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About the Music

Franz Schubert (1797-1828): Symphony No. 5 in B-flat Major, D. 485
Instrumentation: Scored for flute, pairs of oboes, bassoons, horns, and strings
Composed: 1816
Duration: 27 minutes

By the age of twenty, the Viennese-born Franz Schubert had already amassed a lifetime’s worth of work: singspiels (operettas), choral music, a half-dozen symphonies, various overtures and concert pieces, scores of solo piano, string sonatas, trios, and quartets, not to mention some 150 songs for voice and piano composed in the year 1815 alone! His modestly scored, masterful Fifth Symphony demonstrates both the young composer’s indebtedness to the classical style of Mozart and his already unsurpassed lyrical gifts.

The year 1816 was, for all intents and purposes, an unhappy year in Schubert’s life. Though longing for recognition as a composer, he remained almost unknown outside his cadre of Viennese friends and colleagues, and despite an unrivaled level of productivity, Schubert found himself unable to secure work as a professional musician. To make ends meet, he served as an assistant schoolmaster, though lamenting the time such work stole from his composing. In April, he applied for a post as Director of Music in Laibach but was passed over for another composer of decidedly less ability. Perhaps more disappointing yet, that same April, a friend, acting on Schubert’s behalf, sent Goethe a batch of songs that Schubert had set to the author’s poetry. Included were some of the greatest songs Schubert—or anyone else, for that matter—ever composed, and a strong endorsement by a figure of Goethe’s stature could have significantly altered Schubert’s professional status. Sadly, no word from the famous writer was ever forthcoming. The year was marked by other critical events: a hoped-for marriage fell through, Schubert’s studies with Antonio Salieri concluded, and he resigned his teaching post. Thus began Schubert’s reliance on the goodwill of friends and acquaintances (which included offering the composer free lodging). Absolved of financial burdens, Schubert gave himself over completely to the world of musical composition.

Such was the backdrop for the Symphony in B-flat, which was dashed off over several weeks and completed at the start of October 1816. The occasion for its composition appears to have been a performance at the musically flourishing residence of Otto Hatwig, which may help to account for Schubert’s chamber-sized instrumentation. But it was Mozart who most profoundly affected Schubert’s thinking at the time. Just three months prior, Schubert penned the following into his diary: “O Mozart! Immortal Mozart! What countless impressions of a brighter, better life hast thou stamped upon our souls!” Schubert had Mozart’s Symphony No. 40 specifically in mind while at work on his B-flat symphony, evident, for instance, in Schubert’s modest instrumentation (which, like Mozart, included a single flute but neither trumpets nor timpani) and his use of a minor-mode Minuet.

From the time he awoke until he went to bed, melodies flowed unceasingly from Schubert’s pen, which he scribbled down on whatever was at hand—manuscript paper, an envelope, a napkin. This lyric quality dominates his B-flat symphony from its very opening notes. Four gracious wind chords delicately introduce the sparkling theme of the cut-time Allegro, music, in the words of historian Brian Newbold, that pulses “with Mozartian esprit and Schubertian magic.” A strongly aggressive transition finds full cadence, complete with a Mozart-inspired breath of silence, setting up the secondary theme, a suave idea stated by the violins and quickly usurped by the winds. The movement continues with thrilling passages, including brazen tonal shifts, dramatically climbing bass lines, and an exhilarating coda.

If the simple perfection of the Andante reveals just how much the composer learned growing up and studying in Vienna, the wealth of color and mood found in the movement’s ever-surprising harmonies are vintage Schubert. A middle section is marked by lovely dialogue between the violins and winds, but the tranquil atmosphere is eclipsed by a dramatic series of chords, the tension of which is only resolved with the sublimely embellished return of the opening material.

Although Schubert labeled his third movement “Menuetto”, there is little to suggest the atmosphere of the aristocratic ballroom. To the contrary, he delivers a musical picture of the Austrian countryside, the boisterous opening theme perhaps inspired by heavy footwork of the male peasants, amidst a stormy rural landscape (complete with the plaintive oboe calls) and the pastoral trio, whose rustic setting is underscored by a folksy, if subtle, drone bass.

The finale’s delightful opening evokes a youthful, innocent world, even if both subjects—the first joyful, the second enchanting—take unexpected detours into the darker, dramatic realm of B-flat minor. By the time Schubert recapitulates his ideas, he must have felt he had said enough, for he completely dispenses with a coda. The result is a picture-perfect conclusion to a model symphony, which would certainly have left Mozart, his Viennese idol, proud.

