offering a sense of their relationship to Wozzeck while also revealing something of their mental state. The repeated bass line that characterizes a passacaglia, for example, is perfect for representing obsessive compulsion. Act 2 mimics the structure of a five-movement symphony, and here Wozzeck’s plight is exposed in all of its horribleness. Act 3 offers five “inventions” based on a single musical device: a theme, a single pitch, a rhythm, a chord, a key, and a pitch length. Perhaps the final scene is most gruesome of all. Wozzeck’s son is on a rocking horse, mechanically shifting his weight back and forth as he absorbs the news that both his father and mother are dead. The music at the start of the scene derives, obscenely, from “Ring Around the Rosie.” It grinds to a halt on a rocking tritone, modernism’s favorite dissonant interval, but also an emblem of the demonic. Berg wrote of Wozzeck the man: “There is a bit of me in this character, since I have been spending these war years just as dependent on people I hate, have been in chains, sick, captive, resigned, in fact humiliated.” The strict structures of his music seek out a solution to the challenge of organizing post-tonal music, but they also issue a call for order in a war-torn world seemingly gone mad.

Berg Wozzeck 

In 1921, Schoenberg confided to a student that he had made a discovery that would “insure the supremacy of German music for the next hundred years.” He believed it was his historical mission to develop a new system for ordering and structuring music, and so spent the years between 1916 and 1923 in its pursuit. The discovery was the 12-tone system, also known as dodecaphony or serialism. Basically, it does away with tonality, the governing force behind Western composition since well before Haydn and Mozart. Instead of having a hierarchical system in which melody and harmony can be measured as closer to or farther away from a single point of reference, Schoenberg equalized all twelve tones in the Western chromatic scale, ordered them, and then began manipulating them in very calculated, almost mathematical ways. The result is a music that reveals its logic only through analysis, not by listening.Berg’s first extended 12-tone work is the programmatic Lyric Suite (1926), which documents his illicit love affair with the married Hannah Fuchs. He gave her a miniature score that was discovered in the late 1970s, and in this score was Berg’s own analysis—the key to the coded love-letter. The score is marked on nearly every page, in different colored inks, making all of the programmatic associations and references clear. For example, Berg writes the letters F and H above the main theme (which is not a melody but a collection of 12 pitches, in keeping with Schoenberg’s system). The first movement has 69 measures, and Berg circled the number, writing in 3 x 23, 23 being a number that was especially significant to Berg—his fateful number. Only the first and sixth movements are strictly 12-tone, and it is a special feature of Berg’s style that he is able to integrate serial and non-serial music. The integration is possible partly because Berg takes a more flexible approach to the system than did Schoenberg or Webern. He was also able to translate very technical compositional designs into an entirely audible musical drama. Three fast movements alternate with three slow ones, and they pull in opposite directions: the fast movements get progressively faster while the slower ones slow down. This pulling apart is easily related to the inner turmoil of someone caught in an impossible passion. The second movement is a portrait of Hannah’s domestic life with her two children, while the final movement is a setting of a Baudelaire poem, with the lyrics suppressed. “I beg Your mercy,” it begins, “You, the One I Love!”

In 1921, Schoenberg confided to a student that he had made a discovery that would “insure the supremacy of German music for the next hundred years.” He believed it was his historical mission to develop a new system for ordering and structuring music, and so spent the years between 1916 and 1923 in its pursuit. The discovery was the 12-tone system, also known as dodecaphony or serialism. Basically, it does away with tonality, the governing force behind Western composition since well before Haydn and Mozart. Instead of having a hierarchical system in which melody and harmony can be measured as closer to or farther away from a single point of reference, Schoenberg equalized all twelve tones in the Western chromatic scale, ordered them, and then began manipulating them in very calculated, almost mathematical ways. The result is a music that reveals its logic only through analysis, not by listening. Berg’s first extended 12-tone work is the programmatic Lyric Suite (1926), which documents his illicit love affair with the married Hannah Fuchs. He gave her a miniature score that was discovered in the late 1970s, and in this score was Berg’s own analysis—the key to the coded love-letter. The score is marked on nearly every page, in different colored inks, making all of the programmatic associations and references clear. For example, Berg writes the letters F and H above the main theme (which is not a melody but a collection of 12 pitches, in keeping with Schoenberg’s system). The first movement has 69 measures, and Berg circled the number, writing in 3 x 23, 23 being a number that was especially significant to Berg—his fateful number. Only the first and sixth movements are strictly 12-tone, and it is a special feature of Berg’s style that he is able to integrate serial and non-serial music. The integration is possible partly because Berg takes a more flexible approach to the system than did Schoenberg or Webern. He was also able to translate very technical compositional designs into an entirely audible musical drama. Three fast movements alternate with three slow ones, and they pull in opposite directions: the fast movements get progressively faster while the slower ones slow down. This pulling apart is easily related to the inner turmoil of someone caught in an impossible passion. The second movement is a portrait of Hannah’s domestic life with her two children, while the final movement is a setting of a Baudelaire poem, with the lyrics suppressed. “I beg Your mercy,” it begins, “You, the One I Love!”

