In an effort to continue my recovery I am staying home again today. I am missing 2 more things today because I cannot be sick this week. I have to make it through the rest of my work week and the PSSO rehearsal tomorrow night. So, in the mean time, here is some more program information for the PSSO concert coming up:
Variations on a Theme by Haydn, Op. 56a (1873)
Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)
Scored for: piccolo, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, contrabassoon, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, timpani, triangle, and strings.
Johannes Brahms was a German composer and pianist of the Romantic period, but his compositions did not fall in line with the Wagnerian style of composing. Brahms' musical was more classical than romantic. His music was classical in the sense that his music uses forms and orders from the Classical period. Many people see Brahms as the premier composer of "pure music" (music that is composed for the sake of music with no story attached to it) as opposed to the programmatic music employed by those associated with the Wagner camp (including Franz, Liszt, Gustav Mahler and Anton Bruckner). One supporter of Brahm's music was Robert Schumann and his wife Clara. When Brahms first played his C minor Piano Sonata for Robert Schumann, Schumann rushed out of the room mid chord. He returned with Clara saying, "Here, dear Clara, you shall hear music such as you have never heard before." When Schumann fell ill Brahms returned to comfort his old friend and support Clara, who Brahms had secretly been in love with since their first meeting. As Robert's health dwindled Clara stayed strong and stayed by her husband, never succumbing to Brahms' infatuation. It is rumored that once Robert Schumann died in July of 1856, Brahms proposed to Clara and she turned him down. In any case, their final meeting was the fall of 1895. They parted ways laughing in high spirits and Clara died the next year in May.
The inspiration for Variations on a Theme by Haydn came from an unfinished set of instrument suites by Haydn that a friend of Brahms' had run across while doing research for a Haydn biography. Brahms wrote down the theme from a Partita in B flat labeled "Choral St. Antoni." In 2 years he finished the orchestral version of the Haydn Variations and the version for 2 pianos, which he played with Clara Schumann in August of 1873 before it was published in November. Unknown to Brahms when he copied down the "Choral St. Antoni" theme, the music was probably not composed by Haydn. Musicologists can offer up no definite answer as to who the composer is, although some believe the theme to be from an old Austrian folk song or from a student of Haydn's, Ignace Joseph Pleyel.
The Haydn Variations begins with a theme and is followed by eight variations and a finale. The structure of the opening theme has irregular five-measure phrases. The following eight variations keep this five-measure phrase structure and the key differences between each variation lies in the mood: thoughtful, playful, gentle, and sometimes sensual (which Brahms was not known for using very often in his music). The finale is a pasacaglia, in which a phrase is repeated in the lower voices for the duration of the piece while the upper voices vary, and the basses play the five-measure ostinato based on the original theme. Eventually the string sing out the return of the original theme before the woodwinds overtake it with streams of scales.
