The Waltz X: The Last Waltz?

As the First World War drew near, audiences in Central Europe were being treated to waltzes from a composer who combined the melodic and rhythmic spirit of the Strauss Family with the scrumptious late-Romantic harmonies of Richard Strauss, Puccini and the like. Even Gustav Mahler was enamoured of the composer's best-known waltz - Lippen schweigen ('Silent Lips'), better known as 'the Merry Widow waltz'. Its composer Franz Lehár  was a man with a remarkable gift for writing achingly memorable melodies, such as the main theme of Lippen schweigen, and setting them against rich and masterfully-scored accompaniments. Though I seem to have known that tune since I was evicted from my pram, it was the quality of the various melodies that go into making the Gold und Silber ('Gold and Silver Waltz') such a popular favourite that first alerted me to the delights of Lehár. If you've never heard it before, please take the opportunity to do so now. As you will hear the waltz follows the traditional pattern, as does Wilde Rosen ('Wild Roses') - a piece of which the composer himself was particularly fond. In Wilde Rosen you can hear the ingenuity with which Lehár weaves delightful counter-themes around some of his melodies. This is typical of the man. Just listen to the orchestral richness of the Altwiener Liebeswaltzes ('Love Waltzes from Old Vienna'). The composer himself conducted extracts from several of his operettas, including waltzes from The Count of Luxembourg and Eva, helping to spread his own message. Lehár continued to enjoy success between the wars, but as a popular phenomenon his was a dying art, losing out - especially after the Second World War - to the encroaching form of the musical.

Talking of which...one of the many gems from George Gershwin (and, of course, his brother Ira) was a song originally written for a review called The Show Is On about a lady who likes just one composer...and it isn't Lehár or Gershwin. By Strauss!: 

When I want a melody

Lilting through the house

Then I want a melody

By Strauss

It laughs, it sings

The world is in rhyme

Swinging to three-quarter time 

I suspect she would have been a fan of Arnold Schoenberg's arrangement of Strauss waltzes though I also suspect that she wouldn't been quite so keen on Schoenberg's own take on the form - the Waltzer from the Five Piano Pieces, Op.23. This is among the composer's first wholly twelve-tone works - and is unquestionably the first ever twelve-tone waltz. You won't be able to dance to it, despite the waltz rhythms. It's more of a fantasy-piece. As for his Strauss-waltz-arranging disciples, well, Anton Webern wrote no original waltzes of his own. Alban Berg, however, made conscious allusions to the Viennese waltz in his beautiful Violin Concerto of 1935 (very clearly in the 'Wienerisch' section around five minutes in). These, however, are essentially memorials for the waltz.

Of course, as we saw in Russia, the waltz lived on beyond the end of the First World War - and beyond La Valse - even if its glory days had well and truly gone. You see a waltz movement here and a fleeting glimpse of the waltz there among the works of many a famous 20th Century composer, but - as with the Schoenberg and Berg examples - they are fleeting things, memories, nostalgic or ironic glances backwards, parodies, mockeries. The waltzes in Richard Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier were already tending in that direction before the Great War, and his only concert waltz, München was originally written in 1939 but then re-written with a minor-key section in 1945, with the addition of the words "ein Gedächtniswalzer". It was a memorial waltz - a memorial to Munich, its opera house and to the waltz.

It needed a memorial. Of course, in popular music the strains of the waltz lingered on. Film composers also found many-and-varied uses for the waltz. Light music composers kept the waltz flame flickering too. Composers of musicals often reach for a waltz. My survey of the music of Paraguay's greatest composer Barrios showed the waltz thriving in the bars of Latin America. Ballroom dancers the world over are still dancing away to waltzes. Many sub-species of the waltz have sprung up across the globe. But among the major classical composers the waltz went into serious decline. Given that people still love a good waltz, that's a shame, isn't it?

Let's not end on a triste note about la valse. I've got quite a few miscellaneous waltzes to offer you, to round things off.

