Welser-Möst Conducts Strauss

Richard Wagner drafted his first ideas for Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (The Master Singers of Nuremberg) as early as 1845, while still living in Dresden. But the work that later came to fruition as his only mature comic opera served as a necessary tonic to the anguished drama of its immediate predecessor, Tristan und Isolde. For Meistersinger, Wagner put aside the unmoored, futuristic harmonic language of Tristan’s world, instead grounding himself in the musical past, finding new vigor in J.S. Bach–inspired counterpoint and even further back, in the traditions of medieval music guilds.

Like Tristan, Wagner first imagined Die Meistersinger as a brief interlude in his creative work. In this case, it was to be a quick comic romp inspired by an actual historical figure, the working-class hero and poet Hans Sachs. The exhaustive effort of Tristan notwithstanding, Wagner rallied — while still keeping the not-yet-completed Ring cycle on the back burner — and found his initially modest concept ballooning to gigantic proportions. One inspiration was the example of the “old masters” and the topic itself of artistic renewal and creativity, which lies at the heart of Meistersinger.

In his autobiography, Wagner reports that he’d been perked up by an art-viewing expedition in Venice, where he sought relief from his post-Tristan depression. The paintings of the great Renaissance artist Titian made such an impression that Wagner resolved to turn his attention to Meistersinger. Wagner’s telling of this inspiration points to the sense of nostalgia that Meistersinger stirs for an imaginary Renaissance utopia of a society in which artistic genius has integral value.

Wagner recalled that, while taking the train from Venice back to Vienna in 1862, a portion of the Prelude to Die Meistersinger came to him spontaneously, “with the greatest clarity,” and composed it quickly. Ironically, the opera as a whole proved much more effortful — Wagner spent another five years finishing the work.

Die Meistersinger calls for a very large cast and features several plot lines that intertwine with the contrapuntal finesse that we hear in the Prelude itself. Wagner scales back his orchestral forces somewhat from what he had used in Tristan, but the musical tapestry he weaves from his material is magnificently rich.

The Prelude is designed in the old-fashioned mode of an overture-style “synopsis” of main themes to come (even if the opera itself had yet to be written). At the same time, it can be heard as a miniature symphony that is “about” itself, whether we know that the proud, pompous opening represents the self-important attitude of the Mastersingers or that the sweetly cadenced, lyrical music that comes next stands for the love between Eva and Walther. A young upstart of an artist, Walther will win Eva in marriage through his success at the climactic song contest, with the final thread of his winning song woven into the musical mix.

Wagner even includes a miniature scherzo of chattering woodwinds — a figure for the most annoying pedantic of the Mastersingers, the rule-bound Beckmesser — that spin mock counterpoint from the opening theme. He then pulls out all the stops for a grandly symphonic climax. Combining these materials together in a thrilling, majestically paced synthesis, Wagner ends the Prelude with a sunlit blaze of C major.

— Thomas May 

Thomas May is a writer, critic, educator, and translator. A regular contributor to The New York Times, The Seattle Times, Gramophone, and Strings magazine, he is the English-language editor for the Lucerne Festival. 

In March 2019, Bernd Richard Deutsch made his first visit to Severance Music Center to attend the US premiere of his concerto for organ and orchestra, Okeanos, with eminent soloist Paul Jacobs. He had just embarked on his first season as The Cleveland Orchestra’s 10th Daniel R. Lewis Composer Fellow, following in the footsteps of now-internationally recognized composers, including Susan Botti, Anthony Cheung, Matthias Pintscher, and Jörg Widmann.

This performance came early in the fellowship, while the Orchestra and Music Director Franz Welser-Möst familiarized themselves with Deutsch’s soundworld, a musical landscape that has been described as virtuosic, playful, and sometimes ironic. (The performance was captured on A New Century, the Orchestra’s inaugural release on its own recording label.)

Deutsch remembers the concert vividly: “I listened to the music with my eyes closed and experienced the sound very intensely and highly emotionalized. Strong color impressions set in, gold, purple, bright, radiant colors, various forms of light. I memorized these impressions well, and they surely influenced and inspired my music.”

The result was Intensity, written especially for The Cleveland Orchestra. Deutsch defines this title as “a quality or state of experience that I expect from life as well as from art in general.” This quality resonates within his music and can also be found in the way the Orchestra and Welser-Möst approach music-making. It also captures how the pandemic heightened feelings of separation as well as togetherness in the artistic process.

Born in 1977 outside of Vienna, Deutsch studied composition, piano, and bassoon at the Vienna University of Music and Performing Arts. Since graduating in 2001, he has received several prizes and accolades, including Vienna’s Ernst Krenek Prize (2002), an Austrian state scholarship twice (2010 and 2017), second prize in the 2011 Tōru Takemitsu Composition Competition, the Paul Hindemith Prize (2014), and Australia’s Paul Louwin Prize for composition (2015).

“We believe Mr. Deutsch will be a major figure,” said Franz Welser-Möst. “He’s in the tradition of the third Viennese school, which has a lighter touch to it, but he also has a real original, personal voice in his music.”

The initial sparks of Intensity came shortly before the premiere of Okeanos, when Deutsch attended The Cleveland Orchestra’s 2018 performances at the Musikverein in Vienna. The all-Beethoven program, part of that season’s Prometheus Project, made an impression on the composer.

Deutsch recalled, “I thought immediately I should include a short moment in my piece, in which only the string section plays. A few months later, I then composed such a passage in the third part of my piece.”

