Lyrical Landscapes: Mahler, Walton, & Clair de lune
What to listen for
Clair de lune: Stokowski’s opulent arrangement uses a full complement of winds, including four flutes, with a large string section complete with harp.
Rückert-Lieder: Notice how Mahler skillfully deploys the resources of a large orchestra to create an intimate chamber music sound that never drowns out the soloist.
Belshazzar’s Feast: Walton brings the drama of the text to life with a massive ensemble that includes two mixed choruses, two brass bands, and a large orchestra, plus a baritone soloist.
Other works by these composers
Debussy: Suite bergamasque, L’isle joyeuse
Mahler: Kindertotenlieder, Das Lied von der Erde
Walton: In Honor of the City of London
Claude Debussy (orch. Stokowski): Clair de lune
Composer: born August 22, 1862, St. Germain-en-Laye, France; died March 25, 1918, Paris
Work composed: 1890, rev. 1905; originally for solo piano
World premiere: undocumented
Instrumentation: 4 flutes, oboe, English horn, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, horn, 2 trumpets, marimba, vibraphone, electric guitar, harp, and strings
Estimated duration: 6 minutes
Claude Debussy was an unknown 28-year-old composer when he composed the first version of his four-movement Suite bergamasque for solo piano in 1890. Fifteen years later, he had achieved both critical and popular renown as the composer of Pelléas et Mélisande, Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune, and other major works.
In 1905, Debussy’s publisher, Jacques Durand, saw an opportunity to capitalize on Debussy’s fame and asked the composer to submit all his early piano music for publication. The Debussy of 1905 was a vastly different composer from the Debussy of 1890. Stylistically, Suite bergamasque is a juvenile work, very different from Debussy’s more recent compositions. Before sending the Suite to Durand, Debussy made significant revisions, but the exact nature of most of the changes he made is undocumented. This leaves us with a tantalizing question: which Debussy endures in this work, the young journeyman or the mature composer?
The Suite bergamasque pays homage to the keyboard music of 17th and 18th-century French composers; it abounds with the hollow modal harmonies of medieval and Renaissance music, and three of its four movements began as Renaissance and Baroque dances: Prélude (originally titled Pavane), Menuet and Passepied (a sailor’s hornpipe from Brittany).
Clair de lune (Moonlight) is unique among the four movements in several ways. First, it does not reference old-fashioned French music; instead, its pentatonic (five-note) melodies and harmonies come from the scales of the Javanese music Debussy first encountered when he attended the 1889 World’s Fair in Paris. Unlike the other movements, Clair de lune is not a dance, but an ethereal interlude of exquisite beauty unmarred by either time or overexposure. It is also Debussy’s most popular and recognizable composition.
Legendary conductor Leopold Stokowski orchestrated Clair de lune and recorded it with the Philadelphia Orchestra. In the liner notes, he wrote, “Debussy was outstanding among the impressionist composers of France and this is among his most sensitive poems in tone. Extremely delicate, it suggests by a few notes a whole world of mystery and nocturnal beauty.”
Gustav Mahler: Rückert-Lieder
Composer: Born July 7, 1860, Kalischt, [now Kaliště, Jihlava in the Czech Republic], Bohemia; died May 18, 1911, Vienna
Work composed: 1901-02
World premiere: The world premiere of the four songs published in 1905 was conducted by Mahler himself at a concert in the Brahms-Saal of the Vienna Musikverein (29 January 1905).
Instrumentation: solo voice, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, English horn, oboe d’amore, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, contrabassoon, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, harp, piano, celesta, and strings
Estimated duration: 18 minutes
In both music and life, Gustav Mahler was a relentless seeker. His reflections on existential and spiritual questions influenced his choice of the texts he made into songs, particularly the song-symphony Das Lied von der Erde, and his settings of works by the 19th-century German poet Friedrich Rückert (1788-1866).
Songs were an essential component of Mahler’s output, and he composed them throughout his life. Mahler also adapted some of his songs into his first four symphonies, known as the Wunderhorn symphonies, named for the collection of poems Des Knaben Wunderhorn (The Boy’s Magic Horn) from which Mahler set a number of texts.
Mahler had a particular affinity for the poems of Friedrich Rückert (1788-1866), a professor of Oriental languages. His study of Asian tongues inspired Rückert to write poetry using the forms and styles of Asian and Middle Eastern literature. Rückert also excelled at the hyper-romantic German lyric style of his own time. For his part, Mahler was drawn to Rückert’s subjects as well as his words, and Mahler’s settings of Rückert’s poems are among the finest examples of German lieder.
