Vaughan Williams

I’ve come to say a word about the leading tone. You all remember the leading tone…back when you learned about the scale.  Some scale notes have names. There is the tonic, the dominant and the leading tone. [Play on piano] Those stay the same whether we are in major or in minor. The chord on the dominant, going to the chord on the tonic, give us the cadence. In music commonly called ‘modal’, the leading tone is lowered. We get either the Mixolydian mode, or the Dorian mode. (There are other modes, such as Phrygian and Locrian—but you have to pay extra for those. They’re not included in this particular package.)  The cadence with lowered leading tone loses some of its oomph. The leading tone no longer leads and we feel a bit adrift. And that’s all I have to say about the leading tone.

Now to the music on our program.

Peggy Glanville-Hicks was Australian, she studied at the Royal College in London with RVW, whose fourth symphony begins with an idea she claimed he took from her own Sinfonietta for Small Orchestra.  (That is one of many threads, including her marital history, mode of dress, and career as music critic, that we just don’t have time to follow up here—beyond saying that Byron assures me of RVW’s innocence in the matter.) Glanville-Hicks’s Satie-like Pastoral for piano solo is the very model of diatonic (as opposed to chromatic) writing. [Start playing] Until the bottom of the first of its two pages, not a single chromatic note appears—she uses only the white keys. Then suddenly, and without warning, an F#, and then Eb, a D#, a C#. and then a fermata, a pause to recover, and the music reverts to pure diatonic. No more disruptive black keys. It’s a lovely piece. [Show at the piano]

Ruth Gipps—a composer I had not previously heard of--wrote her first piece at age 8 and even more remarkably sold it to a publisher—for one and a half guineas…in 1929…equivalent of about eight dollars…I think.   She was both a performing pianist and oboist. Her teachers in composition included both Gordon Jacob, whose viola and piano Sonatina we heard yesterday, and RVW.  Like Glanville-Hicks, she was a feminist, but she never accused either teacher of plagiarism. In her 3 ½ minute The Piper of Dreams, we have an oboe solo—really solo, with no accompaniment. And written by a player of the instrument who knew just how to reveal its beauties.  The fairly slow modal melody of the opening comes [demonstrate] back near the end. In between you’ll hear several lively episodes. The last two notes: high F and low D stake out pretty much the limits of the oboe’s range. The Piper of Dreams dates from 1940 I can’t help but mention that Benjamin Britten’s 6 Metamorphoses After Ovid—also for oboe unaccompanied—was composed in 1951, eleven years later.

If you’ve never heard of Constant Lambert, but sure to check out on YouTube “An Audience with Peter Ustinov” for a hilarious and irreverent impersonation of Lambert as he was being introduced to Queen Mary.  He was a writer, conductor and composer, founder of the Royal Ballet, and friend of John Maynard Keynes (who said he was the most brilliant man he—Keynes—had ever met). His Elegiac Blues, as our program note tells us, was written in memory of the African-American singer, Florence Mills (known as the “Queen of Happiness.”) who died at age 31 after giving 300 performances of the hit show “Blackbirds” in London. You get its flavor from the first chords. [Play a bit] It’s marked ‘Lugubre ma con moto’

Samuel Barber’s Serenade, composed at age 18, caused his uncle and influential mentor, the composer Sidney Homer (husband of opera singer Louise Homer) to worry over young Sam’s [and I quote] “almost too apparent maturity. It seems as if you are going to skip ‘youth’ and jump into the Maelstrom and complexities of a mature man.”  Homer went on to remind that Mozart and Schubert “kept the spirit of youth through their entire lives.” I don’t know about maelstrom, but the violin’s opening melody is quite chromatic [Illustrate]. Given first in slow, somewhat mysterious harmonies [Illustrate], it will change character for the march tempo that soon appears [Illustrate]. Both slow and fast music are cleverly integrated in this short first movement. The second movement is a slow lilting 6/8 time. The third, called Dance, is in light-hearted triple time. If you are surprised by the quiet, undramatic ending to this third movement, the reason may be that a fourth movement seems to have been written and then disappeared by the time of publication in 1942. How that could happen I’m not sure. BTW I recommend Howard Pollack’s new biography of Barber. There you can read how Sam and his friend Gian Carlo Menotti visit Toscanini on Lake Maggiore (they are aged 23). Toscanini plays through the score of Monteverdi’s opera Orfeo, himself singing the part of Euridice with Barber singing that part of Orfeo. Now that would have been something to behold. Five years later, Toscanini would conduct the Adagio for Strings—one of the most consequential premieres of the 20th century. Barber was 28.

