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FREDERIC CHOPIN (1810-1849) Piano Sonata No. 3 in B minor, op. 58 February 26, 2017: Emanuel Ax, piano Until they parted ways in 1847, Chopin and writer George Sand spent most of their summers at Nohant, her country estate, where Chopin composed some of his best works. He completed his Third Piano Sonata, one of the greatest of the Nohant works, during the summer and early fall of 1844—this was before their relationship had soured and altogether one of the happiest periods of his life. Chopin dedicated the Sonata to his pupil and friend Countess Emilie de Perthuis, wife of aide-de-camp Louis-Philippe, who had received the dedication of Chopin’s Opus 24 Mazurkas. Early critics belittled Chopin’s formal technique in his three mature sonatas, which are now considered masterpieces: No. 2 in B-flat minor (which contains the popular Funeral March), the present Sonata, and his last work, the Cello Sonata. More recently his “abnormalities” have come to be appreciated for their supreme ingenuity. In a throwback to certain eighteenth-century sonatas, his first-movement sonata forms begin the return (recapitulation) of the opening section not with the first theme group, but with the second. This allowed him great liberty to treat the first theme with complex contrapuntal working-out in the development section without fear of overexposure. His development sections also show him taking the Romantic fancy for chromatic elaboration to highly original levels. The first movement of the B minor Sonata is packed with ideas. Characteristically in Chopin’s music, certain melodic or figural wisps generate material whose sophisticated kinship crosses sections and movements, and thus provides a kind of unity that lurks beneath the surface. Almost every passage of fast sixteenth notes here in the first movement can be related to the brief cascade at the very outset. Especially striking are the mysterious incarnations in contrary motion, which bring about a grand gesture with a nice harmonic surprise. The lovely second theme with its widely spaced broken-chord accompaniment would seem right at home in one of Chopin’s nocturnes. This is the theme that, after remarkable contrapuntal working-out of the first theme, returns to initiate the recapitulation. Chopin’s Scherzo, placed second as in the Second Sonata, is one of those glistening, feather-light creations that flashes by, interrupted by a much lengthier introspective central section. This centerpiece offers a kind of slow-moving counterpoint over long-held notes that allows the listener to enter a dream world. The Largo begins and ends majestically—a slow march possibly conceived under the same impulse as the Funeral March of the Second Sonata. One senses Chopin’s great love for Italian opera in the singing melodic line with distinctive accompaniment that follows the dramatic unison introduction. Along the way he treats the listener to some remarkable harmonic twists and turns, leading to an exquisite middle section that again lulls one into reverie, and lasts much longer than the opening section or its condensed return. Chopin’s finale takes the form of a rondo—not a lighthearted romp as in Classical-period sonatas, but a surging movement whose refrain gives a feeling of inexorable power. The intervening episodes are relentless in another way, requiring utmost virtuosity to make the right-hand filigree seem effortless. A bravura coda presses the built-up excitement to a dazzling conclusion. © Jane Vial Jaffe Return to Parlance Program Notes

DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH (1906–1975) Sonata for Cello and Piano in d minor, Op. 40 (1934) February 8, 2015 – David Finckel, cello; Wu Han, piano While interpreting the events of a composer’s life as impetus for his creative work is always risky business, one important personal development from Shostakovich’s life around the time of his Cello Sonata nevertheless remains inescapable. In the summer of 1934, Shostakovich fell passionately in love with Yelena Konstaninovskaya, a 20-year-old translator. Much to the dismay of his wife Nina (despite their mutual agreement to an open marriage), the composer spent the majority of their summer holiday writing letter to his young mistress. “There is nothing in you which fails to send a wave of joy and fierce passion inside me when I think of you,” he wrote. “Lyalya, I love you so, I love you so, as nobody ever loved before. My love, my gold, my dearest, I love you so; I lay down my love before you.” William T. Vollman dedicates a chapter of his epic novel Europe Central to the tempting–albeit improbable–influence of the affair with Konstaninovskaya on the music of the Cello Sonata. Though rooted in fancy, Vollman’s poetic assessment of the work nevertheless speaks to its lyrical pathos and sense of romantic abandon: Each of Shostakovich’s symphonies I consider to be a multiply broken bridge, an archipelago of steel trailing off into the river. Opus 40, however, is a house with four rooms……[He] built Opus 40 for her and him to dwell in, and she led him inside. They were going to have an apartment with a dark passageway, then steps and halfsteps. They’d live there, deep below the piano keys in Moscow. Nina could stay in Leningrad… Therefore, Opus 40, and in particular the first movement, composed of firelight and kisses, remains the most romantic thing that Shostakovich ever wrote. Shostakovich and Nina separated, and the composer, as