Reading Vaughan Williams' 5th

The first time I heard the Fifth Symphony by Ralph Vaughan Williams, I got angry at it. I can't remember another piece of music leaving me feeling so indignant, so cheated... only to become, in time, a beloved favorite. Such a reversal of heart will be no less remarkable if I add that my enthusiasm for it has mellowed to a quiet but firm respect. Perhaps I owe to this experience my ability not to get angry at a piece of music that I don't quite "get." Or perhaps it only illustrates an ethic that I wish I could share with more music lovers: namely, that the right response to a perplexing musical art-work is to focus your interest on it, to keep cracking at it until it opens itself to you. Such hard-won discoveries have made Brahms's First, Sibelius's Seventh, and this symphony (among others) even more special to me than some pieces that went "click" on the first go.

In spite of my rocky start with this symphony, I did not choose it for this assignment because it is the greatest of Vaughan Williams' nine symphonies, or even because it is one of my all-time favorites; for I assert neither of these things. I chose it, rather, because I think it is the most readily approachable. It may be the best beachhead from which to storm the symphonic island of this interesting composer. Completed in 1943 and dedicated "to Jean Sibelius, without permission," it has a charm that appeals to devotees of the Romantic symphony. And though it pulls back from the nerve-jangling dissonances of its composer's Fourth Symphony, it remains a mature and even experimental work in its way.

The 70-year-old composer based much of this symphony on themes from a then-unfinished opera, The Pilgrim's Progress, having evidently despaired of completing it (though he did so, seven years later). There is also a hint of nostalgia and fare-thee-well in it, hinting that Ralph never dreamed that he would live to write four more symphonies after it. But before you write it off as crass indulgence in backward-looking sentiment, don't forget to ask: "What key is it in?" The official answer is D. Early drafts describe it as being in G. Vaughan Williams himself conceded that he wasn't sure. Parts of it seem to be in two keys at one time.

And that's where it rewards a second read-through, even if you're just reading with your ears. It may sound like "easy listening" at first - like a bit of film soundtrack, perhaps, or a suite of elevator music. What's surprising is partly that there's more to it than that, and partly how it achieves that effect in the first place. For while it comes across as effortlessly easy on the ear, it is at the same time harshly dissonant. How can this be? Answer: through a remarkable layering of tone colors. RVW puts together contrasting choirs of instruments, each playing in a different register. Thus, for example, the low strings may be playing in C Major while the horns float above them in D. Because the colors remain separate, the ear accepts these clashing tonalities as though they belonged together. It's an astonishing trick!

Movement I, a "Praeludio" marked Moderato, begins with a serene dialogue between the horns and violins, floating over a bass drone. Other instruments enter as the conversation becomes more elaborate, the texture thicker, the themes more fully evolved. At first the harmony changes infrequently, but as the density and intensity of the music gradually grows toward a minor climax (around 4 minutes in), so does the variety in its sonorities. At around 4:30, the first significant key change brings with it a sense of unease and of passage from one structural section to another, as it were to a development section.

The texture grows busier in a way that seems cheerful enough, but haunted by darker shadows. Big climax around 6:40 ff, dying away after the 7-minute mark to what a sonata-thinking listener will hear as the beginning of the recapitulation. This passage, however, builds steadily to the highest peak of the movement, a bright glory that cannot fail to impress. Here the thematic ideas seem to find their ultimate fulfillment. The coda begins with the same harmonic gesture that led into the development. These menacing shadows lead, however, to a final return of the serene dialogue from the opening of the movement. It ends in ambiguity, dying away as if peacefully, yet without ever quite reconciling the conflicting tonal forces of C and D major that have divided it since the beginning. The final chord, most unusually, is a long, low, soft D7 chord in last inversion (i.e. with a C in the bass).

Movement II, the Scherzo, is marked Presto misterioso. Beginning softly with strings in octaves, its first gesture is an ascending chain of fourths. These fourths evolve into the accompaniment for the theme announced by the woodwinds. Here is playful, magical music, like a dance of nature spirits, most (but not all) of them benign. Yet at the same time, it is often highly contrapuntal music. Overabundant melody flows through it. In quicksilver succession one spots a few seconds of fugato here, strong rhythms with shifting accents there, moments of lush watercolor vagueness there, and an oboe theme whose sudden, strident appearances in a "wrong" key seem rudely disruptive.