Fancy a pair of Edvard Grieg Valse-caprices for piano duet? Dating from 1883, they make a charming set. I think the first is the best, with a melodic appeal that should win its many friends. It really does speak the language of its composer, albeit with waltz rhythms rather than with Norwegian folk rhythms. The major/minor shifts in the trio section of this Valse-caprice are particularly characteristic. I'd never heard them before but I was aware of Grieg's involvement with the form. His series of sixty-six Lyric Pieces contains many an attractive waltz. I've always enjoyed playing the Vals, Op.12/2 - another gem where unpredictable major and minor shifts add a touch of Griegian magic. For a spirited take, please try the Vals, Op.38/7 - short but charming. The Norwegian folk influence is felt in the captivating melody of the Valse-Impromptu, Op.47/1, another magical number, with its tune based on an unusual (but very characteristic) take on the minor scale. The Valse mélanconique, Op.68/6 is more conventional but has much to recommend it.

Moving from the far north to the far south of Europe, we find the waltz flourishes in the hands of the Chopin-soaked Enrique Granados. His Valses Poéticos takes the traditional form of an introduction, waltz sequence and reprise-coda. From lightness to melancholy, nobility to sentimentality, Granados's richly-imagined set offers the listener many rewards. Listen out in particular for the 6th waltz - the one marked 'sentimental'.

Such pieces come from the heart of the Romantic piano composer tradition. We've already looked at Liszt's Mephisto Waltzes - those waltzes that were so hard to hear as waltzes. Liszt wrote quite a few non-devilish waltzes too. I'm not sure that many pianists would agree that the early Grande Valse di Bravura isn't devilish, given the devilishly difficult demands it places on the performer! This is an entertaining piece in the most brilliant salon style of the time. From the more intimate side of Liszt's nature came the lovely Valse mélancolique - one of many works the composer reworked over the years. You can trace this process in action by journeying (happily) through the transformation of the first version of the Petite Valse favorite into the second version of the Petite Valse favorite and from there into the Valse-Impromptu. Delightful music! Nor must I forget the Valse oubliées. These are very special waltzes from Liszt's later years. No.1 has always been a favourite, for understandable reasons. It has all the best tunes. No.2, however, is a dazzling and dream-like fantasy, full of beauty and not to be missed. No.3 enters into visionary harmonic worlds to come (as late Liszt was so often to do) and is, if anything, even more airy and beautiful. No.4, ironically, was literally a forgotten waltz for many years, only being rediscovered in America and published in 1954. It is even closer to the soundworld of Scriabin and full of flare and fire. The Valse oubliées are indeed something special, unlike...

Did you know that Liszt's son-in-law Wagner wrote a waltz? The Zuricher Vielliebchen Walzer for piano of 1854 is that most surprising of things. I think you'll agree it's hardly a masterpiece, but it's a charming trifle nonetheless. Who'd have thunk it? That's really it though for Wagner and the waltz (except for an arrangement he made of Wine, Women and Song) - unless you are prepared to countenance my passionate belief (which I will defend to the death - and beyond) that the Flower Maidens' beguiling Komm o holder Knabe from Parsifal is a waltz!

Let's leap across the Atlantic and forward in time (before working backwards again). Two of the three great ballets of Aaron Copland feature waltzes. There's the Saturday Night Waltz from Rodeo - a lovely slow waltz announced by the 'tuning-up' of the 'fiddlers' of the orchestra. There's also the no-less-lovely slow Waltz that precedes Billy's death in Billy the Kid. Both give a flavour of how the waltz had become a popular dance in the America of yore.

Charles Ives had penned a characteristically off-centre take on the waltz a quarter of a century earlier. His Waltz-Rondo of 1911 has strange and purely coincidental echoes of the Ravel Valse nobles et sentimentales, among other anticipations. It's a rich and fascinating piece that's as oblique a take on the waltz as Schoenberg's Op.23 piece a decade later. Less complex (but charming) is the Waltz parodying the popular waltzes of the time that Ives wrote in 1895, as arranged by Jonathan Elkus in 1971. (The original song can be heard here). This is the waltz as a sentimental song (or a take thereon).

American composers of Ives's were still showing themselves to be smitten by the great masters of the classical waltz, especially Chopin. There's Horatio Parker, for example,with his Chopinesque Valse gracile of 1899 and George Chadwick with his equally Chopin-inspired (and highly agreeable) Three Waltzes of 1890.

This American process is a rewind of the process we have been seeing in Europe - the move from the real thing to parodies and nostalgic memories of the real thing.

