Paul Archibald Sounding Out

Composers have used variations in music for centuries. Renaissance and Baroque composers wrote variations on a short tune in the bass which was repeated again and again. Handel wrote a famous set of variations for harpsichord and Bach wrote his monumental Goldberg Variations. Mozart, Beethoven Brahms, Elgar, Schoenberg and Britten all contributed to the genre so the programme today explores some of the great music composed using this form.

Zoltán Kodaly (1882-1967)
Variations on a Hungarian Folk Song ‘The Peacock’
Philharmonia Hungarica
Antal Dorati (conductor)

Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)
Variations on a Theme of Haydn
Variation 10 – Finale
London Symphony Orchestra
Valery Gergiev (conductor)

Edward Elgar (1857-1934)
Enigma Variations
Variation 8 – Nimrod
Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra
John Eliot Gardner

J.S Bach (1685-1750)
Goldberg Variations
Variations 8, 9 & 10
Glenn Gould (piano)

Benjamin Britten (1913-1976)
Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra
Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Purcell
Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra
Libor Pesek

Zoltán Kodály, like his friend and fellow Hungarian, Béla Bartók, sought out the authentic folk music of Hungary at a time when it was virtually unknown. Beginning in 1905, he gathered more than three thousand folk melodies in his expeditions throughout Hungary, and not only drew attention to the melodies themselves, but grew as a composer through his study of them. He was a tireless proponent for the further exploration of true Hungarian folk music – and fought for the revitalisation of music education and culture.

The Variations on a Hungarian Folk Song (The Peacock) were composed in 1939 to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam. The work consists of variations on a single melody based on the pentatonic scale – a scale consisting of only five notes. By composing a series of variations on the basic melody, Kodály thus stayed true to the essence of folk song performance while writing a modern masterpiece in traditional European variation form.

Brahms (1833-1897) broke new ground for himself and for the musical world with this set of variations. He returned to symphonic writing during his 1873 summer holiday in the Bavarian town of Tutzing using the variation form as a preparation for his first symphony. He was accomplished at writing in the variation form having previously done so for piano and movements of chamber works, but this set of variations would prove to be the first ever written for full orchestra. This work served to usher in Brahms’ own symphonic phase (his four symphonies, Academic Festival & Tragic Overtures, as well as two more concertos would follow). Brahms was introduced the to a set of manuscripts supposedly by Haydn and Brahms jotted down a portion that had been used as a theme for a set of variations, “Chorale St. Antoni.” Most scholars now believe that Haydn had nothing to do with the chorale or the variations, but it was this chorale and its original orchestration for winds that provided the basis for Brahms’ variations. The theme, “Chorale St. Antoni” is thought to be a pilgrim hymn from Bergenland. Each variation displays a unique mood, tempo, and orchestration and Brahms employs the forces of the classical orchestra (pairs of winds, timpani, and strings) but experiments with additional possibilities of orchestral color by adding two additional horns, contrabassoon, piccolo and triangle. In he final variation the triangle and piccolo are employed to add colour the final triumphant chorale theme.

Enigma Variations unfolds as a theme and 14 short variations. Most are labeled with initials, lending an even more enigmatic appearance—but the subjects were easily identified and confirmed by Elgar. The ‘Enigma’ arises from the word being scrawled on the first page of Elgar’s manuscript, above the theme. It was jotted there by August Jaeger, Elgar’s best friend and the subject of the ‘Nimrod’ variation. Elgar stated: The Enigma I will not explain—its “dark saying” must be left unguessed, and I warn you that the apparent connection between the Variations and the Theme is often of the slightest texture; further, through and over the whole set another and larger theme “goes,” but is not played’. ‘The theme is so well known that it is extraordinary that no one has spotted it,” Elgar later added. Given Enigma Variations was arguably the most sensational piece of British orchestral music ever heard up to that time it made Elgar suddenly famous after the premiere on June 18, 1899. The variation ‘Nimrod’ is based on a character from Genesis, ‘a mighty hunter before the Lord’ and in a translation pun, Elgar uses it to refer to August Jaeger, whose last name means ‘hunter’ in German.

Bach’s Goldberg Variations was published in 1741 and consists of 30 variations, starting with a single ‘Aria’. It was the largest single keyboard composition published in the 18th century.The story behind their composition is priceless. Count Kaiserling, who suffered from insomnia, would make his musician, Johann Goldberg, play in the adjacent room to help him sleep. Goldberg was a student of Bach and when hearing of Goldberg’s plight composed the Variations for Goldberg to play to his employer. Bach thought that variations was almost a form of musical ‘sheep counting’ and thus perfect for an insomniac. Luckily for Bach, and also for Goldberg, the new composition helped Kaiserling a good night’s sleep!

Bach uses the Aria as the theme for the variations and transforms the music over the course of an hour, using different time signatures, textures, and harmonies. At the end of the work the beautiful first aria returns. After its publication, a change in musical taste toward simpler, more transparent textures meant that the Goldberg Variations were largely forgotten until the harpsichordist Wanda Landowska (1879-1959) recorded the set in 1933. When a 22-year-old Canadian pianist, Glenn Gould, walked into the New York studios of Columbia Records to record his debut album little did anyone know that this recording was to became one of the best-selling classical albums of all time. In his 1955 recording Gould revealed the intellectual depth of the work, and the breadth of interpretive possibilities which it offers to the performing pianist. Glenn Gould placed Bach’s Goldberg Variations in the standard repertoire and according to the Goldberg Variations Discography website, there have now been more than 600 recordings made of the work.

Young Persons Guide To The Orchestra was composed in 1946 for a film, Instruments of the Orchestra, produced by Crown Film Unit and first shown at the Empire Theatre, London, on November 29, 1946. The concert version had already been introduced on October 15 by the Liverpool Philharmonic under Malcolm Sargent with the same musicians who made the soundtrack for the film. The main theme comes from Henry Purcell’s music for a revival in 1695 of the tragedy Abdelazer, or the Moor’s Revenge. Britten lets us hear this theme first with full orchestra and then introduces the orchestral families one at a time (woodwind, brass, strings, percussion), finally giving it to us for full orchestra once more in the glorious finale. After the orchestra has been taken to pieces, Britten puts it all back together again through a fugue, in which the themes are introduced one after the other and then combined. The ‘grand finale’ hears Purcell’s original tune rides in majestic brass chords across the busy scurry of Britten’s original fugue writing