A little before the two-minute mark, a chorale-like theme begins to coalesce. Following this theme, the movement starts over from the opening fourths. At first this seems to herald a varied repetition of the first section. But this has scarcely got under way before it is rudely interrupted by the oboe theme, now sounding even ruder in brass, and at last succeeding in diverting the movement into a contrasting key, rhythm, and thematic episode. This one seems to be skipping downhill, but the skip soon becomes a life-threatening plunge. Then - suddenly - we are flying, or floating. The movement ends with a gentle, final return to the fourths theme.

Movement III's "Romanza" is a very slow (Lento) movement, often excerpted from this symphony because of its breathtaking gorgeousness. Its opening slow, oscillating chord progression sets a scene in the mind's eye. Mine, for example, sees a still, starry night, in which the ensuing English horn solo seems to be the only soul watching. What a lonely watcher! But the strings respond with great tenderness. The flute and oboe, soon joined by other instruments, follow this with overlapping entries of a theme beginning, again, with a stack of fourths. We return to the opening, only with the strings taking over the English horn theme, so that all the world seems to sing it together. The music builds up to a mass dripping with emotion, then thins back again for another go at the fourths theme, played against a variant of the opening oscillation.

As this passage undergoes further development, that variant becomes an increasingly important theme. Twinges of anxiety and pain gather around this idea. Then the oscillation returns in a tremolo guise, underpinning the erstwhile English horn theme, now repatriated to French horns. When the trumpets get into the act, brace yourself for the movement's anguished climax. The oscillating chords come back in the brass, answered by two-part strings moving canonically. It is as if the nighttime watcher had weighed the painfulness of nervous agitation against the lonely tedium of his vigil, and found the latter to be more painful. But once again, consolation follows, perhaps from the answering stars looking back at the watcher and saying, "We are with you." The fourths theme returns again, a bit before the 10-minute mark, sung by the very spirit of vulnerable intimacy, the solo violin. This soloist converses briefly with brief reminiscences of the main themes, before even briefer horn and cello solos dial the movement down to its soft ending.

Movement IV is titled "Passacaglia," though it does not entirely follow through on its advertised plan. A passacaglia, wouldn't you know, is a set of continuous variations on a short musical pattern. The pattern in question is first presented by the basses, and forms the bass line of a couple succeeding variations, joined by the rest of the orchestra. The pattern migrates to other parts of the texture, which grows ever more complex and exciting. Motives from the same pattern are woven into the other parts, adding to the music's density. Note the key change around 3:45, signaling a sort of development section. Here Vaughan Williams plays around with the theme, or parts of it at least, in numerous instrumental and contrapuntal combinations, while shifting from key to key.

At what point Vaughan Williams abandoned the passacaglia pattern is unclear to me. But it's surely somewhat before the six-minute mark, where the opening of the first movement makes a surprise reappearance. A little over a minute later, the passacaglia theme returns in a passage of churchly nobility, like a glowing benediction at the end of the symphony.

Typical of RVW, but atypical of the genre as a whole, this symphony ends softly. In fact, all four movements end softly. But these peaceful closings come across as a just reward after conflict, struggle, and pain. Between them and their equally quiet openings, the inner peaks of each movement's dynamics and musical argument stand out all the more clearly. For example, I once saw a graph of the loudness of the Preludio from beginning to end. It was beautiful to look at, a pattern of exquisite proportions, with an overwhelming sweep from low to high and back again; or rather, three such sweeps in succession, each larger than the one before it. What looked good on a graph sounds even better as music, a testimony to the exquisitely planned and movingly executed dramatic shape of this symphony.

Number Thirty-Six

I had lunch at the Mekong restaurant in St. Louis today, where I am always torn between trying new things and revisiting old favorites. Everything they make is so good!

Today I picked entree number 36 off the menu. Sorry, I forget what it was called, and my grasp of Vietnamese lingo is tantamount to a random-syllable generator. I can only describe it as stir-fried chicken, carrots, broccoli, and snow pea pods in a deliciously seasoned oyster sauce. In a less public venue I might have licked the plate. That's how happy it made my taste buds.

When I took my Dad to the Mekong a couple months ago, he memorably remarked that eating the Pho Tai was like drinking perfume. It's true, in the sense of something that tastes as good as perfume smells when it isn't frightfully overdone. And the last time I was there, I caved in to my craving for curried squid, mussels, and scallops; this house specialty was as good as I remembered. I'm beginning to think that if they offered hot braised rat with a chaser of fermented horse piss, it would be worth trying.