Vollman alludes, remained in Moscow with no definite plans to follow his wife back to Leningrad. It was during this time that work on the Cello Sonata began. By 1935, however, Nina was pregnant with the Shostakoviches’ first child, and the marriage essentially righted itself (which did not preclude later extramarital affairs by both Dmitry and Nina). Shortly after the affair ended, Konstaninovskaya received an anonymous political denunciation and spent roughly a year in prison. Shostakovich composed the Cello Sonata for the cellist Viktor Kubatsky, an esteemed cellist and one-time principal at the Bolshoi Theater. Shostakovich, also an able pianist, subsequently toured with Kubatsky, premiering his Cello Sonata in Leningrad on Christmas Day, 1934, alongside the cello sonatas of Grieg and Rachmaninov. The composer reportedly performed the piano parts to all three works from memory. ©2006 Patrick Castillo Return to Parlance Program Notes

LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN (1770–1827) Adelaide, Op. 46 March 29, 2015 – Matthew Polenzani, tenor; Ken Noda, piano Having moved from Bonn in 1792, Beethoven, in his twenties, was in the process of making a name for himself as a composer and pianist in Vienna. Greatly enamored of Friedrich von Matthison’s poetry, he was especially captivated by Adelaide, which must have resonated with his own yearnings for romantic involvement with women who proved unattainable. In fact, he may have conceived his “cantata,” as he called it, for the beautiful singer Magdalena Willmann—a Bonn acquaintance who arrived in Vienna in 1794 and to whom he proposed unsuccessfully. Making many sketches, Beethoven set the poem in 1794–95 in a style that shows an Italianate-Romantic fervor, but also possibly the Classic influence of “O Tuneful Voice” by Haydn, with whom he had just been studying. Marriage proposal aside, Willman did give the first performance on April 7, 1797, and Beethoven published the song that year with a dedication to Matthison—unbeknownst to the poet. Three years later Beethoven wrote humbly to Matthison saying, “I cannot explain why I dedicated a work to you which came directly from my heart, but never acquainted you with its existence,” except that “at first I did not know where you lived” (a flimsy excuse), and also “from diffidence” (likely), and that even now he was sending the song “with a feeling of timidity.” As it turned out, Matthison greatly appreciated the song, as we know from his introduction to an 1825 edition of his collected poems: “Several composers have animated this little lyric fantasy through music; none of them, however, according to my deepest conviction, cast the text into deeper shade with his melody than the genius Ludwig van Beethoven in Vienna.” “Adelaide” became one of Beethoven’s most popular songs—a favorite especially in salons and in numerous arrangements by other composers. Beethoven’s setting is through-composed—every stanza fit with new music, even the refrain “Adelaide”—and divided into two parts, the first three stanzas at a slow tempo followed by a fast section comprising the last stanza. The dreamlike opening section suggests the beloved’s wandering with triplet motion and many key changes—influenced by Haydn’s song, perhaps?—and the rapturous closing section suggests the poet’s reuniting in death with the beloved who was unattainable in life. © Jane Vial Jaffe Return to Parlance Program Notes

LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN (1770–1827) Piano Trio in D major, op. 70, no. 1, “Ghost” December 13, 2015 – Kristin Lee, violin; Paul Watkins, cello; Gilles Vonsattel, piano In the fall of 1808 when Beethoven began writing his two Piano Trios, op. 70, he was living in rooms generously furnished to him by Countess Marie Erdödy. (For more background about their relationship see the notes for the Cello Sonata above.) Beethoven participated in the first performance of the Opus 70 Trios at Countess Erdödy’s home around Christmas in 1808, and sent them off to his publisher with a dedication to her. At one point he changed his mind and wished to dedicate them to Archduke Rudolph, but in the end let the dedication to the Countess stand. It had been ten years since Beethoven had composed his Opus 11 Trio for clarinet (or violin), cello, and piano, and twelve years since he had composed his last major works in the piano trio genre—his three Opus 1 Trios, which had served as his public entrée. By 1808 he was at the pinnacle of his productivity and popularity, and the Opus 70 Trios are surrounded by the masterpieces he presented on that famous marathon concert in December 1808—the Fifth and Sixth Symphonies, the C major Mass, the Choral Fantasy —and equally important works such as his Coriolan Overture and A major Cello Sonata. The first of the Opus 70 Trios came to be called the “Ghost” because of a comment made after Beethoven’s death about the amazing slow movement. Carl Czerny, Beethoven’s former pupil, wrote in 1842 that the Largo assai ed espressivo “resembles an appearance from the underworld. One could think not inappropriately of the first appearance of the ghost in Hamlet.” The nickname stuck for the entire Trio, and only afterwards it was discovered that Beethoven may have had something supernatural on his mind, because sketches for this movement appear near those for a Witches’ Chorus for a projected Macbeth opera. The forthright unison opening of the first movement sounds almost as if Beethoven