In our last installment of “Playing in the Orchestra from A to Z,” we delved into the mysteries of the mute. And what amazing (if understated) discoveries me made there! After writing that blog, next on my agenda was N for Nerves. Fittingly, this topic gave me cold feet. What if my blog was unable to fully explain and solve the age-old problem of performance anxiety? Well, never fear; in the near future I plan to stare down my perfectionism and write a blog on stage fright that will free us all of it paralyzing grasp forever!
Luckily, another N topic has presented itself as timely: Nationalism in classical music. This weekend we are playing Sibelius Symphony #5, an unusual piece in its structure and sound world. Sibelius’s best known piece is probably his symphonic poem “Finlandia,” which evokes the oppression of czarist Russia and a prayer for freedom. Sibelius’s symphonies by contrast are “absolute music” in the sense that they don’t tell a story or evoke specific images. Nevertheless, it’s not difficult when listening to parts of Symphony #5 to imagine the icy landscape of the composer’s Finland, insects buzzing over the tundra, or majestic mountains and coastlines. (BTW the insect effect is achieved by repeated tremolo-like string parts. At times one could wish they’d had Orkin in early 20th-century Finland.)
Music that reflected nationalism really took off in the 19th century, for a few reasons. First, Romanticism as a general movement in art concerned itself with folk traditions of the “common people,” seeing them as natural, spontaneous, innocent, and even closer to the divine. Secondly, the French Revolution spread the values of freedom and national self-determination around a Europe that had been oppressed by absolute monarchs for centuries. The 1815 Congress of Vienna attempted to turn back the clock on this nationalistic spirit, but the genie was out of the bottle. Since that time, many composers have used their music to express the idioms of their homeland and pride in its values and culture.
A famous example is Bedrich’s Smetana’s “The Moldau.” This video features beautiful images of Prague.
There was a sort of rage for things Hungarian in the 19th century, and the German Brahms jumped on board with his Hungarian Dances.
In the 20th century Bela Bartok studied the folk music of his native Hungary and incorporated it into his compositions. The last movement of the Viola Concerto, for example, resembles a raucous peasant dance. When I was learning it, my teacher would hop around the room singing “Dance, gyspy!” BTW, the violist in this clip is amazing! If you watch any of these videos, watch this one… Viola Power!
As we know, the Czech composer Dvorak lived in the United States for three years, where he took inspiration from African-American and Native-American music. He wrote some of his best-known music there, including the Cello Concerto and the New World Symphony with it’s famous “Goin’ Home” slow movement. He also lived in a Czech-speaking community in Iowa for a while, where he wrote the American String quartet. In its last movement you can almost visualize cowboys riding across the prairie. One teacher I had directed my quartet to play the staccato chords like “Indian hatchet chops” (this was before political correctness).
America’s homegrown musical style is jazz, of course, and Gershwin is the one who introduced it to the concert hall with “Rhapsody in Blue.” His “Lullaby” also makes use of the syncopated rhythms of jazz and popular dance.
Zzzzzzzzzz…… well after that I think I may be relaxed enough to face writing about nerves. Till then, dear readers.