Reading Sibelius' 3rd

Deep-throated basses and cellos, in octaves, emerge from nothing with a crisp, jaunty theme in C major. Horns and violas join in, then violins. Flutes and oboes add a second, dancelike idea. The strings kick up their heels in a moment of folklike revelry. Horns shout out an exultant fanfare. All this happens in the first minute and a half. And that's just the First Group!

After a brutally blunt key change, the cellos sing a graceful "second theme" against a droning background with gently ticking violins. Then the lower strings begin what threatens to become an endlessly bustling pattern. Bits of previously-heard themes begin to float around. The violins announce one more lyrical theme. Then the exposition ends with a pause, followed by the violins and basses simultaneously playing ascending and descending scales, give or take a few chromatically added notes. It's a moment of almost frightening austerity, like a forked line drawn across an otherwise blank piece of paper.

The music has entered a frozen waste where all creation seems to hold its breath. The flute is the first creature to stir, quoting fragments of the bustling string pattern heard earlier. This pattern starts to move around among various sections of the orchestra, mostly of the stringed persuasion, while fragments of the other themes circulate like bits of separate conversations overheard on a constantly shifting breeze. What I have roughly designated as the "second theme" is the first to emerge intact from this chaos, still backed up by the bustling figure. The music seems to be trying to make a decision between e minor and C Major. After a passage of growing intensity, the jaunty opening theme arrives with the beginning of the recap. This time the bustling figure becomes the background for a review of the main themes, ending with a pizzicato version of the forked-line scale passage.

The last two minutes of the movement, then, are a coda, beginning in a slower tempo and with an entirely new theme. The nobility of this passage is breathtaking, like the farewell scene at the end of an epic movie. The movement ends with a touching triple-Amen in which the e minor/C Major dilemma is finally settled in favor of C.

Movement II, Andantino con moto quasi allegretto, begins with droning horns, plucked strings, and a delicately dancing pair of flutes. This dance becomes the main theme of the refrain in which a lonely sense of melancholy is wedded to a graceful dance full of lithe energy, wit, and pleasure. At times one can even sense a bubble of laughter floating deep in the dancer's belly, buoying him (or her) up but never breaking forth. The cellos introduce the melody of a mournful first episode in which, for some time, the woodwind choir has a sort of group solo.

After one last sigh from the cellos, the dance-refrain returns in a varied form, with a background of pizzicati and changes of key and instrumentation. The pizzicati continue into the second episode, also featuring rushing woodwind figures and thoughtful hesitations. Then the dance-refrain comes back for a third run, with both darker shadows and brighter highlights than before. The winds and strings answer each other back and forth in a brief but deadly-serious coda.

The third and final movement consists of a scherzo and a finale dovetailed together. Inspired perhaps by the finale of Beethoven's 9th, its opening is sprinkled with themes quoted from the earlier movements. The true scherzo theme isn't introduced until after the 1-minute mark. After this point we are mainly tantalized by partial glimpses of it, and the sense that its separate motives are growing together like different parts of an organism, or like patterns found throughout nature in varied scales and combinations.

The chorale-like theme of the finale emerges from this crysalis around 4:20 (in the performance referenced below). This stately theme, first introduced by the lower strings, completely takes over and drives the remainder of the movement to ever higher realms of nobility and victory. Within it the conflict between e minor and C Major, or (put another way) between F-sharp and F-natural, plays out all over again. You may start to wonder how long this can go on. The answer is limited only by one's attention span and the ability of the orchestra to repeat the chorale theme louder and more triumphantly than before. But just when you are beginning to sense this, Sibelius abruptly (not to say arbitrarily) ends the movement with a brassy, descending C-major triad. And that's as close to a resolution of the eternal conflict as we are likely to get, according to Sibelius at least.

The work I have been describing is the Symphony No. 3 in C, written in 1907 by Finnish composer Jean (or Jan) Sibelius, and first performed later that year. It splits the difference between the Romantic warmth of his earlier symphonies and the chilling spareness often noted in his later ones. Neither too hot nor too cold, it's just right.

