JoAnn Falletta is the Paul and Linda Lee Guest Artist.
Mark Sparks is the Helen E. Nash, M.D. Guest Artist.
The concert of Saturday, November 11, is underwritten in part by a generous gift from Dr. and Mrs. Richard G. Sisson.

Art’s Yin and Yang
BY PAUL SCHIAVO 

            Of the many terms used to discuss or describe music, none carries greater or deeper connotations than “classical” and “romantic.” These two small words are the yin and yang of music--and, indeed, of much of our concepts about art. They represent constellations of generally opposing, yet to some degree complimentary, characteristics of thought, expression, emotional comportment, and artistic values. A proper discussion of precisely what those characteristics are might easily fill this magazine, but we can venture a few general observations.

            Classical art, and music, adheres closely to widely accepted notions of beauty, seeking perfection within established modes of expression. It tends to strike us as elegant, elevated, and ideal. Often it employs tried-and-true forms and, in music, contrapuntal textures. Its emotional character is not muted or restrained but contained within bounds of decorum.

            Romanticism, by contrast, is about extravagance and revolt. Shunning conventional notions of expression or form, romantic art revels in subjectivity, uniqueness, and originality. It often conveys fantasy and passion. Whereas classical art is bound by moderation, its romantic counterpart is given to extremes of ecstasy and despair. And while counterpoint is a fundamentally classical virtue, evocative harmonies lie close to the heart of romanticism in music.

            These are, of course, broad observations that hardly give a full picture of a very complex subject. Moreover, we rarely find classical or romantic principles exclusively at work in any composition. Rather, elements of classicism and romanticism often coexist, in varying proportions, in a single piece. Our program illuminates all this in a pleasing manner. The three works we hear exemplify classicism and romanticism in music, but they also show how the two principles can mingle in different degrees. In addition to whatever else they may provide, these three works give us two real masterpieces and a work of undeniable charm and grace.

            Historically, classicism in Western music flourished during the 18th century, whereas the 19th century was the age of romanticism. But like nearly everything else we can say about classicism versus romanticism in music, that formulation is not invariable or absolute. We find romantic passions expressed in the music of Haydn and Mozart, two composers usually held to be paragons of musical classicism. On the other side of the coin, classical principles continued to attract major composers during the 19th century. None upheld them more consistently, or to finer effect, than Johannes Brahms, the great musical classicist in the age of romanticism.

            Brahms’s classicism showed itself especially in his choice of compositional genres, which tended to such established formats as the symphony, concerto, string quartet, and theme-and-variations. This last format particularly concerns us here. Brahms was one of the few major composers of his day with a strong practical knowledge of the classical variation set (as it had been cultivated by Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven) and the older chaconne, or passacaglia, which figured so importantly in the works of such earlier masters as Bach and Handel. Moreover, he maintained that these formats could still serve as vehicles for original and contemporary musical invention (a notion that placed Brahms in direct opposition to the revolutionary spirit of 19th-century romanticism.)

            Nowhere did Brahms demonstrate this point more convincingly than in his Variations on a Theme by Joseph Haydn, written in 1873. Brahms initially composed this work for two pianos, but he must have sensed immediately a larger potential in the music. The two-piano score was scarcely finished when he commenced an orchestration of the work, and although the composer endorsed both versions, it is in its orchestral garb that the “Haydn Variations” has become one of the most familiar of Brahms’s compositions. (The orchestrated form of the piece and its initial keyboard version are distinguished from each other by their respective designations as Opus 56a and 56b.)

            The subject of these variations is a modest theme known as “St. Anthony’s Chorale,” which Brahms found in a wind-band partita attributed to Haydn. (The melody seems to have been an old pilgrims’ hymn. Recent scholarship has questioned Haydn’s authorship of the partita in which it appears, but that is hardly relevant to the matter of Brahms’s variations.) Brahms clothes this melody in timbres that suggest its source, giving it to the woodwinds in the opening section of the composition. Each of the eight variations that follow preserves the harmonic outline of the theme but offers entirely new elements of rhythm, melodic contour, texture, and instrumental color. So distinct are the individual variations from each other that the musicologist Hans Gal likened them to a suite of contrasting character pieces, though their common framework of harmonies and phrase length ensures an underlying unity beneath the variegated musical surface.