Let's end with another American composer but one who began as an Austrian composer and whose music is Viennese to its fingertips, Erich Korngold. His work in arranging rare Strauss operettas brought a fair few of them back from the dead. Korngold's music is rich in influence, sharing some of the spirit of Franz Lehár whilst also being aware of Schoenberg. Of course, Korngold is best known for his film music, all written for the studios of Hollywood. A man of the past and the future then. I've enthused about Korngold's music (at length) before, so this is my second bite of the cherry here. It's such a tasty cherry though that I'm always happy to keeping nibbling at it.

As well as those arrangements of Strauss operettas, Korngold wrote a pastiche singspiel called Walzer aus Wien ('Waltzes from Vienna') which drew on Strauss's less-known music (the Broadway version was called The Great Waltz) to tell a story from the life of the Waltz King. For a flavour of what must be a wonderful piece, please take a listen to the waltz-aria Frag mich Oft . (A second delicious aria may be heard here.) One of Korngold's final works was a short orchestral tribute to the great man, Straussiana, drawing on an obscure Strauss polka and an obscure Strauss waltz. There's not a hint of irony in it. This is love.

Korngold wrote waltzes of his own, including in his remarkably prodigious youth. I like the story about the teenager's Vier fröhliche Walzer all being dedicated to friends at school - all girl friends - and his father confiscating the young composer's manuscript to try to deter him from thinking about girls! The pieces were re-discovered later. As you would expect from the extraordinarily gifted youngster, the waltz Margit sounds like the work of a fully mature composer and contains a rich flow of melody and harmony. For a waltz from a work from the composer's actual maturity, please try the warmly nostalgic second movement from the Suite Op.23 for two violins, cello and piano left hand or the delightful finale of the String Quartet No.2, Op.26 - both first-rate waltzes. If you ever feel yourself wanting to sing along to a Korngold waltz you will be in good company - as you can hear from the composer's own performance (on piano) of the waltz-song Die schönste Nacht from his operetta Die Stumme Serenade. Try it for yourself with the waltz, Feast in the Forest, from his legendary film score The Adventures of Robin Hood or with Pierrots Tanzlied from the composer's most famous opera, Die Tode Stadt.

Resisting the urge to end with Engelbert Humperdinck's The Last Waltz, that's the end of this short series of posts on the waltz. Hope I didn't leave out too much! 

The Four Ages of Aaron Copland

Aaron Copland's Appalachian Spring is one of the handful of pieces which first turned me onto classical music in my late teens. (What the others were you will doubtless discover in due course!) I used to listen to it over and over again. I listen to it far less often these days but, even now, I still get a tingle down my spine whenever I hear its quiet opening bars.

Appalachian Spring is a piece I will save for another post. I want to use it, however, as a beacon on the landscape of Copland's output - the highpoint of his 'American' style, where that style appears at its simplest and most accessible. Other scores in his 'American' style cluster around Appalachian Spring and there are foretastes and aftertastes of it among his early and late works. Copland, however, wrote in several styles throughout his composing life and his music was not always so simple or accessible - it could also be tough, dissonant, modernist. He was a composer not only the music of prairies but also the music of the city. He could write in a populist folksong-inspired style but was no less capable of composing in a potentially crowd-displeasing abstract vein - the kind of music that could famously make the likes of Jackie Kennedy exclaim, 'Oh, Mr. Copland!' (after a performance of the late serialist work, Connotations).

To simplify (and how!), Copland began as a composer of the Jazz Age, passed into an Age of Modernist Austerity, embraced the New Deal ideals of American 'music for the people' and then reverted to modernism for a final Cold War Era of serialism. Of course, it's far from being as neat and tidy as that! Still, even if 'The Four Ages of Copland' is a simplistic concept I think it's not entirely unhelpful. I will chose four representative pieces from each 'Age' to give you a flavour of the range of Aaron Copland's wonderful music. The Jazz Age is represented by the Piano Concerto of 1926, the Age of Modernist Austerity by the Piano Variations of 1930, the New Deal 'Americana' period by the Violin Sonata and the Era of Serialism by the orchestral work Inscape.