Click here to see a Youtube playlist of Esa-Pekka Salonen conducting, and the Swedish Radio S. O. playing, this exquisite symphony. My only complaints are that (1) the sound is slightly muffled at the beginning of each video, and (2) the first movement is split between two videos. Other than that, it's an exciting account of a symphony I have loved almost as long as I have been reading symphonies with my ears. Here, for your immediate listening pleasure, is Movement II:

Word Nazi 2

Language is important to me. As I've mentioned before, anything that contributes to the crumbling of language works on my nerves. Here are a few more examples.

I have always hated the phrase "as best I can," ever since I first spotted it - probably in a statement by President Bill Clinton. It seems to have taken on a kind of respectable currency. But it doesn't make grammatical sense. You can say "I'm doing the best I can," or you can claim to be doing something "as well as I can," but you braid these two expressions together at your own risk. Or rather, at the risk of eroding the power of words.

"As ___ I can" calls for an adverb (such as "well") and another "as." Meanwhile, "___ best I can" requires only a definite article, "the." The one is a comparison between what I'm doing and what I can do. The other uses a relative clause, "(that) I can," to qualify my claim to be doing "the very best." They aren't such dissimilar ideas that you should have trouble choosing between them. Either one will do in a given context. But if you mash them together, all you get is an ungrammatical cant phrase.

Other usages have become current without any consideration for the rules of language. When I read them or hear them, I don't think, "There goes the English language." It isn't just my language that I'm worried about. It's people's ability to order their thoughts, and to make meaningful connections between them. It is, in a nutshell, language itself that suffers.

For example, take the title of an episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: "Let He Who Is Without Sin." Based on a biblical allusion, the implied ending of this sentence fragment is "Cast the First Stone." Apparently the TV show's budget didn't allow them to include the full sentence in the title, but that isn't my problem. My problem is with the word "He." I am morally certain the word should be "Him." And it isn't just a matter of misquoting John 8:7 (KJV: "He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her"). It's a matter of confusing the case of the pronoun.

The cause of the confusion seems to be the phrase "who is without sin," inserted after the main clause beginning with "let." We expect "he who is without sin" to be correct, either because we vaguely remember John 8:7 or because "he who" sounds better than "him who." Or maybe we just think the subject of "cast" must be "he" rather than "him." The confusion could be cleared up simply by deleting the phrase "who is without sin." We would then see that "Let him cast the first stone" is correct grammar, a fact not altered by inserting the adjectival phrase "who is without sin."

I'm far from the first person to express irritation at the politically correct, gender-neutral use of "they" as a singular pronoun. Sentences such as, "The author should get their pronouns straight," and, "Anyone who has a problem with the gender-inclusive he can do thus to themselves," are an assault not only on the historic usage of the English language, but on the reasoning part of the human mind - the part where pronouns must agree with their antecedents in at least number, if we are to have any power to put thoughts together meaningfully.

Back when I watched TV, I used to bristle at the "headline-speak" frequently spoken by news presenters. Rather then telling us what had happened in complete sentences, they often resorted to titles and slogans such as, "In South Carolina, new questions about the governor's infidelity," and, "Heat wave in Oklahoma," etc. One or two additional words would have sufficed to turn those headlines into full sentences. And some sentences can be pretty clever, such as: "The panhandle is too hot to touch."

As Jesus points out in Luke 14:28, before you build a tower, you should count the cost, whether you have enough to complete it. Writers, likewise, should "count the cost" of sentences they have begun, and make sure they balance out at the end. When you see decent author lose track of whether a sentence's subject is plural or singular, you can reasonably deduce that he hasn't counted the cost. It's amazing to see how many talented, professional writers match a plural verb to a singular subject such as "John or Mary." John and Mary do this; John or Mary does this. It's a grammatical jungle out there, however. What do you do with "You or I" when the main verb is a form of "be"? Do you say "You or I are"? Can it be that you or I "am"? Or maybe you or I "is"?

But even more often, the problem is (again) the case of the pronoun "I." It really can't be as hard as today's prose makes it look. And yet "you and I" frequently pops up as the object of a verb or preposition, while at times the subject is "you and me." This gets past editors as well as authors. The head-scratching really starts to generate heat when words such as like, as, or than are involved, and in nominal sentences where the verb is a form of "be." Billy Joel actually has it correct when he croons: "It's only you and I." It is I. But, it is like me. "Like" seems to be one of those prepositions that demands an accusative object. So anything we compare to ourselves must be "just like you and me."