Unlike the Kindertotenlieder, a group of Rückert’s poems Mahler made into a song cycle in 1904, the Rückert-Lieder are not thematically linked and Mahler did not specify the order in which they should be sung. Mahler wrote four of the five songs in the summer of 1901, and the fifth, “Liebst du um Schönheit” (Do You Love for Beauty), an intimate expression of love for his new wife, Alma, in the summer of 1902. “Blicke mir nicht in die Lieder” (Do Not Look at my Songs) is a lighthearted commentary on the mystery of the creative process: “I can’t even trust myself/To watch them grow/Your curiosity is a betrayal!/Bees, when they build their cells/Also don’t let anyone observe them/even themselves.” In “Ich atmet’ einen linden Duft!” (I breathed a gentle fragrance), the scent of a lime tree becomes synonymous with love. “Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen” (I Have Become Lost to the World), considered by many Mahler’s finest song, expresses the quintessentially Romantic notion of spiritual and emotional withdrawal from the troubles of the world. The dark solitude of “Um Mitternacht” (At Midnight) is conveyed through a minor key and solemn tempo, while the joy and poignancy of “Liebst du um Schönheit” captures Mahler’s passion of Alma and his longing for love and acceptance.
William Walton: Belshazzar’s Feast
Composer: born March 29, 1902, Oldham, in Lancashire, England; died March 8, 1983, on the island of Ischia, off the coast of Naples in southern Italy
Work composed: 1929. Commissioned by the BBC.
World premiere: October 8, 1931; Malcolm Sargent led the Leeds Festival choir and orchestra
Instrumentation: solo baritone, double SATB chorus and semi-chorus, piccolo, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 3 clarinets (1 doubling E-flat clarinet and 1 doubling bass clarinet, respectively), alto saxophone, 2 bassoons, contrabassoon, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 2 trombones, bass trombone, tuba, timpani, anvil, bass drum, castanets, cymbals, glockenspiel, gong, side drum, tambourine, triangle, tenor drum, whip, wood block, xylophone, 2 harps, organ, and strings 2 brass bands, each with 3 trumpets, 2 tenor trombones, bass trombone, and tuba
Estimated duration: 35 minutes
The music of William Walton, though not as well known in America as that of his countrymen Edward Elgar, Ralph Vaughan Williams, and Benjamin Britten, is well-crafted, colorful and deeply emotive. He was most influenced by the innovations of Igor Stravinsky and Sergei Prokofiev, as well as American jazz, Belshazzar’s Feast is full of energy, fresh and unexpected harmonies, and propulsive rhythms.
In 1929, the BBC commissioned the 27-year-old Walton, then a rising star among young British composers, to write a small choral work. Walton’s close friend Osbert Sitwell created a libretto from texts in the Bible’s Books of Daniel, Isaiah, and Revelations about Belshazzar, the last Babylonian king. His tyranny over the enslaved Israelites eventually resulted in his death and the Israelites’ freedom. Walton was drawn to the story but struggled over the music. “I got landed on the word gold,” Walton later recalled. “I was there from May to December, perched, unable to move either right or left or up or down.” As he worked, Walton kept enlarging the size of the ensemble, until it eclipsed the BBC orchestra’s modest resources. The Leeds Festival, which was better equipped to mount such a large work, agreed to premiere the massive 35-minute cantata. Critics and audiences alike were enthusiastic and Belshazzar’s Feast soon became a regular addition to the modern choral repertoire.
Walton structured the music into one large movement containing three sections joined together by the solo baritone, who sings unaccompanied recitatives that move the narrative forward. In the first section we hear Elijah mourning the destruction of Jerusalem, and his fateful prophecy dooming the Israelites to slavery in Babylon. The baritone describes Babylon’s magnificence and suggests its inevitable decay.
The second section features Belshazzar’s decadent feast heralded by a flamboyant parade of pagan gods. The Israelites look on, helpless, as Belshazzar and his guests use and desecrate the Hebrews’ holy objects. The baritone interrupts with a hair-raising description of “the writing on the wall.” As the feast grows more debauched, a mysterious hand inscribes the doom-laden fate of Belshazzar and his kingdom. All of a sudden, Belshazzar dies – the chorus cries out “Slain!” – and then launches into the joyous celebration of the final section, in which Babylon is destroyed and the Israelites are freed from bondage. A glorious pull-out-all-the-stops “Alleluia!” brings the music to a jubilant conclusion.
© Elizabeth Schwartz