Kurt Weill (1900-1950): The Seven Deadly Sins
Instrumentation: Scored for soprano, vocal quartet (two tenors, bass and baritone), two flutes (with piccolo), oboe, bassoon, pairs of horns and trumpets, tuba, timpani, percussion, harp, piano, banjo, guitar, and strings
Composed: 1933
Duration: 35 minutes

When we think of the great musical collaborators for the stage, the pairings Ira and George Gershwin, Gilbert and Sullivan, Rogers and Hammerstein, or Lerner and Lowe probably spring to mind, at least among an “established” generation of listeners. That partnership pantheon should also include Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht, despite their fruitful time together lasting only a few short years. Weill and Brecht burst onto the scene in 1928, with the creation of Die Dreigroschenoper, The Threepenny Opera, a work that brought Weill longed-for financial independence and briefly allowed him to turn himself entirely to his craft. The journey had been long in coming.

Born in the German town of Dessau to a Jewish cantor, Weill’s musical talents were recognized early and by the age of 18, he was enrolled at the Berlin’s Hochschule für Musik. However, the hardships in the wake of The Great War forced Weill to return home and help support his struggling family. Back in Dessau, he worked as a répéteur at the local theater, composing all the while. He was eventually able to return to his studies in Berlin, where he was accepted into the limited class of the highly sought-after pedagogue Ferrucio Busoni, who, along with Mahler, Schoenberg, and Stravinsky, proved among Weill’s strongest musical influences.

Early on, Weill was forced to put his talents to work, first as a beer-tavern pianist and then as a teacher himself, but all that changed with the Berlin triumph of The Threepenny Opera. Though treated to an initially poor reception, the work slowly gained success, as theaters across Germany began vying for performances. By the time Weill was forced to flee Nazi Germany, the work had played over 10,000 times on European stages! Weill’s association with Brecht lasted for some three years, leading to the musical Happy End (1929) and the opera Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny (1930), until politics brought both Brecht and Weill (a Jew as well as a modernist) into the Nazi crosshairs.

The pair met up again in Paris, where they were commissioned by the wealthy Englishman Edward James, to create Die sieben Todsünden, The Seven Deadly Sins. James saw a strong resemblance between Weill’s wife, Lotta Lenya (whose later silver-screen roles included the sadistic Rosa Klebb in the James Bond film From Russia with Love) and his own, the ballet dancer Tilly Losch. Thus, from the start, James’ commission was to feature a split-personality plot. The score that emerged, which the composer regarded as among his best, wove together Weill’s love of melody, musical irony, command of form (waltz, march, saltarello, etc.), and brilliant feel for orchestration. The plot’s overt social commentary, meanwhile, proved a fitting close to the Brechtian chapter of his life.

Weill and Lotte moved to New York in 1935, where the refugee composer made a study of the American musical and even collaborated, albeit briefly with both Gershwin and Hammerstein. But despite some favorable results, Weill’s artistic temperament was not for the American stage, and he never again scored the brilliant success he all-too-briefly claimed in pre-Nazi Germany. The stamina required to attempt to re-invent himself on American shores ultimately proved more than Weill’s heart could handle and he died of a heart attack shortly after his fiftieth birthday. Like so many of his German-Jewish contemporaries, in the end, Weill was both a product and a victim of his time.

The score to the ballet chanté or sung ballet, The Seven Deadly Sins, was dispatched between April and May 1933. In so many words, it tells the story of Anna, whose split personality is reflected in two Annas: Anna I, the practical realist with a conscience, portrayed by the singer, and Anna II, a dancer (whose role tonight will also be taken up by Storm Large), an impulsive beauty. Her exploitive family is sung by a male vocal quartet that serves the function of a Greek chorus, mirroring their hopes and dreams and Anna’s progress, or lack thereof. They send Anna away from their home on the banks of the Mississippi to earn her fortune in the big cities of America—each representing one of the seven sins—in hopes of her earning enough money to build them a house on the river in Louisiana.

At the center of the six numbers (following the Prologue) stands ‘Gluttony,’ for the vocal quartet accompanied only by guitar. The other numbers are scored for orchestra with the addition of banjo, harp, and piano. For those listeners familiar with “Mack the Knife,” arguably Weill’s most famous number from The Threepenny Opera, keep an ear out for reminiscences in the fifth movement (Lust, marked moderato). The work’s “home” key is C major, the “simplest of all keys; perhaps Weill intended for “home” to appear simple while being deceptively complicated, demanding, or ruthless. From there Anna is on her way, a route that will subject her moral, instinctive self to great demands and crises and ultimately sacrifice her “on the altar of a falsely orientated society.”

Anna II attempts to follow her heart but is constantly reined in by Anna I, who, always practical, scolds her other half for committing each of the sins. By the end, Anna has accomplished her goal, having made the necessary money, but at what cost? She had set out free but has returned a slave to society. And, thus, Weill’s compact tragedy comes to an end. If it is not a happy end, who could blame him?

(c) Marc Moskovitz
marcmoskovitz.org