Sometimes you have to imagine the verb that would follow the pronoun. Should the sentence go "You are as tall as me" or "as tall as I"? Stick another "be" verb at the end and you'll see that "you are as tall as I (am)." Are you heavier than me or heavier than I? Same deal. If you keep this up, you will soon be smarter than I.

When you know how to put sentences together - when you really learn to think them through - you can make some interesting discoveries. Certain subtleties only open themselves to those who have trained themselves to see them. For example, take the sentence, "Like you and me, the newspaper has issues." It's a clever little thing, playing on a double meaning. The phrase "to have issues" can mean, in the case of the newspaper, to be published in one volume after another; or, in the case of you and me, to have problems in our relationship resulting from some past events.

Now suppose you flip the sentence around. "The newspaper has issues, like you and me." This sentence plays on the same double-meaning as before, but it links these ideas in a different way. The first sentence was a humorous way of saying that you and I have things to talk about. The bit about the newspaper is just a witty bit of double entendre, like "Make like a tree and leave." The second sentence, on the other hand, means that a journal's problems are related to people "like you and me." We are among the people the newspaper is failing to reach.

The difference is what is "like you and me." In the first sentence, it was the newspaper. In the second, it was issues. This also changes the trajectory of the double entendre. When the newspaper, like you and me, had issues, the two meanings of "issues" were carefully distributed between the newspaper and us. The problems were on our side; the published volumes were on the journal's side. But in the second issue, both meanings of "issues" apply to the newspaper, one after the other. The phrase "like you and I" simply reveals the trick, prompting us to see a new side of the words "The newspaper has issues."

One reason for the newspaper's trouble may be that people (like you and me) are losing our ability to connect thoughts, to express or interpret ideas, to think and communicate. If our society is going to correct this, its burden will be to teach its next generation a better grasp of language.

Movies I Walked Out Of

For many years, I went to the movies at least once a week. Obviously, this set me at a considerable risk of seeing some films I didn't like, and of having to see other films more than once. But there have only been a handful of memorable instances in which I cared so little for a movie that I didn't stay in my seat to the end. These cinema walk-outs have gotten scarcer lately, perhaps because I see fewer movies these days, or perhaps because I have gotten better at spotting what movies I will and won't enjoy.

I nearly made it through Hannibal, the sequel to The Silence of the Lambs. It's not that I thought it was badly made. I just got disgusted with the graphic torture and the gore. I reached a point where I couldn't take any more -- somewhere around the point where Anthony Hopkins was feeding Ray Liotta parts of his own brain. I lingered in the exit, though, and poked my head back in a few minutes later to see Hopkins offering a piece of candied brain to a child. Then I left for good.

I made it through about fifteen minutes each of Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back and The 40-Year-Old Virgin. Both comedies turned out to be so stomach-turningly raunchy that they made me squirm rather than laugh. I remember leaving Jay and Silent Bob with my face hidden, because I was actually afraid that someone I knew would spot me.

When I walked out of In the Cut, a Meg Ryan-Mark Ruffalo neo-noir flick, it was because I hadn't seen a single attractive image in half an hour. All the characters were awful people, everything they did was horrible, and the persistent darkness and grit and grime of the film's look were starting to get me down.

I can only remember walking out of one other movie, but I can't remember the title of it. It was another noir-type flick, sometime around 2000, with an Afro-American cast. Whatever it was, all I needed to see was the opening credits sequence to realize that it was a stinker. "Oy vay," I said to myself over a cheesy sequence of smoking-gun-themed special effects, "this is going to suck." I think the theatre management actually gave me a refund, enabling me to see a movie I really enjoyed.

One of the risks you take by seeing a movie a week is the risk of buying a ticket to a show you know nothing about. It's the kind of risk that has often paid off for me, but my luck isn't infallible. So, in a way, it's a blessing that Hollywood has lost its touch lately. Over the past couple years, weeks and even months have gone by when no film opened that I wanted to see. At first I found this painful, but now I count it a blessing. My film-a-week habit is well broken -- and with it, any likelihood that I'm going to catch myself fleeing one of those atrocious pictures.

Reading Bruckner's 5th

Having tilted bravely at the Bruckner Problem (apropos his Fourth Symphony), I think we are well aware that Anton Bruckner was a composer who had problems. He was finicky, insecure, frequently crushed by the public's (and the critics') indifference to his music, and constantly driven to revise work he had already perfected.

