The year 1809, the same year Beethoven composed his fifth and final piano concerto, saw the invasion of Vienna by Napoleon. Beethoven’s earlier admiration of Napoleon had entirely evaporated, and the invasion caused Beethoven fierce anger and physical discomfort. The nickname of “Emperor” for this concerto was possibly added by a publisher. Beethoven himself would have protested this title, judging from his violent treatment of the dedication of another great work in the same key, the Eroica Symphony. Perhaps because of the war, this work had to wait two years for its first performance.

Beethoven, who played the solo part himself on all his earlier piano concertos, was too deaf to perform in public. The premiere took place in Leipzig in 1811, with F. Schneider as soloist. It was enthusiastically received. However, its first performance in Vienna, with Beethoven’s brilliant pupil Carl Czerny as soloist, was a failure. The audience was probably looking for pianistic showmanship rather than music of deep emotion and feeling. A cadenza-like piano solo opens the majestic first movement, which is cast in traditional sonata-allegro form. The second movement is lyrical and serene. Toward the end of this movement, a mysterious new phrase rises on the piano. Take it as either drama or Beethoven’s humor, the phrase bursts instantly into the riotously exciting and energetic theme of the rondo finale.

Dmitri Shostakovich belonged to the first generation of artists who grew up and were trained under the Soviet regime. Born in St. Petersburg he witnessed the Russian Revolution, and his life thereafter was a series of constant misfortune, illness and privation. He entered the St. Petersburg Conservatory at age 13 and studied piano and composition with Maximilian Steinberg, the son-in-law of Nicholai Rimsky-Korsakov. Shostakovich’s Symphony no.1, written as a graduation exercise at the age of 19, brought him international fame, and at this phase of his career, he began writing music for movies, plays and ballets, as well as two symphonies and operas. His opera, Lady Macbeth of Mzensk, was produced in 1934 to great acclaim. But in 1936, Stalin was said to be infuriated by the opera. Not long afterward, the Russian newspaper Pravda condemned the opera calling it “a muddle instead of music.” It also attacked Shostakovich, calling him leftist, petty-bourgoisie and formalist. He was told by the government to write propaganda music, in a style understood by the masses. His Symphony no.4, already in rehearsal, was withdrawn from performance.

Shostakovich retreated from public life nearly two years for stern self-examination. He re-emerged in 1937 with his Symphony no.5. Across the score was written, “Creative reply of a Soviet artist to just criticism.” The work was a triumphant success and Pravda praised it lavishly. Shostakovich’s personal victory was followed by a greater one when his Piano Quintet of 1940 was awarded the Stalin Prize of a hundred thousand rubles. Since its premiere in 1937, the Fifth Symphony has been a one of the most popular of 20th-century symphonies. It is a bold, epic work with striking, dramatic, rhythmic vigor as well as lyrical intensity. The work is mildly dissonant, traditional in outlook, and shows influences of Tchaikovsky and Mahler. The composer said of this symphony of his, “The theme of my symphony is the stabilization of a personality. In the center of this composition, which is conceived lyrically from beginning to end, I saw a man with all his experiences. The finale resolves the tragically tense impulses of the earlier movements into optimism and the joy of living.” The first movement is immediately dramatic and jagged, contrasted by a soaring second melody. The themes are developed with a constant build-up of tension and drama. The second movement, a scherzo, evokes the spirit of an Austrian Landler, with a touch of the grotesque. The third movement is introspective, tragically tense, and filled with sustained tension. The finale, cast in rondo form and makes references to earlier movements, begins dark in color and propulsive in energy and rhythm, and progresses through tumult and strife to triumphal fulfillment, bringing the work to a grandiose and heroic end.