Berg Lyric Suite 

Strauss Salome

The beginning of the modernist movement was marked by the publication of such perverse, sensual novels as Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, as well as numerous compositions by German and Russian composers that strove for shock effects and defied the norms of conventional composition. Rule-breaking of this sort was termed “decadent” by critics of the period. The most decadent of all was the Munich-based Richard Strauss, who experimented with numerous styles during his long career. His early works are saturated with irrational harmonic combinations and force the orchestra to produce bizarre sounds.The opera Salome, completed in 1905, merits a parental-guidance sticker. Based on an 1893 play by Wilde, it modernizes the biblical tale of King Herod and John the Baptist. Herod has John imprisoned, inciting the wrath of the people, who consider him a prophet. The king’s stepdaughter, the beautiful Salome, performs a sensual dance in seven parts for the lascivious Herod on his birthday. As her reward, she requests that John’s head be brought to her on a platter, and she makes simulated love to it. The king is justifiably horrified by her necrophilia and orders that she be put to death. Symbolically, the tale narrates a clash between an empowered, “modern” woman and the male order she explicitly threatens. The appalling subject matter is matched by the dissonance in Strauss’s score, which was briefly banned from performance. Gustav Mahler sought to conduct the premiere in 1905 in Vienna, but he was refused on account of the opera’s sadomasochism. The premiere instead took place in 1905 in the much more liberal city of Dresden. Strauss’s decadent self-indulgences include a huge orchestra used for the representation of emotional extremes, passages in which two different keys are juxtaposed, and dissonances that find no explanation in the rule-books. Within the first minute, the opening key of the opera, C-sharp minor, is abandoned for C-sharp major and a series of baffling sounds that represent both Salome’s loveliness and her twisted sexuality. (She is likened to the pale moon as well as a ghost rising from a tomb.) A slithering motif heard at the very beginning becomes associated with her, but cannot be pinned down; rather, it shape-shifts—fickle and capricious, like the woman the music represents. In general, Salome is assigned the most decadent sounds in the opera, whereas the music associated with John the Baptist is almost wholesome by comparison: generally consonant, with regular repetitions. The very end of the opera has been called a “dissonant apotheosis,” involving a “sickening” clash of two chords separated by a semitone and a strange choking sound produced by plucked string basses. The show-stopper is Salome’s climactic dance of the seven veils, a kind of strip show that captures her hypnotic, dangerous allure.

The beginning of the modernist movement was marked by the publication of such perverse, sensual novels as Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, as well as numerous compositions by German and Russian composers that strove for shock effects and defied the norms of conventional composition. Rule-breaking of this sort was termed “decadent” by critics of the period. The most decadent of all was the Munich-based Richard Strauss, who experimented with numerous styles during his long career. His early works are saturated with irrational harmonic combinations and force the orchestra to produce bizarre sounds. The opera Salome, completed in 1905, merits a parental-guidance sticker. Based on an 1893 play by Wilde, it modernizes the biblical tale of King Herod and John the Baptist. Herod has John imprisoned, inciting the wrath of the people, who consider him a prophet. The king’s stepdaughter, the beautiful Salome, performs a sensual dance in seven parts for the lascivious Herod on his birthday. As her reward, she requests that John’s head be brought to her on a platter, and she makes simulated love to it. The king is justifiably horrified by her necrophilia and orders that she be put to death. Symbolically, the tale narrates a clash between an empowered, “modern” woman and the male order she explicitly threatens. The appalling subject matter is matched by the dissonance in Strauss’s score, which was briefly banned from performance. Gustav Mahler sought to conduct the premiere in 1905 in Vienna, but he was refused on account of the opera’s sadomasochism. The premiere instead took place in 1905 in the much more liberal city of Dresden. Strauss’s decadent self-indulgences include a huge orchestra used for the representation of emotional extremes, passages in which two different keys are juxtaposed, and dissonances that find no explanation in the rule-books. Within the first minute, the opening key of the opera, C-sharp minor, is abandoned for C-sharp major and a series of baffling sounds that represent both Salome’s loveliness and her twisted sexuality. (She is likened to the pale moon as well as a ghost rising from a tomb.) A slithering motif heard at the very beginning becomes associated with her, but cannot be pinned down; rather, it shape-shifts—fickle and capricious, like the woman the music represents. In general, Salome is assigned the most decadent sounds in the opera, whereas the music associated with John the Baptist is almost wholesome by comparison: generally consonant, with regular repetitions. The very end of the opera has been called a “dissonant apotheosis,” involving a “sickening” clash of two chords separated by a semitone and a strange choking sound produced by plucked string basses. The show-stopper is Salome’s climactic dance of the seven veils, a kind of strip show that captures her hypnotic, dangerous allure.