At the time he wrote his B-flat Major Symphony No. 5 (1875-76), he had a lot to be troubled about. He was the defendant in a lawsuit. His career as an educator at Vienna University was proceeding turbulently. Without meaning to, he had made a great enemy in a music critic named Hanslick, who had set himself up as one of the cut-throat bastards of Western culture. (Hanslick is famous for saying Tchaikowsky's Violin Concerto "stinks to the ears.") And even his friends, such as Franz and Joseph Schalk, had a way of preying on Bruckner's insecurities.

Between them, and for other reasons, Bruckner never got to hear an orchestral performance of this symphony, though he lived until 1896. He did hear a two-piano version performed in 1887, but he was too sick for the orchestral premiere in 1894. So any hopes Bruckner may have attached to this symphony only added to his disappointments.

And then of course, this symphony has its own "Bruckner Problem." Naturally, the composer had some second thoughts, resulting in an "1878 version" of the symphony that has generally been the one performed, either in the 1935 Haas or the 1951 Nowak edition. Most performances of this symphony, and nearly all recordings, have been of one of these editions. The original score completed in 1876 is no longer extant, and can only be partly reconstructed from the fragments that remain. Meanwhile, the version that Franz Schalk conducted at the premiere, with probably unauthorized cuts and reorchestrations (or at best, revisions Bruckner accepted under duress), was published in 1896 as the "Schalk edition." This was the only version of the Fifth Symphony performed until the Haas edition came out. It is still occasionally played, and has been recorded as recently as 1998.

Though the Fifth Symphony is sometimes called his "Tragic" symphony, Bruckner did not take out his troubles on it by writing "autobiographical music" or by depicting everything that was going wrong for him. He did not write music of dark pathos or particularly bitter anguish. Rather, he worked out his pain in music of great thematic density, contrapuntal rigor, and formal sophistication. It is a symphony with large-scale symmetry: the outer and inner pairs of movements are united by similar themes and by their opening pizzicato patterns, for which the work has also been called the "Pizzicato" symphony. It has four sonata-form movements, and the finale also carries forward a sophisticated fugue. And it's an enormous work: for example, my CD of a 1993 recording of the Nowak edition runs close to an hour and a quarter. Two of the movements brush the 20-minute threshold, and the finale downright crosses it.

And now, here's a road map to the main points of interest in this symphony. The first movement opens with the only slow introduction in all of Bruckner's symphonies. The first thing you may hear, provided the volume is turned way up on your hi-fi system, is an oscillating bass pattern in the low, pizzicato strings. Over this, the other strings lay on the first glimpses of a vast, spacious, solemn edifice. After about a minute, an ascending arpeggio (broken chord) heralds the entry of the wind instruments, which contribute an impression of strength. At about the 2-minute mark, this opening Adagio gives way to the main sonata.

The initial, descending theme of the Allegro proves, later on, to be of no consequence at all. The music builds up quickly to an early climax, like the score to the moment in a sci-fi movie where one of the actors says, "I never imagined it like this," while gazing off-camera; cue special-effects sequence and BIG MUSIC. Right after this, say around 3:00, comes the first theme most listeners will readily identify on a drop-the-needle test. Bruckner creates space for it with one of those background string tremolos that he liked to use. This could be analyzed as a transitional theme, because it pulls the music from one key to the next with great efficiency. Bruckner makes a good deal of this theme, generating another minor climax before subsiding to a general pause - another favorite device of his, marking the break between the First Group and the Second.

The second theme involves the pizzicato strings in a sort of plucked chorale, full of searching and awe of the holy (in the sense of total otherness). In the absence of a score to guide my analysis, I can only guess that Bruckner achieved this effect through a combination of tonal instability (i.e., a readiness to slip into a different key at any moment) and indecision between major- and minor-key versions of the same chord. A countersubject is soon added to this theme, turning its almost monastic contemplation into something more personal, an expression I suppose of Bruckner's private yet very intense faith. Not for nothing is this symphony sometimes nicknamed "Church of Faith" - and yes, I believe that about exhausts the nicknames for this work.

Again, Bruckner brings the music down to silence, then introduces a Third Group: a key ingredient in his expanded take on sonata form. This one, arriving around 7:00, has an arch-shaped contour and is introduced by the woodwinds. Soon we are in full-blown codetta mode, with thrilling piles of brass notes, accelerations, crescendoes, and a gentle theme introduced by the horns and passed around among the wind instruments over, yes, another string tremolo.