The great Austrian composer Gustav Mahler was also one of the greatest conductors, having served as music director of such establishments as the Vienna Court Opera, the Metropolitan Opera, and the New York Philharmonic. As a composer, Mahler was the last of the German Romantic symphonists. His vast orchestral structures are filled with personal feelings, questionings, doubts, and struggles with spiritual issues. His music not only can be extravagant in emotional outpourings, but also noble, profound and intense. The first several years of the 20th century were eventful for Mahler, perhaps the best and happiest of his life. He had been director of the Vienna State Opera since 1897, and conductor of the Vienna Philharmonic for a few years as well. He traveled widely, and wrote his middle symphonies, numbers 5 through 7, and his monumental 8th also. He did suffer a near fatal hemorrhage in early 1901. After this brush with death, which perhaps made his life and music somewhat gloomy, he embarked on his Fifth Symphony. Late in the same year, he met Alma Schindler, whom Mahler married in just about four months. The Fifth Symphony was completed in mid-1902, during the summer after the wedding. The first performance, however, did not take place until 1904, in Cologne, Germany.

The Fifth Symphony may be described as the most Viennese of Mahler’s symphonic output. Unlike its three predecessors, the work does not call for vocal forces, although its songful qualities are plentiful, and thematically the Symphony is related to several of his songs. At the same time, the composer had rejected any programmatic descriptions for this gigantic work, resolving to let the music speak for itself. One writer wrote, “Here’s music wild, heroic, exuberant, fiery, solemn, tender, it covers a whole gamut of feelings. But it is ‘merely’ music.”

The Symphony is comprised of three major parts. The first part consists of two movements, which are closely related thematically. One might consider the first movement, “Funeral March”, as a vast, expansive introduction of the stormy second movement. The first movement opens with a trumpet call that reminds one of the “Fate” motif in Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. The solemn march is contrasted by music that is wild and intense as well as quiet and meditative. The second movement is savage and exhilarating, even banal at times. However, the music is not stormy all the time. There are themes that are consoling and poetic. Towards the end, there is music of chorale-like majesty and ominous mysteriousness. The second major part consists of one single movement: an elaborate Scherzo that is highly charged with energy. Mahler referred to it as “dancing stars” or “comet’s tail.” The waltz (or Landler)-like movement features the solo horn, and the music is mostly boisterous, though there are plenty of contrasting sections that provide a poignant or twilight mood. The third major part contains two movements. Again, one might consider the “Adagietto” fourth movement as a prelude to the “Rondo Finale” fifth movement. The music to the “Adagietto” is filled with yearning. Some might relate it to a dirge. Perhaps it is more appropriate to consider it as a declaration of love sent to Alma, Mahler’s new bride. The opening of the “Rondo Finale” has been described as a song-contest between a cuckoo and a nightingale, judged by a donkey. This exuberant movement proceeds on with vigorous themes that return several times (thus the “rondo” form), contrasted by cheerful, masterly and brilliant displays of musical polyphony. The chorale theme of the second movement returns, closing the Symphony in an exultant and triumphant fashion.

Carl Orff, born into a military family in the Bavarian city of Munich, was passionately interested in music, words and theater from childhood. Though he had lessons on piano, organ and cello, and some guidance in composition, he was essentially self-taught. Prolific as a composer, he also worked as a theater conductor and coach and devoted time studying Renaissance, Baroque and African music. In 1924, he co-founded a school for music, gymnastics and dance. Convinced that everybody possess an innate musical ability which needs to be nurtured from a young age, Orff developed a music teaching method, children’s musical instruments and new concept of musical performance.

His method (popularly known as the “Orff Method”), theory and exercises were published in the massive Orff-Schulwerk (curriculum) subtitled Music for Children. The instruments he developed, in the percussion family, are known as “Orff Instruments”. His concept of music performance was that of total theater, combining music, words, visual designs, movement and dance to overwhelm the senses. His concept came to fruition with his own Carmina burana, which has been categorized as a scenic, dramatic, or secular cantata. Orff’s cantata is based on a collection of medieval poetry in Latin, German and French written by people who stood outside of respectable society: minstrels, goliards, wandering students and scholars, vagabond poets and defrocked clerics who are remembered for their satirical verses and poems. In the early 19th century, the Bavarian monasteries were secularized, and the contents of the Benediktbeuern Abbey library, which included over 200 such poems compiled over the centuries, went to the Court Library in Munich.

