The complete idiot's guide to classical music (38 page)

 
Music Words
The
mazurka
and
polonaise
are both Polish dances, the former of rustic origin, the latter a more stately, elegant step that became popular at many European courts.

The
ballade
is an instrumental piece that—as its deriviation from “ballad” suggests—either tells a story or is inspired by a literary poem or narrative tale.

The
nocturne
is a night piece (in Italian: nottoruno), usually short, lyric, and serene. All of these forms were brought to exquisite concert life by Chopin, though he neither invented them, nor was the last to use them.

If you don’t like the piano, better cross Chopin off your listening list. Otherwise, hours of musical heaven await you, and it doesn’t matter where you begin. For high virtuosity, make it the études; the nocturnes are better for moments of reflection and introspection; to sample of Chopin’s Polish fervor, try the mazurkas and polonaises. Some of all those qualities swirl through the ballades and scherzos, and if you grew up on old-time pop songs, the “Fantasie Impromptu” ought to bring back fond memories: The tune was pilfered by Joseph McCarthy and Harry Carroll for “I’m Always Chasing Rainbows.”

For Chopin on a larger scale, listen to the B-flat Minor Sonata, with the famous “Funeral March,” and the two Piano Concertos. Less often encountered, but worth the hunt, are his variations on Mozart’s “La ci darem la Mano” and another sparkling work for piano and orchestra, the “Grand Fantasy on Polish Airs.”

Given the zillions of composers whose names begin with B—from Buxtehude to Britten—it’s a pretty high honor to make to the fabled “Three B’s,” as happened when Johannes Brahms joined the pantheon of Bach and Beethoven. The linkage is appropriate though, because unlike Berlioz, Chopin, and Schumann, who epitomized the Romantic era and stretched its poetic boundaries ever farther, Brahms was a classicist at heart, who had an 18th century respect for structure, and followed classical form even while his musical language kept up with the Romantic times.

Brahms (1833–1897) was born in Hamburg, Germany, where his father was a town musician, and Johannes began earning his own keep at the age of 15, giving piano lessons, arranging marches for brass band, and playing dance music for ladies of the night and their seafaring customers at waterfront bars.

This provided young Brahms with a good education (in life, if not music), but he knew he was destined for better things, and they started happening when he met the famous Hungarian violinist, Joseph Joachim. Joachim was sufficiently impressed by Brahms to send him on with letters of introduction to Liszt in Weimar and Schumann in Dusseldorf.

The Liszt connection, alas, never amounted to anything because Brahms managed to doze off while the older pianist was demonstrating his keyboard prowess (Brahms didn’t much care for Liszt’s music, even when he was awake), but when the young man played for the Schumanns, the results were far different. Robert immediately pronounced his new friend a genius “who would not show us his mastery in gradual development, but like Minerva, spring full-armed from the head of Zeus.” Brahms, meanwhile, found in Clara an ardent admirer and lifelong friend.

 
Bet You Didn’t Know
Clara was impressed by more than Brahms’ compositions, writing in her diary about his “beautiful hands and interesting young face, which becomes transfigured when he plays.” For his part, Brahms dashed off a set of Variations “on a Theme by Him, Dedicated to Her.” Hmmm . . . what went on here?

With Schumann’s help, Brahms’ rise to fame was nearly immediate, although he was sometimes caught in the crossfire of the two warring camps in mid-19th century Vienna. There were the devotees of “music of the future,” who fell to their knees at the mere mention of Liszt and Wagner; and there were the classicists who exalted Brahms and Mendelssohn, and not-so-secretly hoped that the new music enthusiasts would be attacked by roving bands of Valkyries.

Brahms, meanwhile, ignored both sides and proceeded to produce a stream of glorious music in a style that was his alone. He did, though, stall for quite some time on the composition of a symphony, because he fretted about coming up to the standards set by his idol, Beethoven. Brahms planned out a symphony in a two-piano score, then thought better of the idea and turned the sketches into the D Minor Piano Concerto. He labelled two other symphonic-type pieces serenades, while a third became the Variations on a Theme of Haydn. Finally, twenty years after he had begun the agonizing process, Brahms came forward with his First Symphony. The famous conductor Hans von Bulow immediately dubbed it “Beethoven’s Tenth.” The musical logjam broken, Brahms proceeded to add three more masterworks to the symphonic ranks, all the while continuing to compose reams of piano, vocal, and chamber music.