derived it from the first movement of the his Piano Sonata, op. 10, no. 3, and injected it with new energy. He contrasts this immediately with a sweeter phrase begun by the cello. Beethoven allows himself an expansive development section with quite a bit of counterpoint after his extremely concise exposition. The tranquil coda relies on his sweet second phrase until a bright recall of the opening idea ends the movement. The celebrated “Ghost” movement is one of those marvels that fired the Romantic imagination with its alternating-repeating fragments, plaintive melodic lines, sudden contrasts, agitated tremolos, unsettled harmonies (diminished seventh chords), and above all the eerie floating descents of the piano right hand and rumbling bass notes in the left. As with many of Beethoven’s most startlingly original movements, the overall sonorities mask the quite traditional aspects of his structure, in this case a simple three-part form with coda. Beethoven opted to return to a three-movement format for this Trio, and hence there is no scherzo. The sonata-form finale returns to the light of day, with a cheerful main theme that keeps halting and digressing. This good-natured meandering flows so naturally that occasional harmonic surprises are swept right along without ceremony. Just before the conclusion, a clever diversion with pizzicato effects, seamless splitting of the melody between the two strings, and piano right-hand glitter gives added urgency to the cadential flourish. © Jane Vial Jaffe Return to Parlance Program Notes

WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART (1756-1791) Sonata for Piano Four-Hands in C major, K. 521 December 19, 2017: Alessio Bax, piano; Lucille Chung, piano Four-hand piano music—two players at one keyboard—first surfaced in England in the early seventeenth century and became immensely popular in the mid-eighteenth century. As children/teenagers in the 1760s, Mozart and his gifted older sister Maria Anna (Nannerl) greatly popularized four-hand playing all over Europe through the tours they were taken on by their father Leopold. A famous painting of the Mozart family from about 1780 depicts the two showing crosse-hand technique at the keyboard, their father standing by with violin, and a portrait of their recently deceased mother on the wall. Wolfgang apparently wrote his first four-hand sonata, K. 19d, in London in 1765 when he was nine years old. Nannerl also mentioned in a letter of 1800 that she had other similar four-hand works in her possession, some of which may have been even earlier works, but all of which regrettably are lost. Wolfgang returned to the genre in 1772 with the D major Sonata, K. 123a (K. 381), probably influenced by seeing circulating manuscripts of Charles Burney’s four-hand sonatas even before they were printed in 1777 as the first published set of piano duets. Mozart went on to complete three more, of which the present C major Sonata of 1787 was the last. In Mozart’s day it was customary for the woman to play primo (the higher part, often with the melody) and the man secondo (the lower part, often with the bass support)—Wolfgang and his sister always played thus and perhaps instigated the custom. (From 1769 onward, having reached marriageable age, Nannerl was no longer permitted to perform in public.) Charles Burney, famous for his observations on musical life in many European countries, requested that a lady who wished to play piano duets should remove the hoops from her skirt, and not be embarrassed if her left hand occasionally grazed the gentleman’s right. Today’s piano-duet players—as in the case of Alessio Bax and Lucille Chung—like to change up who plays which part for any number of reasons. In his own thematic catalog, Mozart dated the C major Sonata May 29, 1787, which happened to be the very day he received word of the death of his father Leopold. He shared the sad news that day with one of his best friends, Viennese court official and amateur musician Gottfried von Jacquin, at the same time asking him to “have the goodness to give the sonata to my lady, your sister [Franziska, one of Mozart’s most talented pupils], with my compliments—but she might have a go at it immediately, for it is a bit difficult.” Evidently Mozart was eager to play it with her! Several months earlier he had nicknamed Franziska “Signora Dinimininimi” (related to diminutio and minim), no doubt referring to her skill at playing fast notes. As it turned out, when Mozart published the piece the following year, he dedicated it to some other members of the Jacquin circle, Babette and Nanette Natorp, the young daughters of a wealthy Viennese merchant. Babette was also a pupil of Mozart’s and later married Gottfried and Franziska’s older brother Josef Franz. The C major Sonata breathes grace and elegance, much like Eine kleine Nachtmusik, which he composed just two months later—and in great contrast to the more brilliant character of the F major four-hand Sonata composed just ten months before. The C major Sonata’s sparkling first movement opens by contrasting a forthright idea in octave unison with a more delicate response that alternately highlights the secondo and primo parts. Mozart begins his elegant second theme with a distinct three-note pickup to a dotted idea related to the movement’s opening pronouncement, into which he injects darting fast-note decorations. His development section is a fascinating excursion through new ideas and keys that includes storm and brief melancholy before winding up to a full recapitulation. The middle movement ambles sweetly in its outer sections, which surround a more agitated central section. Each of these sections takes on the binary form of a traditional dance-suite movement—two halves each repeated, except for the return to the opening section which is reprised without repeats. The final rondo shows Mozart’s mastery of understatement in its genial refrain. Its subtle charms provide a great foil for the remarkable yet still seemingly effortless virtuosity of its intervening episodes. Mozart’s ingenuity shows up in some wonderfully unexpected harmonic diversions in the episodes and even in the coda, which Mozart caps with emphatic chords. © Jane Vial Jaffe Return to Parlance Program Notes

