Twentieth Century

Saint-Saëns’ Fantaisie for Violin and Harp: Sunny and Exotic

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Camille Saint-Saëns’ Fantaisie for Violin and Harp, Op. 124 is filled with charm, virtuosity, and dreamy exoticism. The 72-year-old Saint-Saëns was vacationing in the city of Bridger in the Italian Riviera when, in 1907, he composed this sparkling miniature. He dedicated the work to a musical duo made up of two sisters, harpist Clara Eissler and violinist Marianne Eissler. Set in a single brief movement and bathed in Italian sunshine, the music …

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Ives’ “The Pond”: A Dreamy Elegy

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Composed by Charles Ives in 1906, The Pond is a shimmering, atmospheric fragment, or, in the words of the composer, “a song without voice.” Evocative of a rippling pond on a lazy afternoon, the work is so brief that it unfolds as a fleeting dream. The Pond was the composer’s nostalgic elegy for his father, George Ives (1845–1894), a cornet player and bandmaster in the Union Army during the Civil War. In Ives’ musical fragment, …

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Prokofiev’s String Quartet No. 1 in B Minor: Classical Foundations

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The impetus for Sergei Prokofiev’s First String Quartet came from America. In 1930, Prokofiev received the commission from the Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge Foundation of the Library of Congress. The Brosa Quartet premiered the work in Washington, D.C. on April 25, 1931. At the time, Prokofiev lived in exile in Paris, having fled his native land shortly after the 1917 Russian Revolution. In 1936, he would return home, telling friends, “I must see …

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Prokofiev’s Overture on Hebrew Themes: Klezmer Conversations

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When the February Revolution of 1917 broke out in Petrograd, Sergei Prokofiev resettled in the United States, stating that his native Russia “had no use for music at the moment.” Soon after arriving in New York, the 28-year-old Prokofiev received a commission from Zimro, a touring Soviet ensemble made up of Russian Jewish immigrants. The new sextet was to be based on themes from a notebook of Jewish folksongs. In his autobiography, …

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Ingram Marshall’s “Wanderer’s Night Song”: Hymnodic Twilight Meditations

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“The all too familiar hymns of my childhood have come back to haunt me,” wrote American composer Ingram Marshall (1942-2022) above the program note for his 1992 work for string quartet, Evensongs. Marshall went on to describe the six sections of Evensongs as “hymnodic meditations” concerning twilight. The concluding section, Fast falls the eventide: Wanderer’s Night Song is haunting and atmospheric. Frequently, Marshall blended elements of minimalism and electronic music (listen to the 1982 Fog …

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Holst’s “Nunc Dimittis”: Homage to Renaissance Polyphony

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English composer Gustav Holst found inspiration, not only in the folk music of his native land, but also in the early music of William Byrd and Palestrina. Nunc dimittis for eight-part choir is Holst’s homage to Renaissance polyphony. Composed in 1915 for Richard Terry, organist of Westminster Cathedral, the work was performed on Easter Sunday of that year, and then fell into obscurity. It existed in manuscript form until publication in 1979. This …

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The Vocalise: Music of André Previn and John Williams

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Free of the literal meaning of a text, the wordless vocalise floats into a dreamy and surreal landscape. In André Previn’s Vocalise, the singer enters into a haunting musical conversation with the solo cello and the instrumental voices of the orchestra. Composed at Tanglewood on July 18, 1995 for Sylvia McNair and Yo Yo Ma, the work was originally scored for voice, cello, and piano, and was orchestrated later. Previn, the German-American pianist, …

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