PROGRAM NOTES

Arvo Pärt (b. 1935)
SILOUAN’S SONG

The Estonian composer Arvo Pärt began his career writing in the styles of serialism and atonality, which earned him unwanted attention in the form of warnings from the Soviet government. The threat of politically motivated punishment, however, was not the catalyst for Pärt’s shift toward a new sound. After taking time to reevaluate his compositional methods in the late 1970s, along with studying Bach, Gregorian chant, and Russian Orthodox sacred music, Pärt arrived at a new compositional philosophy and technique that he called “tintinnabulation” (“bells”). He explained: “Tintinnabulation is like this. Here, I am alone in silence. I have discovered that it is enough when a single note is beautifully played...I build with the most primitive materials – with the triad, with one specific tonality. The three notes of a triad are like bells. And that is why I call it tintinnabulation.” 

Tintinnabuli, the ringing/sound of bells, alludes to the mathematical division of a note’s sound wave into the overtone series, the basis of Western music theory and its harmonic progressions, which is heard in the chaotic timbre of a ringing bell. In brief, if you strike a single note, you are not just hearing that note but an entire sequence working together (the “fundamental” and its “partials,” to use the lingo). Thus, when you hear A-natural you also sympathetically hear other tones from the A scale in a sequence of 5ths, 4ths, 3rds, and so on: A, E, A, C-sharp, E, etc.—a musical universe orbiting a single note. 

Silouan’s Song is named for the Russian monk St. Silouan, reflecting Pärt’s personal religious devotion to the Eastern Orthodox Church. In the music, you hear aspects of tintinnabulation, the simple revolution and contemplation of a select sequence of notes, buffered intermittently by silence, and a subtext of yearning for spiritual renewal.

Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges (1745-1799)
SINFONIA CONCERTANTE IN E-FLAT MAJOR, OP. 13 NO. 1

In January of 1786, the Concert de la Loge Olympique in Paris, one of the best orchestras of 18th century Europe, began premiering six newly commissioned symphonies by Franz Joseph Haydn. These “Paris” symphonies were commissioned by the ensemble’s 41-year-old music director and conductor, a young man that John Adams praised in his diary: “He is the most accomplished Man in Europe in Riding, Running, Shooting, Fencing, Dancing, Musick.” This was Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-George, the son of plantation owner George Bologne and his Senegalese slave, Nanon, born on the island of Guadeloupe in the Caribbean. 

At the age of 8, the family left the Caribbean and returned to France, taking Joseph and his mother with them. The young Bologne soon displayed exceptional talent at many things, but his initial fame was as a champion fencer. It was said he never so much as harmed an opponent due to the immense control he displayed, and only one match loss was recorded. Little information has survived about the beginnings of his musical education, but he was so accomplished as a violinist that by age 24 he became a member of the renowned Concert des Amateurs orchestra, made his debut as a soloist, and assumed the role of their music director just four years later. Bologne had become a fixture in the brilliant musical scene of Paris (he and Mozart even lived under the same roof for a brief period of time—no record of interactions between the two survives), and some research suggests he became so closely associated with the Queen of France, Marie Antoinette, that he gave her music lessons. He was also employed by members of the extended royal family, taking over as music director of the private theater of Madame de Montesson, wife of the Duke d'Orléans. If it were not for the complaints of four divas from the company about “taking orders from a mulatto,” Bologne might have assumed the role of music director of the Paris Opera. 

A prolific composer as well as performer, Bologne published the majority of his orchestral compositions within the span of six years, between 1773 and 1779. These include over a dozen works for orchestra, and multiple sonatas, quartets, and other works for small ensemble. His six operas were amongst his last works, written and published right up to his death. The orchestral works include around nine sinfonia concertante, which were a kind of transitional genre between the baroque concerto grosso with its integral soloist parts, and the classical symphony that championed balance, form, melody, and disciplined uniformity of the performers.

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893)
SERENADE FOR STRINGS IN C MAJOR, OP. 48

“Why don’t you love Mozart? With regard to him we clearly disagree with one another, my dear friend. I not only love Mozart—I worship him,” Tchaikovsky wrote in a letter from March 1878, gently reproving his patron, confidant, and friend, Nadezhada von Meck. In an era predating recording devices, the only way to hear, or become familiar with works of a composer was to either attend concerts where the music was being performed, or be wealthy enough to hire people to play it for you at home. So, to broaden public knowledge of his idol, in 1887 Tchaikovsky re-arranged four of Mozart’s pieces into the Suite No. 4 in G Major, Op. 61, “Mozartiana.” The Serenade for Strings, written seven years earlier, was also meant to be reflective of Mozart, whom Tchaikovsky thought was “devoid of self-satisfaction and boastfulness...a genius whose childlike innocence, gentleness of spirit...are scarcely of this earth.” 

Even if Mozart is at its heart, the Serenade for Strings is quintessential Tchaikovsky, distilled and refined. Here he leaves aside exaggerated thematic statements, ostentatious virtuosity, and foreboding dread in favor of incandescent melody. Like a sunbeam through panes of ancient cathedral glass, the opening chords emit into the silence. The four movements unfurl one by one, take the listener on a sublime journey through various harmonic landscapes and shifting qualities of feeling. If the work feels like a resolute proclamation (or even celebration of) beauty, there’s a reason. Tchaikovsky wrote the Serenade concurrent with the 1812 Overture, a work for which he had little to no sentiment. In another letter to von Meck he wrote, “The Overture will be very loud, noisy, but I wrote it without any warm feelings of love and so it will probably be of no artistic worth. But the Serenade, on the contrary, I wrote from inner compulsion. This is a piece from the heart and so, I venture to say, it does not lack artistic worth.”

Somewhere between string quartet and symphony, the Serenade for Strings begins with descending tutti chords, commencing what will be a relationship between gravity and weightlessness through the constantly ascending and descending lines heard over the course of the first three movements. The effect is a work that seems to actually breathe, to be alive and feel along with us; harmony implying movement—which is perhaps why George Balanchine was inspired to use the music in his ballet, Serenade. The charming Valse of the second movement glimmers all the more contrasted with the wistfulness of the Élégie (that seems to foreshadow the Grand Pas de Deux of the Nutcracker, some 10 years later). Then we arrive at the Finale, hovering like an autumn leaf fluttering midair before being carried away in an upward breeze—or, in this case, a whirlwind of Russian folk melodies, which are abruptly interrupted with the return of the opening tutti chords in the last moments.

Kathryn J Allwine Bacasmot is a pianist/harpsichordist, musicologist, music and cultural critic, and freelance writer. A graduate of New England Conservatory, she writes program annotations for ensembles nationwide.