Intensity unfolds in three main sections, which Deutsch describes as “departure — introspection (absence) — return.” Having written most of the piece in a period of self-imposed isolation just prior to the lockdowns early in the pandemic, Deutsch finds even more emotional weight within the last section: “It seems almost prophetic [that] ... after an enforced ‘absence’ of such long dimensions, the ‘return’ becomes even more emphatic.”

— Amanda Angel

Amanda Angel was The Cleveland Orchestra’s Managing Editor of Content.

COMPOSER’S NOTE

Intensity has three parts and is built on three main themes and two basic chords. I borrowed the second basic chord as an objet trouvé from Modest Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition (The Old Castle). The fast movements of the first part convey a sense of a fresh start/euphoric mood (the German word is “Aufbruchsstimmung”). The motivic core for the whole piece emerges from a trumpet signal in the first bars.

The middle section is a very quiet introspection — a listening to the sound and an inward intensity — in contrast to the outward intensity of the first and third parts.

After a transition, there is a return of the euphoric mood. Motives from the first part are processed playfully and freely. The piece ends with a renewed burst of energy.

— Bernd Richard Deutsch

Marriage, parenthood, and the intimacies of family life, for most of us, are of consuming importance, permanent and inescapable. They are usually also private, personal matters, and the source of happiness, misery, or both. Painters and novelists have explored domestic subjects for centuries, and the self-portrait is an honored form of art. Why, then, was Richard Strauss ridiculed for portraying himself and his family in his music? How can the subject of domestic life be deemed unworthy of a composer’s creative efforts, condemned as in bad taste, when other artists and art forms have plunged its intimate and emotional depths to the fullest?

If a symphony can be pastoral, or fantastique, or Italian, or Rhenish, or pathétique, why not domestic? This was what the composer was thinking when he attempted to portray — and celebrate — the everyday private world he shared with his wife, Pauline, and son, Franz.

The Symphonia domestica belongs to the series of tone poems Strauss had been composing since the stunningly successful Don Juan of 1889, each more ambitious than the last. The new one was to be called a symphonic poem, not a tone poem (and it has recognizable scherzo and adagio sections, not unlike symphonic movements). Yet it is much more of a narrative with three principal characters. Two of them, his wife and himself, featured prominently in the previous tone poem, Ein Heldenleben. They are now joined by the baby, known as “Bubi,” whose squeals and tantrums — as well as his heavenly repose — are represented in the music.

The listener may prefer to know no more than that and let each section suggest what it will. Strauss originally explained events in considerable detail, then later removed most of the tags and cues, sensing the embarrassment that over-descriptive music can cause.

The musical themes for Strauss and his wife are a reflection of each other in diametrically opposing keys, F and B. They reappear constantly — his not always gently, hers not always angrily, although Strauss lays his cards on the table early on. His own themes at the opening are in turn comfortable (cellos), dreamy (oboe), morose (clarinets), fiery (violins), joyful (trumpet), and fresh (rushing scales).

Her themes follow immediately, but without labels. Pauline did not always make her husband’s life easy and even sometimes sneered at his music. One of their rows became the basis of his 1924 opera Intermezzo. Nevertheless, he remained devoted to her and recognized that he needed her, as the closing pages of the Symphonia domestica celebrate. Their marriage lasted more than half a century, until his death in 1949; she died 10 months later.

A folklike passage suggests bourgeois comforts (interrupted by passionate exchanges) before a sudden hash introduces the baby. He is represented by an important theme played by the oboe d’amore, an instrument familiar to J.S. Bach but not widely used in Strauss’s time. The baby is, of course, sweet when quiet but also capable of screaming. During his playtime, his theme is transformed into a gentle scherzo somewhat in Mahler’s manner.

As the baby gets drowsy, father looks on with pride. A gently rocking lullaby appears, and as the two parents each say “good night” to their own themes, a clock chimes 7 in the evening. All is calm and father settles down to his desk (the adagio, or third movement). The rich sound of horns introduces his thoughts taking shape and, although he is interrupted by his wife, the music flows freely and leads directly into a love scene. Strauss is at his descriptive best here, and why not? He did not need to apologize for any lack of delicacy since no words are needed.

The couple are soon asleep, although they are troubled by worried thoughts about the child in a surreal passage scored mostly for high instruments. They are woken by the clock again striking 7 in the morning.

The new day provides material for the extensive final scene (or movement). The baby’s theme, sped up, is the subject of a vigorous fugue, with the wife’s theme as a second subject, also treated as a fugue. In the course of this energetic music, tension grows between husband and wife, leading to a blazing row — but ending in reconciliation. Strauss’s sheer joy in composing and his unstoppable invention take over, well beyond the point where any storytelling is needed. This is no dirge on the miseries of home life — it is a triumphant celebration of a good and ideal life, brilliantly expressed.

Once again Strauss shows himself the master of the modern orchestra, in this case an orchestra larger than any he had called for before. A horn section of eight (as in Wagner’s Ring cycle) was established in Ein Heldenleben, but here he adds the oboe d’amore and a full quartet of saxophones, although Strauss is strangely cautious in their use, for they only play in sections for full orchestra and are never heard on their own. Indeed, in his own performances he did not use saxophones.

Strauss once boasted he could portray a teaspoon in music and compose the differences between a knife and a fork. Music can transform the trivial into the sublime, and the Symfonia domestica proves it quite admirably.

— Hugh Macdonald

Hugh Macdonald is Avis H. Blewett Professor Emeritus of Music at Washington University in St. Louis. He has written books on Beethoven, Berlioz, Bizet, and Scriabin, as well as Music in I853: The Biography of a Year.