GASPAR CASSADÓ (1897-1966) Sardana and Jota from Suite for Solo Cello September 24, 2017: Rafael Figueroa, cello Young prodigy Gaspar Cassadó began his music training early with his organist-composer father. The family moved to Paris to insure the best teachers—the great Jacques Thibaud for his violinist brother and Casals for him. Casals’s playing and mentoring left an indelible impression on the young Gaspar, who became acquainted with all the leading musicians in Paris—he also studied composition with Ravel and Falla. Influenced by his mentor’s legendary performances of the Bach solo cello suites, Cassadó composed one of his own in 1926, successfully transferring the idea of Bach’s stylized Baroque dances to dance forms of his own Spanish heritage. The Sardana, reflecting the national Catalonian circle dance, unfolds in two parts: slow and stately (dancer holding hands with arms down) and fast and exuberant (arms up). The final movement alternates an introspective Intermezzo with a lively triple-meter Jota, which evokes the guitars and castanets of the dance’s northern Spanish roots. © Jane Vial Jaffe Return to Parlance Program Notes

JOSEPH HAYDN (1732-1809) Piano Trio in G, Hob. XV: 25 (“Gypsy”) October 17, 2021: Adam Barnett-Hart, violin; Brook Speltz, cello; Roman Rabinovich, piano Ethnomusicology—the comparative study of musics of the world, music as part of culture, and music of oral tradition—has only been considered a formal scholarly discipline since the 1880s. Yet the study of non-Western music dates back to the Renaissance with occasional flowerings in subsequent periods. Liszt in the Romantic period, for example, published The Gypsies and Their Music in Hungary (1859). In this context Haydn’s “ethnomusicological” activities in the Classic era prove intriguing. Haydn biographer Giuseppe Carpani (plagiarized by Stendhal in his well-known Haydn biography, translated in 1817 by William Gardiner) reported: Some years after Haydn’s establishment at Eisenstadt, when he had formed his style, he sought food for his imagination, by diligently collecting those ancient and original airs, which are to be found among the peoples of every country. The Ukraine, Hungary, Scotland, Germany, Sicily, Spain, Russia were laid under contribution by him. Though this passage confuses Haydn’s arrangements of folk tunes for British publishers with his other real use of folk tunes, it does speak to Haydn’s genuine interest in folk song. He was particularly interested in Hungarian-Gypsy lore (and their food!), a natural result of the geographical position of Esterháza in Hungary. The Esterházys’ appreciation of Hungarian-Gypsy folk music is reflected in an engraving made in 1791 from a drawing by Carl Schütz of an elaborate ceremony at the Esterházy castle that includes a Gypsy band playing off to the side. Haydn’s love of Hungarian-Gypsy melodies manifests itself from the 1760s through the 1790s. Haydn made no distinction (as in Bartók’s later painstaking work) between Hungarian and Gypsy music, using the label “Rondo all’ongarese” in his D major Piano Concerto (c. 1780) and “Rondo, in the Gypsies’ stile” (so-labeled in the authentic Longman & Broderip print) in the present G major Trio (1795). Hungarian scholar Ervin Major noted that the folk tunes Haydn used in his Finale are of particular significance for the history of Hungarian music: the dance melodies woven into [the Trio] belong to our earliest hitherto known recruiting [verbunkos] dances: among our more notable records, only the Hungarian dances of József Bengráf (1790) and four Hungarian dances in the ‘Hadi és más Nevezetes Történetek’ are of an earlier date. Bibliographic details on the wealth of information about Haydn’s borrowed folk melodies can be found in H. C. Robbins Landon’s monumental multivolume Haydn study. Some of Haydn’s Hungarian melodies, with slight variances, are paralleled in an 1805 publication issued by the Vienna “Chemische Druckerey.” The variances seem to indicate that Haydn used them as he knew them, possibly from childhood, without referring to any publication. Haydn’s Gypsy Trio was one of Three Trios, op. 73, probably the last compositions he wrote on his final English sojourn. He dedicated them to Mrs. Rebecca Schroeter, a piano student of his in London who had helped him with certain business matters and with whom he kept up a correspondence after his return to Austria. His piano trios at that time were called “sonatas for pianoforte with the accompaniment of a violin and violoncello”; accordingly the piano part is most prominent though the violin occasionally dominates as in the E minor variation in the first movement and the middle section of the Poco adagio second movement. The cello almost always reinforces the piano’s bass line. In his use of a leisurely (Andante) movement to begin the Trio, Haydn followed his old sonata da chiesa (church sonata) pattern of the 1760s. This lovely set of variations is followed, however, by an even slower second movement that presents a different harmonic world. The triplet accompaniment pattern of the slow movement continues through the three sections of the A-B-A form; a nice touch occurs in the penultimate bar when the cello alone continues the triplet motion. Haydn’s use of a leisurely movement followed by an even slower one intensifies the effect of his brilliant “Gypsy” Finale, which made this Trio an enormous favorite in England and soon after on the continent. © Jane Vial Jaffe Return to Parlance Program Notes

WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART (1756-1791) Un bacio di mano. K. 541, Mentre ti lascio, o figlia, K. 513 May 15, 2016: James Morris, bass-baritone; Ken Noda, piano Mozart frequently composed separate arias on short notice, not only as additions or substitutions for existing operas, but for formal occasions involving a patron, for benefit concerts being given by one of his favorite singers, or simply for private occasions with friends. He composed “Un bacio di mano” (A kiss on the hand) in May 1788 for Francesco Albertarelli, who on May 7 had sung the title role in the first Viennese performance of Don Giovanni and who was particularly known for his stylish performances of comic roles. Mozart contributed this aria for him to sing as the buffo character Monsieur Girò in the Viennese version of Pasquale Anfossi’s comic opera Le gelosie fortunate (Jealousy rewarded), which opened the following month on June 2. Tradition has it that Lorenzo da Ponte—Mozart’s librettist not only for Don Giovanni but Le nozze di Figaro and Cosí fan tutte—adapted Filippo Livigni’s libretto for the Viennese stage, though no proof has surfaced. The replacement of Girò’s aria “Del gran mondo” with “Un bacio di mano” shows just the kind of ironic touches for which da Ponte was known. The worldly Frenchman Girò gives witty courtship advice to the naive, enraged Don Pompeo, who has caught him kissing a lady’s hand. Brief, lively, and masterfully theatrical, this aria has become especially noteworthy for the theme that appears at “Voi siete in po’ tondo” (You’re a little dull), which Mozart famously recycled three months later in the first movement of his Jupiter Symphony. * * * * * During initial work on Don Giovanni, Mozart composed “Mentre ti lascio, o figlia” (As I leave you, o daughter) on March 23, 1787, for one of his closest friends in Vienna, Gottfied von Jacquin, a good amateur bass. Jacquin’s musical skills were so highly regarded, in fact, that for a time it was believed that he was the composer of some of five vocal Notturni (short ensemble love songs) that Mozart had written for him. Mozart took the text for “Mentre ti lascio” from Sant’Angiolo-Morbilli’s libretto for Paisiello’s 1777 opera La disfatta di Dario (The defeat of Darius), about Alexander the Great’s conquest of King Darius of Persia. The grieving Darius bids a heartrending farewell to his daughter, which Mozart depicts with phrases of tender mourning and a faster section that mounts in great agitation, all colored by a rich, imaginative accompaniment (originally for orchestra). © Jane Vial Jaffe Return to Parlance Program Notes

CHARLES IVES (1874-1954) Violin Sonata 1, S. 60 and Violin Sonata No. 4, “Children’s Day at the Camp Meeting,” S. 63 November 15, 2015 – Jeremy Denk, piano; Stefan Jackiw, violin In his four violin sonatas, as in much of his music, Ives drew on scraps of hymns, popular songs, band tunes, patriotic songs, and ballads of nineteenth-century America, familiar from growing up in Danbury, Connecticut. These he combined with his own original blend of traditional and nontraditional harmonies, “wrong-note” dissonances, clusters, and very free counterpoint. The sonatas are groupings of many individual violin and piano movements that Ives worked on from c.1906 to 1919. Definite similarities exist among the violin sonatas. All are conceived in a three-movement form and all end with a large-scale coda based on a hymn tune, played by the violin in altered form. The First Sonata , which Ives assembled around 1914 or 1917 using some materials from as early as 1906, shows an intriguing unification by key scheme and motives that neither Second nor Fourth Sonata demonstrates; the Third again uses cyclic procedures. Not only does Ives preview the key of the next movement’s opening motive in both the first and second movements, but he also emphasizes two main keys across movements. Further, he brings back the first movement’s opening at the end of the third movement, and he plays on the melodic similarities between some of his borrowed tunes, such as “Shining Shore” in the first movement and “Watchman” in the third. Other remarkable features of the First Sonata are its types of cumulative settings—unusual even for Ives—in its first and third movement. Cumulative is the apt term, coined by scholar J. Peter Burkholder in his 1983 doctoral dissertation, referring to the manner in which Ives introduces motives that he elaborates and combines until he presents the final “accumulated” setting toward the conclusion. Here in the First Sonata Ives bases his first movement primarily on the hymn “Shining Shore,” which has a contrasting middle section. He not only lets its