Schoenberg composed Verklärte Nacht (Transfigured Night) in three weeks in September 1899. He originally wrote it for string sextet; in 1917, however, he reconceived it for string orchestra, softening the broodiness of the original. The music is a response of sorts to a poem by Richard Dehmel from a collection called Weib und Welt (The Woman and the World). It was first published in 1896, but republished as part of Dehmel’s 1903 verse novel Zwei Menschen (Two People). The poem was modern for the time in which it was written, especially in regard to its realistic, rather lurid subject matter, in which a woman reveals to her lover that she is pregnant with another man’s child. The five stanzas are of uneven length, the silence between the third and fourth stanzas marking the moment in which the woman’s lover decides whether or not to forgive her (he does).Schoenberg admired Dehmel but communicated with him only once, remarking uncharitably that Transfigured Night merely reflected what the poem had stirred up in him. Later in his career, when his opinion of the poet had cooled, he claimed, unconvincingly, that the music of Transfigured Night “can make you forget the poem, which people today might find repulsive.” In order to distance his work from its source, Schoenberg, in his liner notes for a 1932 recording of Transfigured Night, offered not a translation of the Dehmel poem, which now embarrassed him, but a description of the musical ideas it contained. He listed nine instances of what he called the “unconscious” relationships between the themes and one instance of “conscious” invention: the chorale-like passage in D major that marks the moment the heroine is forgiven her crime of passion. In the opinion of Schoenberg’s devoted student Anton Webern, the first theme, which represents the couple walking in the moonlight, was “suggestive of deep sorrow.” The beginning of the second section offers “the passionate plaint of the woman, full of remorse. There follows an episode evocative of the “longing for maternal happiness” and a return of the opening moonlight music. The fourth section “begins with the comforting reply of the man.” The piece ends as “the first tragic motif now relieved of its melancholy, sounds as if removed from the earthly plane.”In schematic terms, the form of Transfigured Night can be likened to a rondo, with the narrative material of the opening section (A) recurring in ethereal variation halfway through at the end. The music of the B section is associated with the woman’s speech; that of the C section with the man’s response. The actual unfolding of the music is more complex than this simple description suggests, of course. Rather than describing what the characters in the poem themselves experience, Schoenberg sought to convey his own intense and troubled personal reaction to their plight. Subjective experience translated directly into compositional practice, without regard for the rules of harmony and tonality. The technique became known as Expressionism, an aesthetic related to the emerging theories of Sigmund Freud and concerned with the inner life of the mind.

Schoenberg composed Verklärte Nacht (Transfigured Night) in three weeks in September 1899. He originally wrote it for string sextet; in 1917, however, he reconceived it for string orchestra, softening the broodiness of the original. The music is a response of sorts to a poem by Richard Dehmel from a collection called Weib und Welt (The Woman and the World). It was first published in 1896, but republished as part of Dehmel’s 1903 verse novel Zwei Menschen (Two People). The poem was modern for the time in which it was written, especially in regard to its realistic, rather lurid subject matter, in which a woman reveals to her lover that she is pregnant with another man’s child. The five stanzas are of uneven length, the silence between the third and fourth stanzas marking the moment in which the woman’s lover decides whether or not to forgive her (he does). Schoenberg admired Dehmel but communicated with him only once, remarking uncharitably that Transfigured Night merely reflected what the poem had stirred up in him. Later in his career, when his opinion of the poet had cooled, he claimed, unconvincingly, that the music of Transfigured Night “can make you forget the poem, which people today might find repulsive.” In order to distance his work from its source, Schoenberg, in his liner notes for a 1932 recording of Transfigured Night, offered not a translation of the Dehmel poem, which now embarrassed him, but a description of the musical ideas it contained. He listed nine instances of what he called the “unconscious” relationships between the themes and one instance of “conscious” invention: the chorale-like passage in D major that marks the moment the heroine is forgiven her crime of passion. In the opinion of Schoenberg’s devoted student Anton Webern, the first theme, which represents the couple walking in the moonlight, was “suggestive of deep sorrow.” The beginning of the second section offers “the passionate plaint of the woman, full of remorse. There follows an episode evocative of the “longing for maternal happiness” and a return of the opening moonlight music. The fourth section “begins with the comforting reply of the man.” The piece ends as “the first tragic motif now relieved of its melancholy, sounds as if removed from the earthly plane.” In schematic terms, the form of Transfigured Night can be likened to a rondo, with the narrative material of the opening section (A) recurring in ethereal variation halfway through at the end. The music of the B section is associated with the woman’s speech; that of the C section with the man’s response. The actual unfolding of the music is more complex than this simple description suggests, of course. Rather than describing what the characters in the poem themselves experience, Schoenberg sought to convey his own intense and troubled personal reaction to their plight. Subjective experience translated directly into compositional practice, without regard for the rules of harmony and tonality. The technique became known as Expressionism, an aesthetic related to the emerging theories of Sigmund Freud and concerned with the inner life of the mind.