The Piano Concerto comes from the time of Gershwin and his Rhapsody in Blue and Piano Concerto and is the jazziest piece Copland ever wrote. I've long felt that the sort of symphonic jazz we hear in, say, Bernstein comes much more from this piece than from the more famous Gershwin pieces. The first part is influenced by the blues while the second part takes its inspiration from the livelier side of jazz. The arresting opening fanfares for trumpets and trombones, soon joined by the strings, are typical of Copland throughout his output. They have the confidence of 1920s skyscrapers. They repeatedly sound a three-note figure which is treated in canon, with cross rhythms. A memorable bluesy melody (with much use of the minor third) flows out from them in a blaze of lyricism. The soloist then enters and rhapsodises on this tune attractively. The three-note figure opens that melody too and continues to be influential throughout - and not just in the first movement - as orchestra and piano take turns in singing the blues. The movement moves between gently dreaming on this theme and bursting out in fresh fanfares and/or creating a complex cityscape of sound. With the second movement comes a dramatic switch of mood. There's a cocky-sounding piano solo in the style of a lively jazz improvisation to begin with.The jazzy writing in the piano part is reflected in the orchestra, especially when Copland begins making the orchestra sound like a jazz ensemble. Wild and catchy (it has another memorable main theme), this section should get you tapping your toes - at times. 

From popular music (jazz) and catchy tunes, it's onto something very different with the severely abstract  and unquestionably modernist Piano Variations. Bernstein - a great enthusiast for the piece - is often quoted about this piece saying that he could empty a room at parties just by playing it! Once you get to know it though, it's a piece you can get very enthusiastic about. It may seem like a strikingly dissonant and austere score but I would compare it to Bartok in its fierce energy and it's not all about percussive piano writing and sharply-angled phrases as there are also consoling, inward-looking passages and memorable ideas. The Piano Concerto drew a lot on that three-note figure and here Copland takes a five-note figure and makes that the basis of his piece. Here, though, he treats in a way closely akin to serialism - i.e. as a tone row. He keeps his harmonic language tonal though and the result is very far from dry. I find it a gripping work and love it to bits - as much as I love the Piano Concerto. 

On though to the Violin Sonata. Here we are recognisably in the world of Appalachian Spring, with simplicity, uncluttered textures, themes that sound like folk songs or hymn tunes and a pastoral atmosphere that is far from the urban jazz of the Piano Concerto and the abstracted cityscape of the Piano Concerto. This is music that aims to speak straight to the American people. What remains constant though is the composer's ability to make a lot from simple starting ideas. As in the Variations a five-note figure (which you will hear the violin play straight away) plays a key role, generating much of the material of the lovely first movement. If the Variations were fierce then the Violin Sonata is serene but the flow of lyrical melody is set alongside exhilarating and joyous passages. The central slow movement is remarkably simple - especially if heard after the Variations! The piano plays its own tune and the violin plays another, though there is no disharmony between the two whatsoever and they often walk hand in hand. The closing Allegro presents a highly puckish first subject and contrasts it with a more lyrical second theme before a jubilant dancing third theme enters. At the end, things slow and the music that began the first movement returns wistfully. 

When we enter the Age of Serialism and come to Inscape (the title comes from Gerard Manley Hopkins) we find Copland returning to his own serial technique - that of the Piano Variations - but fusing it with the serial techniques of Schoenberg and his disciples. I chose Inscape rather than Connotations because it is more representative than Connotations in trying to keep tonality in play while simultaneously writing 12-note music - and also because I prefer it! Those twelve notes are all packed into the open chord before two-line writing begins - writing that does sometimes sound like the Copland of the open prairies. It changes places with further assertions of dissonant chords of the kind that recall the abstract urban landscape of the Piano Variations. Though he is wearing someone else's suit to a certain extent, Inscape still sounds like true Copland. Serial music seems to be plummeting out of fashion at a moment - not that Copland's serial works were ever really in fashion! - and part of me regrets that Copland felt he had to pursue the 12-tone path, but Inscape is a grand and often beautiful work and I'm glad he wrote it. 

None of these scores gets played very often in the United Kingdom, which is a shame. Radio producers and concerto programmes here should look beyond El Salon Mexico and the three great ballets (Billy the Kid, Rodeo and Appalachian Spring)!

Symphony for the Common Man

Those of you with a literary bent will know of the urge to hail 'The Great American Novel'. There doesn't seem to be quite the clamour to hail 'The Great American Symphony', but when people bring the matter up it usually seems (from British shores) to boil down to a pair of Thirds - those of Roy Harris and Aaron Copland (1900-1990). (Braver souls have been know to posit a symphony by Charles Ives, usually the gloriously strange Fourth). It's the Copland piece that's the subject of this post. [Sadly there's no full performance on YouTube yet].