main theme accumulate through the movement, but similarly treats a countermelody made from the hymn’s contrasting melody. Further, he begins with an introduction that returns at the end, encapsulating the cumulative setting. The slow movement, like much of Ives’s Second Sonata, draws on what is commonly referred to as his “Pre-First” Violin Sonata, which he may have begun as early as c. 1901–02 and worked on at various times between 1908 and 1913. Here, as in that slow movement, he freely varies “The Old Oaken Bucket” in its outer sections and bits of the Civil War tune “Tramp, Tramp, Tramp” in its livelier middle section. The loud violin passage at the end previews the main theme of the third movement. In the third movement’s cumulative setting—even more ingenious than in the first—Ives starts to treat fragments from the tune “Work Song” and interrupts this “development” by beginning a different cumulative setting as a middle section (on the tune “Watchman”). He then resumes the initial setting and takes it to its full-blown conclusion—thus creating a unique three-part form. Ives jotted down the following colorful description of the First Sonata on his score: “This sonata is in part a general impression, of kind of reflection and remembrance of the peoples’ outdoor gatherings in which men got up and said what they thought, regardless of the consequences—of holiday celebrations and camp meetings in the [18]80s and 90s—suggesting some of the songs, tunes, and hymns, together with some of the sounds of nature joining in from the mountains in some of the old Connecticut farm towns. “The first movement may, in a way, suggest something that nature and human nature would sing out to each other—sometimes. The second movement, a mood when ‘The Old Oaken Bucket’ and ‘Tramp, Tramp, Tramp, the Boys are Marching’ would come over the hills, trying to relive the sadness of the old Civil War Days. And the third movement, the hymns and the actions at the farmers’ camp meeting inciting them to ‘work for the night is coming.’” * * * Ives assembled the material of the Fourth Sonata between 1911 and 1916. It was the only violin sonata for which he actually supervised publication: he had it privately lithographed in 1914–15 in a four-movement version. It was later republished in 1942, without the fourth movement and with certain revisions of the other movements. The omitted movement became the finale of the Second Sonata. The Fourth Sonata, Ives said, was “an attempt to write a sonata which Moss White, then about twelve years old, could play. The first movement kept to this idea fairly well, but the second got away from it, and the third got in between. Moss White couldn’t play the last two and neither could his teacher.” The 1942 publication provided Ives’s vivid commentary on the work, taken “mostly from remarks written on the back of some of the old music manuscripts,” which is quoted extensively here for his unique description of his own childhood experiences and how they influenced the work’s construction: “This sonata . . . called ‘Children’s Day at the Camp Meeting’ . . . is shorter than the other violin sonatas, and a few of its parts and suggested themes were used in organ and other earlier pieces. The subject matter is a kind of reflection, remembrance, expression, etc., of the children’s services at the outdoor summer camp meetings held around Danbury and in many of the farm towns in Connecticut, in the [18]70s, 80s, and 90s. . . . “The first movement (which was sometimes played last and the last first)—was suggested by an actual happening at one of these services. The children, especially the boys, liked to get up and join in the marching kind of hymns. And as these meetings were ‘outdoor,’ the ‘march’ sometimes became a real one. One day Lowell Mason’s ‘Work for the Night Is Coming’ got the boys going and keeping on between services. . . . In this movement . . . the postlude organ practice [Ives was an accomplished organist] . . . and the boys’ fast march got to going together, even joining in each others’ sounds, and the loudest singers and also those with the best voices, as is often the case, would sing most of the wrong notes. . . . The organ would be uncovering ‘covered 5ths’ breaking ‘good resolutions’ faster and faster and the boys’ march reaching almost a ‘Main Street Quick-step’ when Parson Hubbell would beat the ‘Gong’ on the oak tree for the next service to begin. Or if it is growing dark, the boys’ march would die away, as they marched down to their tents, the barn doors or over the ‘1770 Bridge’ between the Stone Pillars to the Station. “The second movement is quieter and more serious except when Deacon Stonemason Bell and Farmer John would get up and get the boys excited. But most of the movement moves around a rather quiet but old favorite hymn of the children [“Jesus Loves Me”], while mostly in the accompaniment is heard something trying to reflect the outdoor sounds of nature on those summer days—the west wind in the pines and oaks, the running brook—sometimes quite loudly—and maybe towards evening the distant voices of the farmers across the hill getting in their cows and sheep. “But as usual even in the quiet services, some of the deacon-enthusiasts would get up and sing, roar, pray, and shout but always fervently, seriously, reverently—perhaps not ‘artistically’—(perhaps the better for it). . . . At times these ‘confurorants’ would give the boys a chance to run out and throw stones down on the rocks in the brook! (Allegro conslugarocko!)