Gustav Mahler was fifteen or sixteen years old and a student at the Vienna Conservatory when, in 1876, he composed the Piano Quartet in A minor. The work exists as a single movement, cast in sonata form and marked Nicht zu schnell (not too fast). Conceived as the opening movement of a larger abandoned project, it is followed by a thirty-two measure fragment of an unfinished scherzo. This is the only surviving …
The fifteen-year-old Felix Mendelssohn already had thirteen string symphonies and a number of chamber works under his belt when, in March of 1824, he completed his first symphony for full orchestra. Mendelssohn was a classicist who built on traditions of the past. He studied, extensively, the works of Mozart and Haydn, as well as the counterpoint of J.S. Bach and Handel. Additionally, the teenage composer absorbed the influences of his contemporaries, most …
As a musical form, the serenade implies light, entertaining music of the evening, set in a loose collection of movements which resembles a divertimento. The two youthful Serenades which Johannes Brahms wrote in his early twenties conform to this description. Yet they can also be heard as trial runs on the path to a symphony. It was Robert Schumann who heard “veiled symphonies” in Brahms’ early piano music, and who anticipated that …
Antonín Dvořák was one of the greatest composers of melody. Perhaps the most catchy and popularly enduring example is the Humoresque No. 7 in G-flat Major (Poco lento e grazioso), originally written for solo piano. Propelled forward by an infectious, lilting rhythm, the melody develops in two-note steps which ascend gradually and explore a variety of motivic combinations before sinking into repose at the end of the phrase. As with much of …
In 1892, Antonin Dvořák left his beloved Bohemian homeland to accept an invitation to serve as director of New York’s National Conservatory of Music. In his words, Dvořák had been brought to the New World to “discover what young Americans had in them, and to help them express it.” During the nearly three year stay, Dvořák traveled as far west as Spillville, Iowa, and composed some of his most famous works, including …
Composed in 1891, Iolanta, Op. 69 was Tchaikovsky’s eleventh and last completed opera. On the evening of December 18, 1892, it shared a double premiere with the ballet, The Nutcracker, at Saint Petersburg’s Mariinsky Theatre. Mahler conducted the Vienna premiere in 1900. Then, the work fell into relative obscurity. Set in one act, Iolanta is based on a story by the Danish writer, Henrik Hertz (1798–1870). Iolanta is a fifteenth century French …
Frédéric Chopin’s Mazurka in A minor, Op. 17, No. 4 inhabits the ephemeral world of dreams. Emerging out of silence, the opening bars are hazy and harmonically ambiguous. They contain a rising three-note cell which searches for the “right” note and soon spins into a melody. It is music which seems to be composing itself in realtime. Traditionally, the mazurka is a lively Polish folk dance in triple meter, with strong accents …