            Classical procedure allows a variation set to conclude with something more elaborate than simply another paraphrase of the subject melody. Brahms observes that tradition with a finale that is not, strictly speaking, a variation of the theme, since it does not follow the phrase structure of the original melody. Instead, it presents a passacaglia, a self-contained set of variations over a recurring five-measure figure heard first in the basses and cellos, a figure that strongly implies the harmonic shape of the first phrase of the Haydn melody. Over and  around this figure Brahms spins a succession of countermelodies--first the passacaglia theme itself, then an array of other ideas. When, at the movement’s climax, the humble chorale melody emerges from the general texture, we find it transformed into something unexpectedly grand.

            Brahms’s admiration of the music of Franz Joseph Haydn was unusual during his day. The 19th century was enamored of the new, and especially the romantic, in music. Haydn’s compositions were widely and incorrectly assumed to embody a somewhat staid and out-of-date classicism. History has come down on the side of Brahms in this matter. With access to much more of Haydn’s music than 19th-century listeners knew, today’s music lovers appreciate the composer as one who achieved exceptional originality and depth within the accepted norms of form and style prevailing during his day.

            Haydn’s virtues are especially evident in his late symphonies and string quartets, his mature piano sonatas and trios, and his church music. His concertos form a relatively small part of his large output and tend to be somewhat more modest efforts. The Flute Concerto in D major, which follows on our program, may not be Haydn’s work. The composer wrote a piece matching this description early in his career, but the music was lost. Subsequently, the piece we hear now was published under his name. This is hardly conclusive proof of Haydn’s authorship, however. During the last two decades of the 18th century and the first years of the 19th, Haydn was the most acclaimed composer in the world. Accordingly, many publishers, who operated with far fewer scruples than their present-day counterparts, sought to capitalize on his renown by attributing to him works actually written by other composers. Affixing Haydn’s name to any composition practically guaranteed healthy sales.

            Our concerto was accepted as Haydn’s work until there came to light a copy of the same music bearing the name Leopold Hofmann. A contemporary of Haydn’s (he was born in Vienna in 1739 and died there in 1793), Hofmann was active in the Austrian capital as an organist and composer. The D-major flute concerto may be an early piece by Haydn, but most scholars now believe that Hofmann composed it.

            The true authorship of this concerto need not concern us. What matters is that the piece typifies the classical style that flourished, especially in Austria, during the second half of the 18th century. The broad form of the piece presents a pleasing symmetry: three movements arranged in a fast-slow-fast pattern, each beginning with an orchestral paragraph that establishes the movement’s character and thematic material, and each including a solo cadenza shortly before the close. In terms of expression, the music is about as far from stormy romantic passion as one might imagine. Instead, it conveys cheerful elegance in the opening movement, a pleasing tranquility in the ensuing Adagio, and buoyant spirits in the finale. Neither the fanfare rhythms that inform each movement nor the brief excursions through darker harmonies in their central episodes contradict or dispel the prevailing sense of poise, moderation, and gracefulness, qualities well suited to the dulcet tone of the flute.

            Having heard two very different examples of musical classicism, we now turn to a symphony in a romantic tradition. This tradition stems from Ludwig van Beethoven, who, in the first decade of the 19th century, composed two works that established a new kind of symphonic discourse. Both his Third and Fifth Symphonies implied musical dramas of crisis and overcoming, with turbulent first movements preparing joyous finales. This new symphonic profile strongly fired the imaginations of composers throughout the 19th century. Embracing the ideals of the romantic movement, Beethoven’s most important successors came to regard the symphony as not just an abstract musical form but one with an inherently dramatic character. That character was, above all, heroic--Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3 even bears the subtitle Sinfonia eroica, meaning “Heroic Symphony”--and the typical romantic symphony similarly conveyed a sense of struggle and eventual triumph. This symphonic “narrative” was elaborated by most of the major symphonists of the 19th century, and it continued to inspire symphonic composers well into the twentieth.

            The romantic symphonic tradition came late to countries on the northern periphery of Europe, and it blossomed in England and Scandinavia after it largely had faded elsewhere. One of its last champions was the Danish composer Carl Nielsen. Born on an island off the Danish coast and a resident of Copenhagen for nearly all of his adult life, Nielsen composed music imbued with what seems a distinctly Scandinavian character. Its melodies are by turns sturdy and expressive, its harmonies strong and sober, its tone forthright and unsentimental.

            Nielsen completed his Symphony No. 4 in 1916, during the dark days of World War I, and gave it a striking title: “The Inextinguishable.” He explained that he meant this title to connote “the elemental Will of Life,” the urge of life to continue even in the face of destructive forces. “Music is Life and, like it, is inextinguishable,” Nielsen added. However, he also noted that the symphony implied nothing more specific, and that his remarks were “only a suggestion as to the right approach to the music.”