Close to the ten-minute mark, development begins. We hear the ascending arpeggios from the slow intro, then the big theme from the First Group. Then, most interestingly, Bruckner takes us back to the beginning of the slow intro with its solemn string edifice, only this time the pizzicato-bass oscillation is transferred to the clarinet section. Soon we find our favorite First-Group theme flipped upside down. It goes right-way-up again at about 12:00, in time for some "serious development" (i.e. dramatic-sounding chord progressions). The pizzicato theme from the Second Group returns in the horns and woodwinds, sounding more chorale-like than ever.

By a little after 14:00, Bruckner is building up to a rather compressed recapitulation. The big theme from the first group appears without any of its erstwhile preliminaries. Then, in under a minute, he gets us back to the Second Group's chorale passage. Bruckner dwells on this theme considerably longer. It isn't until 17:00-ish that we hear the Third Group again. The accelerating part of the codetta is followed by an even faster coda that obsesses over the first theme, building almost steadily to an architecturally massive conclusion - saving an almost humorous moment when the momentum breaks for a gentle, upside-down repeat of the same theme. The last half-minute of the movement is basically closing chords.

In Movement II, Bruckner abandons Italian tempo markings and lapses into German. Sehr langsam translates as molto adagio. Again, it opens with a relatively soft, pizzicato accompaniment. The oboes, joined soon afterward by the bassoons, lay a theme over this whose rhythmic groups of two lie squarely across the accompaniment's groups of three. The tenderly solemn first theme, riddled with rhythmic challenges, dies away to another structural pause around 2:40, where the stronger, more assertive second theme arises in rich, homophonic harmony. This develops into a more contrapuntal passage with two melodic voices, often moving in canon, against a throbbing background. Here Bruckner's genius for large-scale musical architecture is seen to excellent advantage as he deliberately, yet enchantingly, builds this theme to a moving climax, then dies away for the development beginning around 6:00.

In the manner of a sonata-rondo, the second movement's development section takes us through the same material as the exposition, and in the same essential order. It abridges here, expands there, and airs the thematic material in different keys and instrumental combinations. I especially like the sense of weightlessness the second theme attains in this section. The recap, beginning around 13:30, doesn't so much take us back to a literal repeat of the expo as continue the development of the first theme. It strikes me just now that Elgar may have had parts of this first group in mind when he wrote his Enigma Variations. So much for that enigma! A more optimistic, major-key version of the first theme makes its debut around 15:30. Around 17:15 the pizzicato strings return to usher in a coda based on the first theme.

Movement III is a Scherzo and Trio, marked Allegro vivace, whose opening bass line is reminiscent of the pizzicato passage from the slow movement. The almost panicky first theme contrasts richly with the genteel dance that immediately follows it. The second part of the scherzo is rather like a sonata-form development section, elaborating and amplifying these themes. By about 3:45 we're ready for a recap and even a bit of coda. A general pause at 5:30-ish signals the advent of the central Trio, whose sinister opening gives way to a relaxed, easy-going dance tune. The second segment of the Trio revisits the same ideas with even more drama. Within two minutes, we're back in a varied repeat of the Scherzo, with an extended development and extra-thrilling coda.

Movement IV (Allegro molto) also begins with an Adagio introduction very similar to that of the first movement. In fact, the main difference, at first, is a couple of added clarinet "honks." The original intro soon breaks off for a review of the themes of the earlier movements. Then the clarinet proposes a fugue subject, taken up first by the basses, then the other string sections in ascending order. A general pause allows a theme, similar to the second theme of the Scherzo, to take its place in the sonata structure.

After another pause, a little before 6:00, the fugue subject returns, against an accompaniment of unison scalework. This subsides into another pause introducing the third theme, a majestic brass chorale decorated by halo-like echoes in the strings. Like the first movement's chorale theme, it carries a load of tonal instability, inherent in its very shape: its last few notes act as a very simple modulation. This theme serves as the second subject of the friggin' brilliant double fugue that occupies most of the movement. The scherzo-based, second theme reemerges around 15:15, more as a contrasting episode than anything else. We can safely regard this region of the movement as a development section, maintaining a sonata form while miraculously blending it with the fugue which returns in full force at about 17:45.

