Harmonious Blacksmith..................................................... George Frideric Handel (1685-1759)

                                                                                              Arranged by Katherine Borst Jones

            One of Handel’s most popular pieces, The Harmonious Blacksmith is an air with five variations which was originally published in Volume One of his Suites de pieces pour le Clavecin in 1720, where it was included in Suite No. 5.  The title “Harmonious Blacksmith” was bestowed on the music in the nineteenth century, and a story of its origin claims the piece was a favorite of a William Lintern, a blacksmith apprentice and an amateur musician.  He was often heard whistling his favorite piece, Handel’s “Air and Variations”, giving his friends the reason to call him “the harmonious blacksmith”.  Lintern later became owner of a music publishing company, the first to publish the piece under The Harmonious Blacksmith title.  Handel borrowed portions of the composition from his early opera Almira, and his Concerto for Organ and Harpsichord in B-flat major, Opus 4, No. 6. 

Clair de Lune................................................................................... Claude Debussy (1862-1918)

            Arranged by Mark Thomas

            Originally a piano piece included in Debussy’s collection Suite Bergamasque, “Clair de Lune” has become one of the composer’s frequently heard works.  The traditional arpeggio patterns in the piano composition are here retained, and the flutes give the music a shimmer which the composer has aptly characterized as occurring in the moonlight.

The Flight of the Bumblebee......................................... Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov  (1844-1908)

                                                                                                                Arranged by Trudy Kane

            The programmatic nature of this piece is obvious from its beginning.  With four flutes, it sounds like not one, but four bumblebees.  The piece began as an orchestral interlude by Rimsky-Korsakov for his opera The Tale of Tsar Saltan, 1899-1900.  The piece closes Act III, Tableau 1, right after the magic Swan-Bird gives Prince Gvidon Saltanovich, the Tsar’s son, instructions on how to change into an insect so he can fly away to visit his father, who does not know he is alive.  There is a vocal line in the original, usually omitted. 

            Among the many versions of this piece, an unusual one is by the French electronic musician, Jean-Jacques Perrey.  In the 1960’s he recorded the sounds of live bees, and by tedious tape manipulation and hundreds of splices of tape, he assembled a frantic version that features the bees actually playing the melody line.

String Quartet in D-major, Op. 64, no. 5 “The Lark”........ Franz Joseph Haydn, (1732-1809)

            Toward the end of his life, Haydn was internationally recognized as the greatest composer of the time.  From his humble beginning as the son of a wheelwright, Haydn sang in what is today the Vienna Choir Boys at St. Stephen’s Church.  When his voice changed he supported himself teaching children music and as a street musician in Vienna.  Becoming Kapellmeister to Count Morzin around 1755, he then attained security by a life-time appointment to the Esterhazy court at Eisenstadt, located in the country near the Austro-Hungarian border.  He held this position for almost thirty years, composing and conducting, patronized by Prince Nicholas Esterhazy.  Upon the death of the prince in 1790 he was granted a pension, and was able to travel to London in 1791 and 1794, invited by the impresario J. P. Salomon.  Each time he spent a year and half in England, and was enormously successful presenting concerts of his own works.

              Many of Haydn’s works have nicknames suggested by musical characteristics in the composition.  The “Lark Quartet” derives its nickname from the opening movement when the first violin begins the exposition by singing a soaring “lark-like” melody.  The second theme, announced in thirds, is richly expanded by descending triplet scale passages.  The development section begins with the lark melody, brings back the triplet scale passages, presents the lark melody again, and leads to a notable climax.  The soaring lark melody signals the recapitulation. In this first movement Haydn combines spontaneity and spaciousness, a unique achievement in his body of string quartets. 

            In the second movement, marked Adagio cantabile, the first violin especially sings a lyrical melody throughout.  During the movement, the principal key of A major is contrasted by a section in its parallel minor, A-minor.  A cadenza-like passage closes the movement. 

            Haydn’s third movements are typically based on the Austrian peasant dance in a moderate 3/4 meter, the Ländler.  With the principal key of D-major, the Trio darkens with eighth-note passages in the parallel minor, D-minor.  The D-major finale movement is notable for its perpetual motion of running 16^th notes.  It includes a D-minor fugato in its middle section, then races on to the end with all the quartet participating in 16^th-notes perpetuum mobile.

Three Little Fugues............................................................. George Frideric Handel (1685-1759)

                                                                                                        Transcribed by Marion Bauer

            In the first of these fugues, the subject is announced by the flute, followed in turn by the clarinet, horn, bassoon and oboe.  A portion of the subject lends itself to imitative extension by the clarinet and the flute.  The second fugue is indicated to be played “Quickly and with humor,” with its entries following the score order of the quintet:  flute, oboe, clarinet, horn, and bassoon. A light touch in its interpretation brings out the character of this fugue.  The third fugue, the only one of the group in triple meter, slips by “Rapidly and gracefully,” with some rapid passage work in the flute and clarinet.  The copy of Three Little Fugues comes from the library of George Irwin, founder and conductor of the Quincy Symphony Orchestra.           