Schoenberg Verklarte Nacht

Mahler completed his Fourth Symphony in April 1901 and conducted the premiere himself that November in Munich. Its inspiration lies in a single song, “Das himmlische Leben” (“Heavenly Life”), found in a collection of traditional German poems published as Des Knaben Wunderhorn (The Youth’s Magic Horn). He almost used “Heavenly Life” in his Third Symphony, but kept it instead as the finale of the Fourth.Beethoven and Haydn are models here: Mahler’s symphony, like Beethoven’s Ninth, seems to move from darkness to light, and from purely instrumental music to vocal; Haydn’s humor is evident in the scherzo, which features a purposefully mistuned solo violin, intended to sound rustic and earthy. These obvious references only measure the distance between past and present.Nineteenth-century Romantic composers believed in transcendence, in the idea that humankind can find salvation, especially through art. But Mahler, a composer writing at the end of an era and of a century, questioned it. The Fourth reveals this skepticism, especially in the finale, as a portrait of innocence and experience. A shocking climax in the midst of the otherwise placid Adagio is transformed into a soothing song. The sonic markers of childhood in the music—a soprano voice that resembles a boy’s; the arpeggiated harp chords suggesting naïveté and godliness; the rocking, lullaby phrasing—convey a sense of melancholy. As a depiction of heavenly life, it is a little disquieting. Old saints lead lambs to slaughter for extravagant, materialistic feasts; the bar is open at all hours; virgins dance grotesquely. Humanity does not reach a higher level, but regresses into primitive behavior. The music pushes time and history away with phrases that repeat over and over again with hardly any development. It all seems to despair at the lack of metaphysical meaning. The Romantic notion of art as a transcendent force has collapsed. Despite being a composer who sought to express a whole world of sounds in his works, this symphony avoids all monumentality. The music dies away with the promise that everyone will wake to joy in heaven, but the music seems to fall asleep forever. This evocation of heaven is sadly pessimistic. Joy remains unattainable, and there is no transcendence—only the yearning for it.

Mahler completed his Fourth Symphony in April 1901 and conducted the premiere himself that November in Munich. Its inspiration lies in a single song, “Das himmlische Leben” (“Heavenly Life”), found in a collection of traditional German poems published as Des Knaben Wunderhorn (The Youth’s Magic Horn). He almost used “Heavenly Life” in his Third Symphony, but kept it instead as the finale of the Fourth. Beethoven and Haydn are models here: Mahler’s symphony, like Beethoven’s Ninth, seems to move from darkness to light, and from purely instrumental music to vocal; Haydn’s humor is evident in the scherzo, which features a purposefully mistuned solo violin, intended to sound rustic and earthy. These obvious references only measure the distance between past and present. Nineteenth-century Romantic composers believed in transcendence, in the idea that humankind can find salvation, especially through art. But Mahler, a composer writing at the end of an era and of a century, questioned it. The Fourth reveals this skepticism, especially in the finale, as a portrait of innocence and experience. A shocking climax in the midst of the otherwise placid Adagio is transformed into a soothing song. The sonic markers of childhood in the music—a soprano voice that resembles a boy’s; the arpeggiated harp chords suggesting naïveté and godliness; the rocking, lullaby phrasing—convey a sense of melancholy. As a depiction of heavenly life, it is a little disquieting. Old saints lead lambs to slaughter for extravagant, materialistic feasts; the bar is open at all hours; virgins dance grotesquely. Humanity does not reach a higher level, but regresses into primitive behavior. The music pushes time and history away with phrases that repeat over and over again with hardly any development. It all seems to despair at the lack of metaphysical meaning. The Romantic notion of art as a transcendent force has collapsed. Despite being a composer who sought to express a whole world of sounds in his works, this symphony avoids all monumentality. The music dies away with the promise that everyone will wake to joy in heaven, but the music seems to fall asleep forever. This evocation of heaven is sadly pessimistic. Joy remains unattainable, and there is no transcendence—only the yearning for it.