Listen for upside-down entries of the fugue subjects, as well as further right-side-up and upside-down reminiscences of the first movement's big theme. And try, just try, not to get caught up in the excitement of the accelerating coda with its colossal sonorities and air of unrestrained exultation. The last couple of minutes are so triumphant that you'll look back over the whole symphony and think, "Wow! Is it possible that a 74-minute symphony could go by so fast?" Before the closing chords - really, more like unison exclamation points over a thunderous timpani roll - the last thing you hear is yet another reminder of Movement I, making this whole symphony come across as a single unit and this movement as its triumphant coda.

IMAGES: Vienna University Square; Franz Schalk; Eduard Hanslick; Bruckner; a monument to Bruckner; two more images of Bruckner.

Reading Beethoven's 6th

Further to Assignment 4 in our study of "How to Read a Symphony Like a Good Book," we come to yet another symphony with a nickname: Beethoven's Sixth Symphony in F, also known as the "Pastoral Symphony." It is well-known to millions of fans of the Disney animated film Fantasia, where it accompanies an episode featuring unicorns, satyrs, and the like. This is appropriate imagery for a work inspired by Beethoven's love of the countryside. The word "pastoral" suggests shepherds sitting on a grassy hillside, watching their sheep wandering up and down the valley, perhaps dancing while one of them plays a hand-carved flute, etc.

"Recollections of Country Life" was another title Beethoven gave the symphony at its 1808 premiere. Each of the five movements also has a title related to this theme: "Awakening of cheerful feelings on arriving in the country" ... "Scene by the stream" ... "Happy gathering of country folk" ... "Storm & tempest" ... "Shepherd song: joyful and thankful feelings after the storm." These titles, apt to be printed in a concert programme, supply the listener with a sketchy storyline to think about during the music. It's a concept known as programme music. There are no lyrics, no precise dramatic outline; but, influenced by the suggestion of the written programme, our minds conjure images and events to go with the symphony's themes and musical events.

Here is Herbert von Karajan conducting this entire symphony with, probably, the Berlin Philharmonic.The opening sonata movement is marked Allegro ma non troppo (fast but not too fast). Note the clever little imitation bird calls that decorate it. Can you imagine a more gracious, gentle, happy piece of music? What you may be too enchanted to notice is the groundbreaking techniques of "cellular" motivic development Beethoven used throughout this movement, endlessly repeating several short ideas in different combinations. The effect seems to parallel the organic growth and variety of nature itself.

Movement II, Andante molto mosso (a very brisk walking pace), is another sonata, this time in the key of B-flat. It depicts an idyllic walk along a bubbling stream. The effect of flowing water is achieved by two musicians playing muted cellos, while the rest of the cellists lay down a bass line of plucked strings. Listen for the tender bassoon solo at about 11:40 in the video above, introducing an open-hearted codetta theme. Also note the increasing use of the woodwinds to imitate birdcalls, culminating in a remarkable cadenza passage (video 19:40) in which flute, oboe, and clarinet soloists impersonate the nightingale, quail, and cuckoo.

Movement III, Allegro, is a Scherzo in F. It is an unusual structure for a Scherzo, however. First off, the Trio comes back for a second time. (Karajan & Co. omit the repeat.) Plus, both times, it is preempted by a faster passage in a contrasting meter, changing a dance of bucolic gentlefolk into a coarse peasant dance. On its last return, the Scherzo is interrupted by the approaching storm.

Movement IV follows without a break, with distant thunder growing into a tempest of seemingly unstoppable fury. Beethoven saved the piccolo, trombones, and timpani for this passage. The storm soon abates, flowing seamlessly into the finale with its chorale-like shepherds' song of joy and thanks. The movement is a "sonata rondo," such that the first theme serves both as a refrain (set off by contrasting episodes) and as the subject of a sonata (with the first episode ending on the dominant, the second modulating through several keys, and the third recapping the first episode in the tonic key of F). The movement climaxes in the ecstasy of its relatively long coda before ending peacefully except for, or perhaps in spite of, two loud final chords.

Next to Beethoven's Fifth, which was written at the same time and premiered at the same concert, the Sixth may seem pale and weak. It certainly did to that first audience in December 1808. But on its own terms, separated from the immediate presence of the Fifth Symphony, it is a lovely peace of music, filled with warmth, good humor, natural charm, and an undeniably peaceful outlook -- the fourth movement's thunderstorm notwithstanding. It's healthy, sunny, outdoorsy music that does the spirit good, and it shows a side of Beethoven's character without which he could not have lived to create so many emotionally turbulent masterpieces.