Fin de Siècle – session 4

Hans Pfitzner (1869-1949)

Albert Roussel (1869-1937)

Carl Ruggles (1876-1971)

Florence Beatrice Price (1888-1953)

Germaine Tailleferre (1892-1983)

Hans Pfitzner (1869-1949)

Pfitzner rejected modernism. He composed symphonies, concertos for piano, violin and cello, and other works.

He was a favorite of Bruno Walter.

His Symphony in C, Opus 46 is on YouTube in a 1949 Salzburg Festival recording by the Wiener Philharmoniker under Furtwängler and in a 1942 recording with Staatskapelle Dresden conducted by Karl Böhm.

Hans Pfitzner (1869-1949)

Here is Werner Andreas Albert conducting the Bamberger Symphoniker in Pfitzner’s Concerto for violin and orchestra op 34, with Saschko Gawriloff. First movement (10:42)

Albert is a musicologist by training and a conductor by vocation. He has devoted himself to “previously unexplored music,” and has recorded the complete orchestral repertoire of Paul Hindemith, Erich Korngold, Benjamin Frankel and Hans Pfitzner.

Hans Pfitzner (1869-1949)

Pfitzner’s opera Palestrina premiered in 1917. In this opera, Palestrina saves the art of contrapuntal music for the sixteenth century church.

Trailer (3:33) for a 2009 film of a very modern Bavarian State Opera production (Simone Young conducting)

Nicolai Gedda sings “Allein in dunkler Tiefe” (12:28) with Renate Freyer (Palestrina`s dead wife), Helen Donath (Ighino) and Brigitte Fassbaender (Silla)

Peter Schreier sings “Allein in dunkler Tiefe” (8:45)

Hans Pfitzner (1869-1949)

A fine setting of “In Danzig,” a poem by Joseph von Eichendorffill sung here (4:54) by Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau.

Hans Pfitzner (1869-1949)

Pfitzner wrote 4 String Quartets, one for each period of his long life as a composer:

• #1 in D minor (1886) – youth• #2 in D major (1902) – maturity • #3 in C# minor (1925) – reflection on Great War• #4 in C minor (1942) –reaction to the corruption

of German culture: nostalgia for old Vienna

Hans Pfitzner (1869-1949)

YouTube performances:

• #1 in D minor (34:17) in the definitive recording by the Franz Schubert Quartett

• #2 in D major: a portion (14:54 out of a 26-minute piece) - movement 3 and part of movement 4) - Streichquartett der Camerata Hamburg

Hans Pfitzner (1869-1949)

In the 1930’s, Pfitzner rejected anti-Semitism but cooperated with the Nazis in order to retain his operatic and teaching positions. By the late 1930’s, he was disillusioned and made Hitler furious by contradicting him directly during a meeting. His pension was cancelled.

He ended his life financially ruined and mentally ill.

Albert Roussel (1869-1937)

Roussel lost his affluent parents and grandfather before age 11. An aunt raised him. He graduated from the École Navale in 1889, and served in Indochina as an officer. He resigned his commission in 1894, devoting himself to music. He went to Paris to study.

At the outbreak of the Great War, Roussel applied for active duty. After the war, he retired to Perros-Guirec on the coast of Brittany and then in 1922 he settled in Vasterival on the Normandy coast. Despite increasingly frail health, he devoted his energy to composing.

Albert Roussel (1869-1937)

A contemporary of Ravel and Debussy, Roussel’s early compositions are influenced by Impressionism.

He traveled to India, learned the medieval Hindu legend of Queen Padmavati sacrificing her life for love, and wrote a ballet-opera Padmåvatî (completed in 1923) which incorporates traditional Indian music. The work was premiered in Paris in 1932.

Albert Roussel (1869-1937)

Padmåvatî

An excerpt (3:13) from a 1957 performance on Rome Radio: Hélène Bouvier, mezzo-soprano with the Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale della Rai directed by Ferruccio Scalia

Final scene (funeral): (12:07) performed by l’Orchestre du Capitole de Toulouse directed by Michel Plasson

Albert Roussel (1869-1937)

His well-regarded four symphonies demonstrate a tension between tradition and experimentation:

• Symphony #1 (“Poem of the Forest”) (36:53) premiered in 1908, is here performed by the USSR Ministry of Culture Symphony, Gennady Rozhdestvensky

• Symphony #2 (1921) – rather mysterious. Charles Dutoit conducts First Movement (7:51)

Albert Roussel (1869-1937)

In his later symphonies, there are elements of neo-Classicism:

• Symphony #3 (1930) commissioned by Boston SO, here performed by the BBC Symphony Orchestra, Lionel Bringuier, conductor. First Movement (6:23)

Symphony #3 is also available on YouTube in the Detroit SO recording with Neeme Jarvi.

