Stacy Garrop composed Spectacle of Light in 2020, commissioned by the Music of the Baroque Orchestra. The inspiration came from a 1749 etching of the fireworks on the River Thames, celebrating King George II’s signing of the treaty at Aix-la-Chapelle (Aachen in Germany) that officially ended the War of Austrian Succession. A grand spectacle of fireworks and music was a typical way at the time to celebrate significant events. It is the same event for which George Frideric Handel wrote Music for the Royal Fireworks.

Observing how fireworks rise, bloom, and overlap with each other to create a rich, complex, and fleeting tapestry of color, Garrop realized that fireworks and music share an ephemeral nature in that they both delight our senses before fading into memory.

“Ultimately, I decided that Spectacle of Light would represent the experience of a fireworks show. The music starts with great anticipation as the crowd waits in darkness, then a single firework illuminates the sky, followed by a massive eruption of light, color, and sound. After this initial frenzied burst, the fireworks quiet down into a slower-paced, mesmerizing display of colors.” The work ends with an unresolved note into silence, as if expecting the next movement to burst forth. Fittingly, a number of hints from Handel’s Fireworks are hidden in the music.

An Assistant Professor in Composition at the Chicago College of the Performing Arts at Roosevelt University, Garrop has a D.M. from Indiana University. Her numerous works have been widely performed by ensembles here and overseas.

As a mature artist, Felix Mendelssohn was acclaimed throughout Europe as a composer and conductor, especially in his native Germany and in England, where he had a private audience with the young Queen Victoria, who sang for him after he had played for her. His untimely death from unknown causes created a profound shock, and Mendelssohn societies promoting his music and ideas quickly sprang up all over middle and northern Europe.

Fortunately for the development of Mendelssohn’s prodigious talents, his carefully selected teachers were strict and demanding. Even as a mature artist, he was extremely self-critical, constantly requesting feedback and carefully perfecting his compositions. The Concerto in E minor had a long gestation period. Mendelssohn started the concerto in 1838 but did not finish it until six years later. He wrote it for his friend, the famed violinist Ferdinand David (1810-1873), concertmaster of the Gewandhaus Orchestra of Leipzig where Mendelssohn served as conductor from 1835 to 1843. The composer sought – and took – David’s advice on technical aspects throughout its composition. David finally premiered it in Leipzig in 1845, but Mendelssohn was ill and unable to attend. Now one of the staples of violin repertory, contemporaneous audiences considered the Concerto daring and innovative

From the first bar, the Allegro molto appassionato broke new ground. Instead of the usual orchestral exposition of the main themes, the violin enters at once with the principal theme on which the movement is built. For the second theme, the roles are reversed, with the winds introducing the theme. The cadenza, largely David’s creation, is placed unconventionally before the recapitulation. Relocating the cadenza away from its traditional place at the end of the movement stresses continuity with the second movement, which follows without pause.

The Andante emerges out of a single quiet bassoon tone, emanating from the last chord of the opening movement. It is joined by other instruments for a short transitional passage, after which the solo violin introduces the simple, almost religious theme.

Another transition, based on the opening theme of the Concerto, leads into the Allegro molto vivace. Mendelssohn saved the demonstration of the violin’s virtuoso possibilities for this sparkling Finale. After an orchestral fanfare for the winds, the soloist enters with a flourish followed by a delicate, dancing theme that dominates the movement and recalls the atmosphere of the teenaged composer’s first great hit, the Overture to A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

The eighteenth century witnessed the birth of many of the important genres in classical music: the symphony, the string quartet and the piano trio were among the important new musical genres. The instrumental serenade was another, written in a light vein designed primarily for entertainment and, frankly, background music for social gatherings and meals. It developed as a hybrid of chamber and orchestral music, as well as the dance suite, with three to ten relatively short movements, often involving unusual instrumental combinations, as in Mozart’s Serenade for 13 Wind Instruments. In the hierarchy of musical genres of the time, the serenade was definitely second class – although not necessarily in musical quality, as witnessed by the aforementioned Mozart serenade.

As a classically oriented composer who revered Beethoven, writing a symphony was a daunting proposition for Johannes Brahms. “You don’t know what it is like always to hear that giant marching along behind me,” he wrote. By the late 1850s, after nearly four years under the benevolent influence of Clara and Robert Schumann, Brahms was ready to strike out to find his own symphonic voice. The two youthful serenades and the Piano Concerto No.1 in D minor composed in his mid-20s had been a way to evade Beethoven’s ghost while allowing him to gain experience in orchestration. The orchestration of an initial attempt at a symphony in 1854 had caused such difficulty for the inexperienced composer that he dropped the project. While in the end Brahms composed four symphonies, the first did not premiere until 1876.

Brahms completed the Serenade in D major in the summer of 1857, originally as a nonet for winds and strings. Dissatisfied with the scoring, Brahms re-scored it immediately for small orchestra and then again in 1859 for fuller orchestra in the form we know it today. Its original instrumentation, however, is reflected in the fact that there are no trombones or tuba. Its gentle and modest mood stands in stark contrast to his first performed work for full orchestra, the gargantuan and passionate First Piano Concerto. The Serenade, by contrast, is a joyous work, whose style harks back to the symphonies and serenades of Haydn and the early symphonies of Beethoven. Its six movements and great length render it a substantial achievement, not to mention the originality of the manner in which Brahms handles the traditional movement structures – sonata form, scherzo/trio, rondo, etc. – a symphony by any other name…

The opening movement, although in sonata form, has about it a playful quality. The first theme is a horn solo, followed by an answer from a solo clarinet, oboe and then the violins – almost as if the individual instruments were calling to their companions to join a game for full orchestra. The close is perhaps the main quality that distinguishes it from a true symphonic first movement; instead of the expected fortissimo orchestral cadence, Brahms ends with a whisper of woodwind solos as if playtime is over and the individual instruments disperse for the day.

The Scherzo represents a wonderful example of how Brahms could push the structural envelope for this descendant of the classical minuet and trio. While the model contains clear-cut foursquare phrases and repeats, Brahms disguises the traditional guideposts by irregular and extruded phrase length and the blurring of the structural boundaries of the repeats. The Trio, by contrast, is more traditional in its clear-cur repeats.

The third movement, marked Adagio non troppo, is a treasure trove of melodies in a much-expanded classic form for slow movements, ABA, with three principal themes in the A section. Brahms spins out all three themes, incorporating variations of the basic musical ideas and adding new melodic content.

Considering the heft of the first three movements, it is something of a surprise to hear what Brahms does with the fourth and fifth; structurally and melodically they are as transparent as the first three are sophisticated. Although Brahms titles his fourth movement Minuet 1 and 2, taken together they are identical to the classic minuet/trio structure.

The Scherzo that follows harks back to Beethoven, who invented the form, fashioning it out of the old minuet by speeding it up and divorcing it once and for all from the dance. Both scherzo and trio sections feature the horns in a stereotypical hunting motive, reemphasizing their importance as signaled by the opening of the entire work.

The Finale is a rondo, whose melody is stomped out on the double basses and bassoons. The first episode introduces a contrasting theme, which recurs in various guises throughout the movement.

Program notes by:
Joseph & Elizabeth Kahn
Wordpros@mindspring.com
www.wordprosmusic.com