by Bill Scanlan Murphy
SAMUEL COLERIDGE-TAYLOR (1875-1912)
DANSE NEGRE from African Suite, Op.30
Composed: 1898
Premiered: 1898, London, England
Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s father came from Sierra Leone; his mother was English. He always referred to himself as an Anglo-African. Coleridge-Taylor had nothing but his immense talent to overcome the barriers of race; it is an astonishing tribute to his skill and perseverance that he was so successful until his early death. In the years before the First World War, only Mendelssohn’s Elijah came anywhere near the mass popularity of Coleridge-Taylor’s Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast, by far his most famous piece.
An early work originally written for piano, the African Suite was inspired by the writings of the African-American poet Paul Laurence Dunbar, with whom Coleridge-Taylor would later write Dream Lovers, the first African-American opera. Coleridge made several visits to the U.S., and was presented to President Roosevelt at the White House.
Later in his career, Coleridge-Taylor would use spirituals and African melodies as he sought to broaden the African side of his musical nature, but there are no such melodies to be found in the Danse Negre, an essentially light-hearted piece that has justifiably been compared in both sound and language to a Broadway overture. It certainly contains ample evidence to confirm no less an authority than Sir Edward Elgar in declaring Coleridge-Taylor “much the brightest” composer of his time.
WILLIAM LEVI DAWSON (1899-1990)
“O LE’ ME SHINE, SHINE LIKE THE MORNING STAR” from Negro Folk Symphony
Composed: Composed: 1933-4, revised 1952
Premiered: Philadelphia, 1934
Just as Samuel Coleridge-Taylor used genuine African material in his later music, William Levi Dawson came to center his music on his African heritage, undertaking a trip to Africa in 1952 to gather musical material. The Negro Folk Symphony dates from 1934, and is based on African-American folksongs; after his African trip, Dawson revised the work to include real African rhythms, which combine well with the Stravinsky-tinged rhythmic drive of the original.
As the composer himself wrote; “This folk music springs from the life of the Negro people as freely today as at any time in the past, though the modes and forms of today are sometimes vastly different from the older creations.” Different, but not disconcertingly so; the ghosts of Sibelius and his fellow late Romantics are there to show that this profoundly African American work is truly world music.
HENRI WIENIAWSKI (1835-1880)
CONCERTO IN D MINOR, first movement (Allegro Moderato)
Composed: 1870
Premiered: Warsaw, Poland, 1870
Devotees of Sherlock Holmes, a violinist as well as great detective, may recall that he would often spend evenings at the hugely popular recitals and concerts given by Pablo Sarasate, the Paganini of his generation; a staple of these concerts was the Wieniawski Second Concerto, the composer’s only work still to be widely performed in our time.
The Allegro Moderato opens with an orchestral exposition building up to the entry of the soloist; the movement’s lyrical second subject is given out first by the solo violin. The movement makes much use of the warm sound of the violin’s lowest (G) string and the instrument’s virtuosic possibilities. At the end of a movement that puts the soloist through the sternest possible paces, the tempo doubles for a final show of bravura/
FRANZ STRAUSS (1822-1905)
HORN CONCERTO IN C MINOR, Op. 8 (movements 1 –3)
Composed: 1865
Premiered: Munich, Germany, 1865
Known firstly in his lifetime as “the Joachim of the horn” before enjoying a second glimpse of fame as the father of the composer Richard Strauss, Franz Strauss also looms large in musical history as quite possibly Richard Wagner’s worst enemy. His own first concerto inspires fear in most horn players and great interest in listeners, who, however, will find very little to suggest that this very conservative composer’s son would eventually become, arguably, the super-Wagner; the older Strauss’s music is firmly in the early nineteenth-century German Romantic idiom familiar to the composer from long years in the Bavarian Court orchestra, with occasional glimpses of the pre-Wagnerian operatic world.
The music’s form is conventional, but its spirit is not (Richard did not come from nowhere). Perhaps we could agree with Wagner, who said, “Strauss is an unbearable, curmudgeonly fellow, but when he plays his horn one can say nothing, for it is so beautiful.”
SIR EDWARD ELGAR (1857-1934)
VARIATIONS ON AN ORIGINAL THEME (“ENIGMA”), Op. 36
Composed: 1898
Premiered: 1899, London, England
The Enigma Variations originated in an evening in the summer of 1898, when Elgar improvised variations at the piano to amuse his wife, portraying their friends in the various transformations of a slightly odd little theme that he said represented himself. Odd, because it sounds like the counter-theme to something else; Elgar hinted that another melody, universally known and popular, would go in counterpoint with his Enigma tune, but never came anywhere near saying what it was. An Enigma, indeed, that keeps scholars busy to this day.
However, we need not detain ourselves with the Mystery Melody; this hugely popular work has more than enough appeal of its own, with its affectionate cameos of Elgar’s wife and friends:
C.A.E.—Carolyn Alice Elgar, the composer’s wife. A Romance, and a sincere one.
H.D.S-P.—Hew David Stewart-Powell, violinist in Elgar’s piano trio. Notice the piano warm-up exercises at the end!
R. B. T.—Richard Baxter Townshend, an amateur actor: the music alternates between high and low as Townshend gesticulates.
W.M.B.—William M. Baker, a country squire with a temper. Note the door-slam.
R.P.A.—Richard P. Arnold seemed to Elgar to be mildly bipolar; gloom and gentle humor alternate.
Ysobel—Isabel Fitton, an amateur violist who often played with Elgar. Her melody here is graceful – but not too difficult.
Troyte—Arthur Troyte Griffith, an architect and would-be pianist whose volcanic temper brought a crashing end to several attempts to master the instrument
W.N.—Winifred Norbury, an amateur violinist, here presented as the archetypal Victorian young lady.
Nimrod—August Jaeger, Elgar’s publisher. “Jaeger” is German for “hunter;” Nimrod is the hunter in the Book of Genesis. The music reflects Jaeger’s love of Beethoven, and the slow movement of the Pathetique Sonata in particular.
Dorabella—Dora Penny, a delightful young lady with a stutter.
G.R.S. —George Robertson Sinclair, organist of Hereford Cathedral, out with his lively but dim dog, Dan, who falls in the river.
B.N. —Basil Nevinson, cellist (with H.D.S-P.) in Elgar’s piano trio.
*** —Lady Mary Lygon, a friend of Elgar who had just gone on a cruise to Australia – hence the quotation from Mendelssohn's “Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage” overture. Or maybe not: Helen Weaver, once Elgar’s fiancée, jilted him and left for New Zealand; the music seems far too sad for a mere cruise.
E.D.U.—Elgar himself; “Edu” was Lady Elgar’s nickname for her husband. Arguably Elgar’s very English answer to Strauss’s egomaniacal Heldenleben, but really a recapitulation of much that we’ve heard in the other variations, and reprises of Elgar’s wife (C.A.E.) and his best friend (Nimrod). As Nietzsche says, good friends make a good man.
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