In 1847, a modern edition of the poetry was found, published and given the title Carmina burana (songs from Beuern, or Bavaria). Written in 1936 and first performed in 1937 in Frankfurt by the Frankfort Opera., Orff’s cantata Carmina burana was an immediate success. However, the time and place surrounding the premiere performances also put the composer and the work in political controversy. After World War II, the popularity of the work continued to rise in the classical music realm, and crossed over to pop culture as well. This striking music displays a directness of speech and popular access. Polyphony, harmonic complexities and development in the classical sense are conspicuously absent. Melodically, Orff was often influenced by, but not quoting from, the music of the Middle Ages, Renaissance and early Baroque. Rhythm is often the primary musical element.

Notable also is the use of percussion instruments. The text covers a wide range of secular topics: the fickleness of fortune and wealth, the transitory nature of life, the joy of the return of spring, and the pleasures of drinking, gluttony, gambling and lust. The familiar opening movement O Fortuna, an invocation to the Queen of Fortune, is followed by a lament about fate. The main body of the poetry is then divided into three major sections. The first, Primo vere (in springtime), with its sub-section Uf dem Anger (on the lawn), contains verses about pastoral simplicity, youth, love and dancing. The second, In Taberna (in the tavern), deals with wine and drunken musings, feasting, gambling and debauchery. The third and longest section, Cour d’amours (court of love), deals with love and passions, both the chaste and the not. The section ends with Blanziflor et Helena, a praise to Venus. The “Wheel of Fortune” comes full circle as the opening movement O Fortuna returns to close the cantata.

Peter I. Tchaikovsky (1840-1893)

Though he started studying music quite early, Tchaikovsky was trained in law. He gave up his job as a government clerk to pursue music at the St. Petersburg Conservatory. Later, he taught at the Moscow Conservatory. In 1876, Tchaikovsky acquired the support of an unusual benefactress, Nedezhda von Meck, a widow who had inherited an immense fortune and who admired Tchaikovsky’s music. She arranged to pay him a fixed annuity so that he could devote himself completely to composition. Their relationship, lasting 13 years, was carried on entirely by letter. They agreed never to meet, and the promise was kept. His fame as a composer grew, and his traveling took him all over Europe and to America, where he conducted at the opening of Carnegie Hall in 1891. He died in 1893, a victim of a cholera epidemic.

Tchaikovsky wrote his popular Violin Concerto in 1878, completing it in less than a month. It was originally dedicated to the famous Russian violinist and teacher, Leopold Auer, who pronounced it unplayable. Tchaikovsky, becoming irritated, asked another violinist, Adolf Brodsky, to perform it. Brodsky, to whom Tchaikovsky eventually rededicated the Concerto, gave the work its premiere with the Vienna Philharmonic in 1881. Even Brodsky declared that the solo part taxed his technical skill to the utmost. The critics at the first performance did not like the work either. But the work persisted, and is now a favorite in the violin repertoire. Auer, who initially declined the concerto, later made revisions, and became its champion. Typical of most of Tchaikovsky’s music, the Concerto is filled with attractive melodies: romantic, sentimental, melancholic, and often vigorous, heroic and exalting, as shown in the first movement. The second movement, which Tchaikovsky finished in one day, is a lyrical and nostalgic song for muted solo violin. The whirlwind-like finale is a lively dance filled with wild Slavic temperament.

In the Third Symphony, Saint-Saëns departs from the normal symphonic form by casting the work in two movements. The first movement consists of two parts: a restless section in fully developed sonata form followed by a lofty slow section. The second movement begins with a sturdy scherzo alternating with a nimble trio, followed by a vigorous finale. The Symphony is dedicated to Franz Liszt and borrows from Liszt the idea of theme transformation, whereby a basic theme or motto is used throughout the whole work, changing its character to suit its surroundings. The work is thus superbly integrated. The Symphony was commissioned by the London Philharmonic Society. The composer conducted the premiere performance in 1886, to critical acclaim. It is scored for triple woodwinds, brass, percussion, strings, piano duet, and a prominent organ part, hence the nickname.