Mahler Symphony No. 4 

Hans Pfitzner’s oft-repeated assertion that Bruckner composed the same symphony nine times is as inaccurate as it is mean-spirited. So too is the claim, made by the conservative aesthetician Edward Hanslick, that Bruckner derived his sound world almost entirely from Wagner. Fair or not, the attacks stung, and left Bruckner prone to second-guessing his music throughout much of his career. He obsessively reworked his major scores, leaving behind multiple versions of most compositions. Music historians and theorists continue to scour the drafts for insight into his technique as well as his idiosyncratic psychology. The Sixth Symphony of 1879–1883 is an exception: It survives in a single edition.It is cast in a traditional symphonic mold, with the exception of the second movement, considered the most beautiful in Bruckner’s output. Instead of a conventional two-part form, the second movement falls in a lyrical three-part design that explores the relationship between various keys. The melodic writing is stunning, and conductors frequently linger over the details, often extending the movement beyond the 15 minutes that Bruckner specifies. The first movement, intended to express divine power (hence the expressive marking “magisterial”), begins with a “Bruckner rhythm,” an agitated, mysterious repeated figure in the strings; a brass fanfare escorts the listener into the first and second themes. It is not a smooth unfolding, however. Thicker textures collapse, after a pause, into intimate passages for strings and woodwinds. The return to order that is characteristic of the recapitulation is also, paradoxically, the moment of greatest strife. The third movement follows a traditional minuet-and-trio format, but the first and last sections are storm-tossed. In the middle is an Austrian folk-dance tune complete with cheerful hunting horns. The final movement recalls the melodic material of the first, and expands the key relationships of the second. Performers and scholars have reassessed Bruckner in recent years, considering the battering he received from the music critics of his time in its cultural and political context. Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms are now considered as important an influence as Wagner, and the apparent bombast of his scores has been tempered by increased awareness of their spiritual inspiration. Bruckner narrates a search for answers in his symphonies, but the protagonist discovers, over and over again, that the path to understanding is blocked, jammed. In the Sixth Symphony, this phenomenon is manifest in delayed affirmations of the home key after agonized extensions of dissonant complex harmonies. The moment of apotheosis, or revelation, tends to be preceded by passages of harsh unrest, with Bruckner pushing the orchestra on occasion through the entire tonal gamut. Ultimately, the truth of the symphony resides in the exquisite passages of Renaissance-style counterpoint, which reflects Bruckner’s studies, as a devout Catholic, of the musical manuscripts preserved at the Monastery of Saint Florian in Linz, Austria.

Hans Pfitzner’s oft-repeated assertion that Bruckner composed the same symphony nine times is as inaccurate as it is mean-spirited. So too is the claim, made by the conservative aesthetician Edward Hanslick, that Bruckner derived his sound world almost entirely from Wagner. Fair or not, the attacks stung, and left Bruckner prone to second-guessing his music throughout much of his career. He obsessively reworked his major scores, leaving behind multiple versions of most compositions. Music historians and theorists continue to scour the drafts for insight into his technique as well as his idiosyncratic psychology. The Sixth Symphony of 1879–1883 is an exception: It survives in a single edition. It is cast in a traditional symphonic mold, with the exception of the second movement, considered the most beautiful in Bruckner’s output. Instead of a conventional two-part form, the second movement falls in a lyrical three-part design that explores the relationship between various keys. The melodic writing is stunning, and conductors frequently linger over the details, often extending the movement beyond the 15 minutes that Bruckner specifies. The first movement, intended to express divine power (hence the expressive marking “magisterial”), begins with a “Bruckner rhythm,” an agitated, mysterious repeated figure in the strings; a brass fanfare escorts the listener into the first and second themes. It is not a smooth unfolding, however. Thicker textures collapse, after a pause, into intimate passages for strings and woodwinds. The return to order that is characteristic of the recapitulation is also, paradoxically, the moment of greatest strife. The third movement follows a traditional minuet-and-trio format, but the first and last sections are storm-tossed. In the middle is an Austrian folk-dance tune complete with cheerful hunting horns. The final movement recalls the melodic material of the first, and expands the key relationships of the second. Performers and scholars have reassessed Bruckner in recent years, considering the battering he received from the music critics of his time in its cultural and political context. Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms are now considered as important an influence as Wagner, and the apparent bombast of his scores has been tempered by increased awareness of their spiritual inspiration. Bruckner narrates a search for answers in his symphonies, but the protagonist discovers, over and over again, that the path to understanding is blocked, jammed. In the Sixth Symphony, this phenomenon is manifest in delayed affirmations of the home key after agonized extensions of dissonant complex harmonies. The moment of apotheosis, or revelation, tends to be preceded by passages of harsh unrest, with Bruckner pushing the orchestra on occasion through the entire tonal gamut. Ultimately, the truth of the symphony resides in the exquisite passages of Renaissance-style counterpoint, which reflects Bruckner’s studies, as a devout Catholic, of the musical manuscripts preserved at the Monastery of Saint Florian in Linz, Austria.