The 40-minute work has always divided opinion. It came at the end of the Second World War and was a sort of victory symphony "intended to reflect the euphoric spirit of the country at the time" (in Copland's own words). Some critics at the time found it bombastic, especially the ending; the public loved it though. At about the same time that Copland was composing it, the Soviet Union's own expectations of an heroic, celebratory symphony from one of its two great composers, Shostakovich, had just being dashed. They got their man's delightfully cheeky Ninth instead. Copland's Third was, ironically, much more in the spirit of what they'd been expecting.

That said, this symphony could not sound more American. That's because it's the culmination of Copland's 'Americana' style, made perfect in those three magical ballets, Billy the Kid, Rodeo and (one of the first pieces of classical music I fell in love with) Appalachian Spring. That style is

characterised by simple themes, vital rhythms (in fast sections), bright colours, transparently scoring, slow-changing harmonies and a strong flavouring of folk-inspired (or folk-like) melodies, conjuring up a spirit of wide open spaces and optimism. The symphony famously finds a home for Copland's most famous piece from his 'Americana' period, Fanfare for the Common Man.

The symphony opens in the spirit of Appalachian Spring with peaceful pastoral music. A simple theme on violins and woodwinds unfolds, punctuated with what sound like 'amens' from the brass. This is a beautiful opening and, to my mind, only the movement's prairie-like closing pages can equal it for beauty. Wait awhile (as the theme proliferates) and the trombones invade this harmonically clear (largely diatonic) world, introducing a theme with harmonically ambiguous (chromatic) elements, whose opening three notes pre-echo the Fanfare theme to come, but darkly. That three note- figure drawn from the Fanfare is, in the spirit of many a symphonic composer, made to act like a seed for much of the thematic material of the symphony. Here it reaches a menacing climax (or so I hear it) before pastoral music returns. The menacing music is not yet finished though, for it soon re-enters, glinting with percussion and ringing like vast bells (another highlight of the movement). The movement grinds out a huge climax before ebbing, as if with a sigh of relief, back into pastoral lyricism, first glowing then as spare as a wide open prairie.

The second movement Scherzo begins with a mighty thwack. Here we get the colourful Copland of the boisterous sections of the great ballets. The brass blare out a new theme based on the Fanfare figure and a lively dance ensues. Is it too brash, too blatant, too populist for its own good? Some critics certainly think so, but it's exciting and fun and the lyrical Trio section is a delight, providing a complete contrast by singing out a lovely folk-song-like melody, gently but warmly. The main section sneaks back in on piano, but there's nothing sneaky about the movement's big finish.

The slow movement (nothing on YouTube yet to link to) begins with another variant of the Fanfare theme, played in a very high register by the violins. This unearthly, beautiful fugue eventually becomes human with some gorgeous, characteristic Copland harmonies but those harmonies quickly congeal into something tense and knotty. A reassuring hymn-like theme enters and then dies away as the flute begins to sing a simple, folk-like tune. This flute melody is the movement's main theme. Clouds vanish, the pace picks up and we seem to be revisiting the bright-eyed dances of Appalachian Spring for a few minutes. A cloud then passes over (along with a little polytonality - music playing simultaneously in different keys) and the music become veiled in mystery again, as it began.

The Finale follows straight on (a lovely touch). It begins with the Fanfare for the Common Man. It's not a wholesale exporting-in of the original piece (from the early days of the war) but a re-working of it, beginning quietly on woodwinds before bursting forth in full-throated glory. It stirs the spirit. What does Copland do with it, having presented it? He begins it again very quietly, and an oboe sings a new tune over it delightfully. Other winds join it, like a dawn chorus. The movement dances with joy, lively syncopations gaining a grip on the music soon after, and reaches an exuberant climax. Fanfares resound and a fantasy of such figures and further bird-like figuration leads to the introduction of a new folk-song-like tune of considerable charm, gently swaying, softly syncopated. The pace quickens as the happy dancing builds to...well, to what? I won't tell you what it builds to, but it's very unexpected. What do you make of this unexpected thing? Does it fit the movement? Another magical fantasy, much like the one that followed the exuberant climax, leads to the closing pages where the Fanfare rings out and Copland builds a succession of grandiose climaxes until the most grandiose of all brings the symphony to an end. Too grandiose? Surely not for a Mahler-saturated age that can take all manner of bombast.

The Great American Symphony? Well, certainly a great American symphony.