—but this was only momentary and the quiet Children’s Hymn is sung again, perhaps some of the evening sounds are with it—and as this movement ends, sometimes a distant Amen is heard—as the mood of the Day calls for it. . . . “The third movement is more in the nature of the first. As the boys get marching again some of the old men would join in and march as fast (sometimes) as the boys and sing what they felt, regardless—and—thanks to Robert Lowry—‘Gather at the River.’” * * * In 1914 Ives invited accomplished German violinist Franz Milke to try out his First and Second Violin Sonatas, before he made revisions several years later. As the composer reported, “He didn’t even get through the first page. He was all bothered with the rhythms and the notes, and got mad. He said ‘This cannot be played.’ . . . He couldn’t get it even after I’d played it over for him several times.” This, coming after Ives had experienced a number of similar reactions to his music, prompted him to wonder, “Are my ears on wrong?” Though they still contain challenges, his violin sonatas have long been recognized by performers and listeners alike as among the most original and important pieces of violin music by an American composer. © Jane Vial Jaffe Return to Parlance Program Notes

ENRIQUE GRANADOS (1867–1916) love songs April 23, 2017: Isabel Leonard, mezzo-soprano; Warren Jones, piano Enrique Granados received most of his musical training in Barcelona, although he did study in Paris for two years. On his return he began to achieve great acclaim as a pianist, but his intense dislike of travel limited his touring. He founded a concert society in Barcelona in 1900 and a music school, the Academia Granados, the following year. Essentially self-taught as a composer, he began gaining recognition with his colorful Spanish Dances (1892–1911), which were among his first published pieces. He considerably enhanced that reputation with Goyescas (1911), piano pieces inspired by the paintings and etching of Goya. Tragically, travel was at the heart of his untimely death at age forty-nine. Accompanied by his wife, he had reluctantly made the sea voyage to attend the Metropolitan's premiere of his opera Goyescas in 1916, and had postponed his voyage home in order to play for President Woodrow Wilson. Having missed the ship to Spain, they sailed instead to Liverpool where they boarded the Sussex for Dieppe. The Sussex was torpedoed by a German submarine and, although Granados was picked up by a lifeboat, he jumped into the water to save his wife from him and they both drowned. Granados published two important song collections: his Tonadillas and his Canciones amatorias, which show opposite sides of his song-writing art, although both are based on love poetry and both are indebted to his fascination with Goya. The Tonadillas , shorter by definition, link directly with the same eighteenth- and nineteenth-century majas and majos of Goya's paintings through the poetry of Fernando Periquet (1873–1940) and feature relatively spare, guitar-like accompaniments. ( Majas and majos were lower-class people of Spanish society distinguished by their elaborate dress and cheeky manners.) The Canciones amatorias , settings of Renaissance texts, boast longer, imaginatively spun-out melodies and more elaborate accompaniments. They have been somewhat overshadowed by the overt link of the Tonadillas to Goya and to popular Spanish song, but the Canciones amatorios show a distinct affinity with Granados's Goyescas , the piano pieces that brought him so much recognition outside of Spain, and they get to the heart of his expressive capabilities—still incorporating folk idioms but in a highly personal style. The Canciones amatorios received their first performance in Barcelona on April 5, 1915, at the debut of soprano Conchita Badía, accompanied by the composer who dedicated two of the songs to her, “Llorad, corazón” and “Gracia mia.” “Discover the thought ,” like many of the songs in this collection, is striking for its harmonic adventurousness. The song's anonymous poet, in the tradition of courtly love, pines for a woman above his social status. Granados provides “Mañanica era” (It was daybreak) with a delicate setting, befitting its images of blooms and seraphs. He gently shifts to a melancholy expressiveness toward the end for the lover who comes to die. Characteristic “strumming” permeates the accompaniment of “No lloráis, ojuelos” (Don't cry, little eyes), whose melodic lines Granados embellishes gracefully. The middle section provides harmonic interest, and the return to the opening text receives a soaring variation. Granados enhances the bittersweet melancholy of “Llorad, corazón” (Weep, heart) with winding chromaticism. He also creates a special effect with the gently rising leaps in the first section. Today's selections conclude with the delightfully ornamented and flowing “Gracia mia” (My graceful one). Spanish rhythms, mixed meters, triplet embellishments, and mercurial shifts between major and minor provide native color—all with Granados's inspired personal stamp. © Jane Vial Jaffe Return to Parlance Program Notes

WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART (1756-1791) Ave Verum Corpus for chamber choir and string quartet December 3, 2023: Brentano String Quartet; Antioch Chamber Ensemble Mozart’s wife Constanze once declared that church music was his favorite genre and that if she wanted to give him a “special surprise” at a family festivity, she would “secretly arrange a performance of a new church composition by Michael or Joseph Haydn.” Mozart, whose tastes in church music were as conservative as his tastes in most other music were progressive, composed church music throughout his life. He had ample opportunities in his native Salzburg while he was in the service of the Archbishop Colloredo. Fewer occasions arose for him to compose church music after he moved to Vienna, though it was there that he produced the the glorious but incomplete Mass in C minor and Requiem, several other unfinished pieces, and the present Ave verum corpus. Mozart composed this brief, exquisite motet in June 1791 for Anton Stoll, choirmaster of the local church in Baden where Constanze was taking a cure. The emotional profundity that he achieves through utmost simplicity is nothing short of genius. Text and Translation Ave verum corpus, natum de Maria Virgine, vere passum, immolatum in cruce pro homine cuius latus perforatum fluxit aqua et sanguine: esto nobis praegustatum in mortis examine. O Iesu dulcis, O Iesu pie, O Iesu, fili Mariae. Miserere mei. Amen. Hail true body, born of the Virgin Mary, who having truly suffered, was sacrificed on the cross for mankind, whose pierced side flowed water and blood: May it be for us a foretaste in the trial of death. O sweet Jesus, O pious Jesus, O Jesus, son of Mary, have mercy on me. Amen. Return to Parlance Program Notes

CÉSAR FRANCK (1822-1890) Violin Sonata in A major, M. 8 November 15, 2015 – Jeremy Denk, piano; Stefan Jackiw, violin César Franck, organist at St. Clothilde and professor of organ at the Paris Conservatory, influenced a generation of composers including d’Indy, Chausson, Duparc, and Vierne, yet was not prolific himself as a composer. He was a late achiever par excellence: he completed his only Symphony when he was sixty-six, and he composed his memorable chamber works, the Piano Quintet and Violin Sonata, just several years before, with the String Quartet closely following the Symphony. There is no telling what he might have achieved had he not died in 1890 at age sixty-seven. Franck’s concern for thematic unity led to the use of what his disciple and enthusiastic champion Vincent d’Indy called the “cyclic” principle—the use of similar thematic material in two or more movements in the same work. D’Indy related Franck’s cyclic procedures to Beethoven, who may have been his inspiration, but Franck’s structural ideas have much more in common with those of Liszt and his practice of deriving an entire work from one musical idea. The opening theme begins with a three-note “generating cell,” as d’Indy called it, that permeates the work. Almost immediately Franck shows his penchant for changing keys. As a teacher of organ, with composition mixed in, Franck grew uneasy when any student remained too long in one key—“Modulate, modulate!” he would urge, which was known to exasperate Debussy, who studied briefly in his class. Formally the first movement is based on this and another main theme that occurs only in piano interludes; the subjects alternate while passing through myriad keys. The presentation of the thematic material in this fashion and the lack of development give the movement the feel either of a prologue or of an inner movement. Originally Franck had conceived the movement in a slow tempo, but changed it to Allegretto after hearing it played by violin virtuoso Eugène Ysaÿe, to whom the work is dedicated. Full-fledged sonata form is saved for the second movement, which employs a bit of the generating cell and also introduces another theme that will return in the finale. The brilliance of this Allegro movement contrasts nicely with the poetic first movement and with the rhapsodic third movement. This Recitativo-Fantasia sounds improvisatory at the outset as Franck ruminates upon the generating cell. The final Fantasia section is dominated by another theme that will reappear in the finale and ends with an unexpected harmonic turn. The finale is remarkable for the exact imitation between the violin and piano—one of the famous examples of canonic writing in the literature—which appears four times like a rondo refrain. The intervening episodes are based on the materials of the previous movements. The Sonata was apparently given as a wedding present to Ysaÿe, who first performed it with pianist Léontine Bordes-Pène as the last work on an all-Franck concert at the Musée Moderne de Peinture in Brussels on December 16, 1886. D’Indy described that memorable late afternoon performance: It was already growing dark as the Sonata began. After the first Allegretto, the players could hardly read their music. Unfortunately, museum regulations forbade any artificial light whatever in rooms containing paintings; the mere striking of a match would have been an offense. The audience was about to be asked to leave, but, brimful with enthusiasm, they refused to budge. At this point, Ysaÿe struck his music stand with his bow, demanding, “Let’s go on!” Then, wonder of wonders, amid darkness that now rendered them virtually invisible, the two artists played the last three movements from memory with a fire and passion the more astonishing in that there was a total lack of the usual visible externals that enhance a concert performance. Music, wondrous and alone, held sovereign sway in the blackness of night. The miracle will never be forgotten by those present. © Jane Vial Jaffe Return to Parlance Program Notes