Bruckner Symphony No. 6 

The Ninth Symphony may be one of the most familiar and beloved works in the entire classical canon, but it is worth remembering just how strange and even troubling this music is. From the outset, something seems amiss. The opening portrait of an inchoate world purposefully confuses listeners, because the falling intervals fail to define a key. As musicologist Leo Treitler wryly observed, the symphony divides the world in two: those who know it’s in D minor, and those who don’t. The movement then unfolds as a traditional sonata-allegro with a final coda. The development feigns a repeat of the exposition, but the main theme never arrives. Eventually a sudden crescendo introduces the recapitulation.The second movement scherzo is likewise in sonata form, heard twice as bookends to a central trio, and the third is a complicated set of double variations whose form proves easier to analyze than to hear. Perfectly audible is the unusually difficult, chromatic solo for the fourth French horn. The finale defied all musical logic to date, being at once a set of variations (on the “Joy” theme, nine in all), a cantata (non-dramatic vocal work accompanied by orchestra), a symphony within a symphony (following the four-movement design of the Ninth as a whole), a sonata form with double exposition (thus akin to a concerto), and even an opera and an oratorio (with the instrumental recitative at the opening).The “Ode to Joy” has generally been interpreted as a hymn to humanity, a utopian vision of universal goodwill, even freedom and liberty. (Bernstein famously changed “Freude” [joy] to “Freiheit” [freedom] in the performance commemorating the fall of the Berlin Wall, but the association dates back to a novella of 1838.) But this paean to the people runs up against the strangest moment in the whole symphony. In the middle of the movement, following three instrumental and three vocal variations, the “Joy” theme transforms into a Turkish march, a style of military music featuring winds and percussion inspired by Turkish janissaries. All solemnity and dignity drains away, yielding to the carnivalesque. Other unnerving twists and turns unsettle the familiar hymn and frustrate any attempt to arrive at a single interpretation. As we intently study the symphony, it—like the Mona Lisa—stares back at us, keeping its secrets to itself.The symphony premiered in Vienna at 7 PM on May 7, 1824. The performance was apparently shoddy (“When they could not reach the high notes as written,” one critic recounted, “the sopranos simply did not sing.”), and Beethoven himself might have noticed. Although the stereotypical picture paints of the composer conducting his Ninth Symphony unable to hear a single note, recent research suggests that he retained some residual hearing until the end of his life.

The Ninth Symphony may be one of the most familiar and beloved works in the entire classical canon, but it is worth remembering just how strange and even troubling this music is. From the outset, something seems amiss. The opening portrait of an inchoate world purposefully confuses listeners, because the falling intervals fail to define a key. As musicologist Leo Treitler wryly observed, the symphony divides the world in two: those who know it’s in D minor, and those who don’t. The movement then unfolds as a traditional sonata-allegro with a final coda. The development feigns a repeat of the exposition, but the main theme never arrives. Eventually a sudden crescendo introduces the recapitulation. The second movement scherzo is likewise in sonata form, heard twice as bookends to a central trio, and the third is a complicated set of double variations whose form proves easier to analyze than to hear. Perfectly audible is the unusually difficult, chromatic solo for the fourth French horn. The finale defied all musical logic to date, being at once a set of variations (on the “Joy” theme, nine in all), a cantata (non-dramatic vocal work accompanied by orchestra), a symphony within a symphony (following the four-movement design of the Ninth as a whole), a sonata form with double exposition (thus akin to a concerto), and even an opera and an oratorio (with the instrumental recitative at the opening). The “Ode to Joy” has generally been interpreted as a hymn to humanity, a utopian vision of universal goodwill, even freedom and liberty. (Bernstein famously changed “Freude” [joy] to “Freiheit” [freedom] in the performance commemorating the fall of the Berlin Wall, but the association dates back to a novella of 1838.) But this paean to the people runs up against the strangest moment in the whole symphony. In the middle of the movement, following three instrumental and three vocal variations, the “Joy” theme transforms into a Turkish march, a style of military music featuring winds and percussion inspired by Turkish janissaries. All solemnity and dignity drains away, yielding to the carnivalesque. Other unnerving twists and turns unsettle the familiar hymn and frustrate any attempt to arrive at a single interpretation. As we intently study the symphony, it—like the Mona Lisa—stares back at us, keeping its secrets to itself. The symphony premiered in Vienna at 7 PM on May 7, 1824. The performance was apparently shoddy (“When they could not reach the high notes as written,” one critic recounted, “the sopranos simply did not sing.”), and Beethoven himself might have noticed. Although the stereotypical picture paints of the composer conducting his Ninth Symphony unable to hear a single note, recent research suggests that he retained some residual hearing until the end of his life.