 
Bet You Didn’t Know
Don’t think appreciation of Brahms’ music was universal, even amongst his fellow composers. Hugo Wolf said that the Second Piano Concerto had the “nutritional equivalent of window glass, cork stoppers, and stove pipes,” while Tchaikovsky, too polite to say anything nasty in public, expressed himself quite clearly in his diary: “I played over the music of that scoundrel Brahms. What a giftless bastard.”

Brahms’ last public appearance was at a concert in Vienna, where his Fourth Symphony was played, and the audience endlessly cheered the cancer-stricken composer. Less than a month later, the world was mourning the loss of the last of the Three B’s.

There are the four great symphonies, of course, the two mighty Piano Concertos, the great Violin Concerto, and the spacious Double Concerto for Violin, Cello, and Orchestra. But for Brahms at his most jovial, put on any of the sparkling Hungarian Dances, and then the boisterous
Academic Festival
Overture, with its symphonic treatment of the ancient student song “Gaudeamus Igitur.”

Listen to the ravishingly lovely “German Requiem, and if you like that, dig deeper into Brahms’ vocal artistry with the “Alto Rhapsody” and some of the exquisite songs.

For keyboard fans, start with the rhapsodies and proceed to the two-piano dazzlements of the Variations on a Theme of Paganini. The chamber enticements are too many to enumerate here, but don’t miss the Clarinet Sonatas, Cello Sonatas and Sextets (there are two of each), plus the three Sonatas for Violin and Piano and, for desert, the Piano and Clarinet Quintets.

The flag-waving propensity of the romantic era was nowhere stronger than in Russia.

Michael Glinka started writing music “that would make my countrymen feel at home,” and was rewarded with the title “Father of Russian Music.” His figurative children included the proudly nationalistic composers who became known as “The Russian Five”: Balakirev and Rimsky-Korsakov, both of whom arranged and published extensive collections of Russian folk songs, Borodin, Cui, and Mussorgsky. Standing apart from this circle was Tchaikovsky, who recognized the gifts of those five composers, but pronounced them (with the exception of Rimsky-Korsakov) “impregnated with the purely amateur conviction of their superiority to all other musicians in the universe.”

While he too would more than occasionally write patriotic pieces and quote folk tunes in his symphonic works, Tchaikovsky was far more universal in his approach, his music incorporating elements of Italian opera, French ballet, German symphony, and song. On the other hand, his soul remained always in Russia, and more than most other composers, he poured his soul into his music. Without wanting to, Tchaikovsky became, as Igor Stravinsky put it, “the most Russian of us all.”

Peter (or Piotr, to put the proper Russian spin on his first name) Ilyich (that is, the son of Ilya) Tchaikovsky (1840–1893) was born in Votkinsk, a remote village at the foot of the Ural Mountains. Not quite the same as Leipzig or Vienna for nurturing an awareness of the arts, and even after the family moved to St. Petersburg, Tchaikovsky’s musical gifts were slow to emerge. He went to a school of jurisprudence and worked for a while as a government clerk before, at the age of 21, entering a new musical institute that would later become the celebrated St. Petersburg Conservatory. Four years later, he won a silver medal for his cantata on Schiller’s “Ode to Joy,” and thereafter, composition became his prime focus.

 
Bet You Didn’t Know
Medal or no medal, Tchaikovsky was so afraid that people would be upset with him for having used the same text as Beethoven for the finale of the Ninth Symphony, that he refused to allow the piece to be published during his lifetime. Unfortunately, nobody bothered to publish it after his lifetime either, so the cantata did not actually appear in print until 1960.

As Tchaikovsky’s fame and fortune increased, so did his psychological torment. Rumors were spreading about his homosexuality, and in a tortured attempt to quell them, Tchaikovsky married a young conservatory student. Predictably, the union was a disaster, the composer fleeing after nine days, then trying to commit suicide by walking into the Moskva River. (The idea was to get pneumonia, but he only wound up with a lousy cold.)

The next woman who came into his life was Nadezhda von Meck, and talk about an ideal relationship (under the circumstances): she paid Tchaikovsky’s debts, lent him money, then bestowed upon him a generous annual allowance, the only condition being that composer and benefactress never meet face to face. “My beloved friend,” the grateful and highly relieved Tchaikovsky wrote to her, “every note which comes from my pen in future is dedicated to you. To you I owe this reawakening love of work, and I shall never forget for a moment that you have made it possible for me to carry on my career.”