Michael Tippett’s First Piano Sonata takes as its first movement a set of variations he had composed previously.  Each variation features a specific piano texture. Arpeggiation, octaves, scales, register contrasts. Let’s have a look.

The theme, with its repeated notes and scale descent, is stated strongly at first—and then given a gentle accompaniment. [Ex. 1] Variation one introduces arpeggios [Ex. 2] Variation two octaves alternating the two hands [Ex.3] Variation three harp-like scales [By the way, I’d have played these examples for you but my harp-like scales just weren’t sufficiently harp-like] [Ex.4]. Variation four, after a final scale flourish, moves to the upper register with dotted rhythms [Ex. 5].  Variation five reverts to the low register, ominously [Ex. 6] and finally Variation six is the theme returning triumphant. [Ex. 7]. Tippetts second movement makes gentle reference to a Scottish folk melody. Not to over-emphasize diatonicism, but this opening presentation of the melody is played only on the white keys.  We get a rollicking Presto to conclude the sonata.

Barber’s and Tippitt’s pieces date from early in their careers. Vaughan Williams’s Violin Sonata was written when he was approaching 82 years old.

Two things struck me when I first looked at the score: the elaborate piano part and the amount of chordal writing for the violin. Only in Bach’s solo violin music have I seen such successions of two- and three-note chords as RVW writes here. Then I discovered that the great Joseph Szigeti was an early champion of the work. He gave the first actual performance before a live audience (at the Eastman School in Rochester, as it happens) and it may be that Szigeti was originally the intended dedicatee.  If so, a reference to Bach’s Sonatas and Partitas makes sense in that Szigeti was famously an early master of that repertoire—his playing of it almost certainly known to RVW.

The sonata begins in an entirely diatonic idiom. There is not a single black key in the first page of the rollicking 6/8 piano part [Illustrate 6/8—refer to folksong and dance], and the violin’s melody is without chromatics. But very soon we get increased chromaticism and along with it a sense of urgency. The violin’s melody, now in the piano and with 6/8 rhythm, is soon pitted against itself.  [Illustrate] It all builds to a fortissimo highpoint:  the piano issues a challenge [demonstrate] and the violin unleashes a barrage of the double- and triple-stops mentioned earlier.  This happens again, and then again. Soon the piano recalls the placid violin line of the opening.

The second movement (Allegro furioso ma non troppo) is generated by a simple rhythmic motif [play].  The third movement consists of six variations on a diatonic, modal theme presented first in the piano in a most unusual and ghostly spacing of the line. Be sure to notice the lowered leading tone! [play]

I’ve made rather a point about diatonic and modal inflections. Folk song, the inspiration for—even foundation of--so much of the music we’ve heard these weekends, exhibits both these characteristics. On the other hand, when speakers refer to modernism, they usually mean chromaticism.  The more chromatic, the more modernist in sound. Vaughan Williams can certainly reveal an intensely chromatic side—think of the fourth symphony of last Saturday or the first movement of the string quartet no. 2 of yesterday. But so often, his works begin in a diatonic fashion, become increasingly chromatic, and return to the easier to sing, easier to remember opening. (Not to over-generalize.) This is going to be a wonderful concert. I know you will enjoy it.