• Symphony #4 (1934) does not seem to have made it to YouTube.

Carl Ruggles (1876-1971)

Ruggles was a New England iconoclast. He was a painter of significance, selling over a hundred paintings in his lifetime. He was uncompromising in his music, using his own style of dissonant counterpoint.

At a concert where music by Ruggles was hissed, Charles Ives rose up and shouted: "Don't be such a God-damn sissy. When you hear strong masculine music like this, get up and try to use your ears like a man!”

Carl Ruggles (1876-1971)

His output was slender. “Sun-Treader” is Ruggles’s most noted work. It was inspired by Robert Browning’s poem Pauline, with the line “Sun-treader, light and life be thine forever.”

Part 1 (movements 1-2) (8:35)

Part 2 (movements 3-6) (8:28)

Michael Tilson Thomas, Boston Symphony Orchestra

Carl Ruggles (1876-1971)

Exaltation (6:28), for Brass, Chorus and Organ (1958)Brass ensemble directed by Gerard Schwarz. Gregg Smith Singers directed by Gregg Smith.Leonard Raven, Organ.

Florence Beatrice Price (1887-1953)

The first black woman in the United States to be recognized as a symphonic composer. Born Florence Beatrice Smith in Little Rock, AR, and guided by her mother, she enrolled in the New England Conservatory of Music at age 14, graduating in 1907 with honors and an artist diploma in organ as well as teaching credentials.

For twenty years she taught in Little Rock, and in 1912 married Thomas J. Price, an attorney.

Frequent acts of racial violence in Little Rock, concluding with a 1927 lynching, led the couple to move to Chicago.

Florence Beatrice Price (1888-1953)

In Chicago, Price studied music and also languages and liberal arts, while teaching and composing. She developed a close friendship with her student Margaret Bonds, who later set Langston Hughes poetry to music.

Price’s 1932 contest-winning Symphony in E Minor (40:23)

was premiered by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Frederick Stock.

Florence Beatrice Price (1888-1953)

Deeply religious, Price composed sacred music, frequently using African-American sources, as well as lieder in the European tradition.

Biography & Vocal Music: (7:09): commentary, then two settings of spirituals. This recording is part of the “Women in Music” series (2:15) at East Carolina University.

Here is Price’s “Night” (2:05) sung by Yolande Rhodes, with Deanne Tucker accompanying.

“Les Six” (1920)

“Les cinq Russes, les six Français et M. Satie” was the title of an article by a French critic published in January 1920.

“Les Six” referred to composers in Montparnasse who deviated from the romanticism of Richard Wagner and the impressionism of Debussy and Ravel.

Jean Cocteau maneuvered to become the leader of “Les Six.” Soon the musicians were interacting with filmmaker René Clair, artist Pablo Picasso, actor Maurice Chevalier and impresario Serge Diaghilev. (Montparnasse sounds a little like Black Mountain College!)

Germaine Tailleferre (1892-1983)

Born Marcelle Taillefesse, she changed her last name to Tailleferre to spite her father, who had not supported her desire to study music.

Tailleferre is the only woman to be a member of “Les Six.” The others were Georges Auric, Louis Durey, Arthur Honegger, Darius Milhaud and Francis Poulenc.

She had a long life. She spent the war years in Philadelphia, then returned to France where she composed film and TV scores as well as chamber and orchestral music.

Germaine Tailleferre (1892-1983)

Arabesque (3:05) per Clarinetto e Pianoforte, performed here by Gaspare Tirincanti and Franca Moschini.

Piano Concerto #1 – unidentified performers – Movements I II (9:32) Movement III (7:20)

Pastorale (3:19) per violino e pianoforte (1942). Massimo Marin, violin and Cristina Ariagno, pianoforte.