Beethoven Symphony No. 9 

Schubert wrote more than 600 songs on texts by some 150 poets. More astonishing than his prodigious productivity was his skill. The lied had previously been the province of amateurs—a genre for composers and performers of modest means and limited ambition. Schubert elevated the song partly by reconceiving the relationship between voice and piano, allowing the accompaniment to become, in effect, another voice in the musical dialogue. He also treated musical form ingeniously. In the simplest songs, the music repeats with each new stanza of text, sustaining a single affect or atmosphere throughout. As he matured, Schubert came to depend on through-composed forms, wherein the music changes always with the text. Thus the music tells the story of the words—or sometimes creates its own story altogether. There are also so-called “dramatic lieder,” which mimic the features of staged vocal genres.All three types are found in Die schöne Müllerin (1823), a collection of 20 songs that can be separated into five quasi-operatic acts. The self-absorbed, typically Romantic lyrics were penned by Wilhelm Müller (1794–1827), and trace the ill-fated love of a young miller for a maiden whose affection is directed elsewhere. He sets out happily, following a stream, wondering where it might lead him. When he spies a comely young lady, he asks a babbling brook if she might be his; ultimately he concludes that indeed she is “mine!” The color green comes to symbolize their love—or so he thinks; for the maiden, green represents the hunter whom she adores. When the miller discovers that the object of his affection does not reciprocate his love, he returns to the brook for solace, then drowns himself in its lulling waters. The relationship with the piano is carefully calibrated to affirm or contest the miller’s feelings. Bliss is registered solidly in the bright major mode; doubt, anger, and despair are matched with unstable harmonies. At times the accompaniment is confined to the onomatopoeic representation of the objects in the miller’s world, other times the piano reveals things that the text otherwise only suggests. There’s a hunting call, for example, that suggests the presence of the maiden’s other suitor. The piano also offers a series of gestures that suggest flirtation, depicts butterflies in the stomach, portrays impatience (the title of the seventh song), and at the end, paints a musical picture of world-weariness. The final song (“The Brook’s Lullaby”) is cast in a key far distant from that of the first one (“Wandering”), suggesting the emotional journey the miller has traveled. The water sings back to him at the end, convincing him in vaguely sympathetic fashion to take his own life, speaking soothingly of the rest that death will provide, and pledging that the heavens that will open up to welcome him.

Schubert wrote more than 600 songs on texts by some 150 poets. More astonishing than his prodigious productivity was his skill. The lied had previously been the province of amateurs—a genre for composers and performers of modest means and limited ambition. Schubert elevated the song partly by reconceiving the relationship between voice and piano, allowing the accompaniment to become, in effect, another voice in the musical dialogue. He also treated musical form ingeniously. In the simplest songs, the music repeats with each new stanza of text, sustaining a single affect or atmosphere throughout. As he matured, Schubert came to depend on through-composed forms, wherein the music changes always with the text. Thus the music tells the story of the words—or sometimes creates its own story altogether. There are also so-called “dramatic lieder,” which mimic the features of staged vocal genres. All three types are found in Die schöne Müllerin (1823), a collection of 20 songs that can be separated into five quasi-operatic acts. The self-absorbed, typically Romantic lyrics were penned by Wilhelm Müller (1794–1827), and trace the ill-fated love of a young miller for a maiden whose affection is directed elsewhere. He sets out happily, following a stream, wondering where it might lead him. When he spies a comely young lady, he asks a babbling brook if she might be his; ultimately he concludes that indeed she is “mine!” The color green comes to symbolize their love—or so he thinks; for the maiden, green represents the hunter whom she adores. When the miller discovers that the object of his affection does not reciprocate his love, he returns to the brook for solace, then drowns himself in its lulling waters. The relationship with the piano is carefully calibrated to affirm or contest the miller’s feelings. Bliss is registered solidly in the bright major mode; doubt, anger, and despair are matched with unstable harmonies. At times the accompaniment is confined to the onomatopoeic representation of the objects in the miller’s world, other times the piano reveals things that the text otherwise only suggests. There’s a hunting call, for example, that suggests the presence of the maiden’s other suitor. The piano also offers a series of gestures that suggest flirtation, depicts butterflies in the stomach, portrays impatience (the title of the seventh song), and at the end, paints a musical picture of world-weariness. The final song (“The Brook’s Lullaby”) is cast in a key far distant from that of the first one (“Wandering”), suggesting the emotional journey the miller has traveled. The water sings back to him at the end, convincing him in vaguely sympathetic fashion to take his own life, speaking soothingly of the rest that death will provide, and pledging that the heavens that will open up to welcome him.