 
Five Easy Dances......................................................................................................... Denes Agay

            Born in Hungary in 1911, Denes Agay studied piano and composition at the Liszt Academy in Budapest.  In 1939 he migrated to the United States, where he worked for the remainder of his career, earning an international reputation as a piano teacher.  As a composer and arranger of piano music, he is particularly noted for his ”Joy of… (here fill in your favorite style of music)” series.  On his photograph he has a small portion of a framed sheet of Gregorian chant hanging behind his piano, unfortunately not clear enough so I could decipher any text. 

            Five Easy Dances for woodwind quintet were published in 1956.  They include: Polka, Tango, Bolero, Waltz, and Rhumba.  All of the dances are relatively short, with faster ones quite lively and the slower ones romantic in their concept.

 
Polka, from The Golden Age.................................................. Dmitry Shostakovich (1906-1975)

                                                                                                        Arranged by Jerry Neil Smith

            The Golden Age is a ballet coming from 1930, the earlier period of Shostakovich’s career as a composer.  It was premiered in Leningrad; this cultural center’s name now reverting to St. Petersburg.  The polka from The Golden Age became so popular that Shostakovich made a piano arrangement in 1935, and later in 1962 another piano arrangement for four hands.  It should be recalled that Shostakovich suffered under the yoke of the 1948 Soviet decree which tightened ideological controls on musicians and led to artistic repression.  It is a tribute to his resilience that he survived and continued to compose through this period.

            Jerry Neil Smith received his Ph.D. from the Eastman School of Music.  Active as a clarinetist and saxophonist, he recently retired from the University of Oklahoma.

Clarinet Trio in B-flat Major, Opus 11.............................. Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)

            In his recent book: Beethoven: The Music and the Life, musicologist Lewis Lockwood has characterized the Clarinet Trio, Opus 11 as “designed for popularity and little more.”  About this ingratiating composition he goes on to say:  “On its publication in 1798 Beethoven dedicated the clarinet trio to a Countess Thun, presumably the oldest one of several by that title, who a few years earlier had gone on her knees to implore him to play.  For her pains she now received a light and flashy reward that moved from a glittering first movement and slow movement to the circus style of its finale, made up of variations on the hit tune ‘Pria ch’io l’impegno’ from a recent comic opera by Joseph Weigl (1766-1846).  In once more forcing an inevitable comparison with Mozart, whose E-flat major Clarinet Trio, with viola, had been another quiet masterpiece, Beethoven did well to make his piece attractive to audiences and performers, especially cellists, but he was fully aware that instead of attempting a really serious work that could stand up to Mozart’s, he was trolling the surface for easy dividends.” 

            This trio for clarinet, cello, and piano, is laid out in three movements.  The first movement follows faithfully the sonata allegro form of the time.  The distinctive first and second themes of the exposition end in the key of the dominant, F-major.  The development section begins immediately far afield in D-flat major, then touches on G-minor, B-flat minor and other keys.  The second movement, marked Adagio, especially favors the cellist with beautiful melodic passages.  The theme of the final movement is the popular air “Pria ch’io l’impegno” (Before I [attempt?] the task [verb missing in the phrase]), coming from the Viennese composer Joseph Weigel’s comic opera, L’amor marinaro (1797). It has a conventional 16-measure structure which then undergoes nine variations.  Among these, variations four and seven are conventionally in the parallel minor, B-flat minor.  While the closing 6/8 Allegro is not indicated as another variation, with its jaunty syncopation it, too, may be classified as such.

Brass Quintet No. 1, Opus 5................................................................ Victor Ewald (1860-1935)

            Victor Ewald spent his entire life in St. Petersburg, where he was primarily a Professor of Civil Engineering.  As only a part-time musician, he was the cellist with the Beliaeff String Quartet for sixteen years.  In the late 1800’s this ensemble performed on the first Friday of every month at the house of the wealthy music lover, Beliaeff, with these performances attracting musicians from all over Russia.  As the most influential string quartet in St. Petersburg, the Beliaeff Quartet introduced much of the standard quartet literature to Russian concertgoers.  Besides being a performing musician, Ewald also collected and published Russian folk songs.        

Victor Ewald’s Brass Quintet No. 1 (1902, revised 1912) uses two trumpets, French horn, trombone, and tuba.   It is in B-flat minor, with the final movement going to the parallel major, B-flat major.  The first movement begins with an imitative subject announced by the tuba, answered by the horn and second trumpet, then with an inversion presented by the first trumpet.  A small ritard announces the second subject in D-flat major.  As the movement develops the initial perfect fifth of the first subject expands to a major sixth, culminating in sforzando chords, then dying away in the first trumpet as another presentation of the first subject enters.  Arpeggios shoot upward as this movement leads to a quiet final presentation of the first subject, and after fortissimo chords, ends softly.

The second movement is entirely in 5/4 meter with the overall structure of ABA.  It opens with an Adagio melody in G-flat major, soon leading to an Allegro vivace in B-flat minor.  After developing new melodic material here, the movement quietly reverts to the opening Adagio material which now has elaborating accompaniment figures.           

            The third movement, Allegro moderato, opens with a main theme having the same rhythmic pattern as that of the first movement, however now in the brighter key of B-flat major.  A second theme soon appears, which is reminiscent of Tchaikowsky’s principal theme in the fourth movement of his Symphony No. 4.  This theme is given an extended treatment before the first theme reappears, and leads to slow triplets crescendoing to the close.