Schubert Die schone Mullerin

Beethoven composed ten violin sonatas, the first nine during the “heroic” period of his career. In his works between 1797 and 1803, he mounted a revolution in musical language, breaking free from the accessible, decorous conventions of the 18th century. The transition begins to be felt in the Fifth Violin Sonata, whose appealing sounding surface conceals some serious fissures. It was nicknamed the “Spring” Sonata in the years after its premiere, less in reference to the personality of its dedicatee (a rather dour banker named Count Moritz von Fries) than the breeziness of the trill-laden opening tune. The first movement obeys the logic of sonata form, but the division between the first and second theme is starker than convention would allow, and the middle section develops material that has not been heard before, an unexpected melodic guest.The middle movements could have been written by Beethoven’s forerunner and teacher, Joseph Haydn. But the fourth and last movement is rather adventurous in terms of the harmonic language.The Seventh Violin Sonata is often associated with Beethoven’s traumatic realization of impending deafness, but actually its fervor, along with the allusions to marches and fanfares, was inspired by its dedication. For the price of a diamond, Beethoven composed this and two other sonatas for Tsar Alexander I, whom the composer idolized. (Beethoven first admired, then turned against Napoleon. Tsar Alexander I was Napoleon’s nemesis.) The four movements of the Seventh Sonata also find Beethoven rejecting altogether the musical decorum of the 18th century. He saturates conventional, Classical forms with intense, Romantic emotions. The filigreed delicacy of the Fifth Sonata cedes in the Seventh to a new brashness: The first movement is marked con brio (“with fire”), the last is presto (“very fast”)—all a contrast with sonatas of the salons and drawing rooms of the past. The Ninth Violin Sonata—nicknamed the “Kreutzer” after its eventual (second) dedicatee, Rudolph Kreutzer—is Beethoven’s most compelling chamber work. At the start, the soloist must survive treacherous waters in the form of excruciatingly slow chords. The technical demands of the first movement, for both the violinist and pianist, are such that commentators have likened it to an amorous double-concerto. The second movement is a set of five variations on a theme in the pastoral key; the two lovers take a holiday. The third movement, recycled by Beethoven from an earlier score, is cast in the form of a tarantella, an Italian courtship dance. The alternating tenderness and rage in the dialogue between violinist and pianist became a source of inspiration for other artists, including the eminent Russian writer Tolstoy. His novella The Kreutzer Sonata offers a non-too-subtle indictment of the passion and power of Beethoven’s sonata. It is performed in the story by the violinist hero. Afterward, he returns home and murders his wife, having caught her in the arms of another man."

Beethoven composed ten violin sonatas, the first nine during the “heroic” period of his career. In his works between 1797 and 1803, he mounted a revolution in musical language, breaking free from the accessible, decorous conventions of the 18th century. The transition begins to be felt in the Fifth Violin Sonata, whose appealing sounding surface conceals some serious fissures. It was nicknamed the “Spring” Sonata in the years after its premiere, less in reference to the personality of its dedicatee (a rather dour banker named Count Moritz von Fries) than the breeziness of the trill-laden opening tune. The first movement obeys the logic of sonata form, but the division between the first and second theme is starker than convention would allow, and the middle section develops material that has not been heard before, an unexpected melodic guest. The middle movements could have been written by Beethoven’s forerunner and teacher, Joseph Haydn. But the fourth and last movement is rather adventurous in terms of the harmonic language. The Seventh Violin Sonata is often associated with Beethoven’s traumatic realization of impending deafness, but actually its fervor, along with the allusions to marches and fanfares, was inspired by its dedication. For the price of a diamond, Beethoven composed this and two other sonatas for Tsar Alexander I, whom the composer idolized. (Beethoven first admired, then turned against Napoleon. Tsar Alexander I was Napoleon’s nemesis.) The four movements of the Seventh Sonata also find Beethoven rejecting altogether the musical decorum of the 18th century. He saturates conventional, Classical forms with intense, Romantic emotions. The filigreed delicacy of the Fifth Sonata cedes in the Seventh to a new brashness: The first movement is marked con brio (“with fire”), the last is presto (“very fast”)—all a contrast with sonatas of the salons and drawing rooms of the past. The Ninth Violin Sonata—nicknamed the “Kreutzer” after its eventual (second) dedicatee, Rudolph Kreutzer—is Beethoven’s most compelling chamber work. At the start, the soloist must survive treacherous waters in the form of excruciatingly slow chords. The technical demands of the first movement, for both the violinist and pianist, are such that commentators have likened it to an amorous double-concerto. The second movement is a set of five variations on a theme in the pastoral key; the two lovers take a holiday. The third movement, recycled by Beethoven from an earlier score, is cast in the form of a tarantella, an Italian courtship dance. The alternating tenderness and rage in the dialogue between violinist and pianist became a source of inspiration for other artists, including the eminent Russian writer Tolstoy. His novella The Kreutzer Sonata offers a non-too-subtle indictment of the passion and power of Beethoven’s sonata. It is performed in the story by the violinist hero. Afterward, he returns home and murders his wife, having caught her in the arms of another man."

Beethoven violin sonatas

Haydn composed 104 symphonies, and participated in the consolidation of forms that define the genre. The first movement follows dramatic three-part arrangement, the musical equivalent of a journey of discovery or enlightenment. This is usually followed by a mediational slow movement in two or three sections, then a tripartite dance-based movement with a lighter instrumental texture than the first two and redolent of the dance suites that gave rise to the symphony in the first place. The final movement can assume several forms, with theme-and-variations and the rondo being Haydn’s personal favorites.

Haydn Symphony No. 90 

Vienna: City of Dreams

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