Ravinia 2024 Issue 2

and serial writing à la Schoenberg, heighten dramatic and atmospheric effects. Michael Sweeney, an award-winning staff ar- ranger for Hal Leonard, incorporated three of Williams’s well-known main themes— Star Wars , Jurassic Park , and E.T. (The Extraterrestri- al) —into Great Movie Adventures . Star Wars (1977). George Lucas’s masterpiece of special effects wizardry combined the action of old Western films with futuristic technology. The Rebel Alliance, led by Princess Leia Organa, enlists the help of the young warrior Luke Sky- walker, the intergalactic smuggler Han Solo, his gigantic hair-covered first mate Chewbacca the Wookie, and two robotic companions (R2-D2 and C-3PO) in the struggle against evil imperial forces commanded by Darth Vader, Dark Lord of Sith. Williams’s score won numerous honors: Academy Award (1978), the Anthony Asquith Award for Film Music from the British Academy (1978), a Golden Globe Award (1978), and the Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award (1978). Jurassic Park (1993). Scientific theory, theme park commercialism, and the dinosaur craze converge in Spielberg’s Jurassic Park . Geneti- cists extract dinosaur DNA from blood-sucking mosquitos encased for millions of years in pet- rified amber. Completing the partial dinosaur genetic code with modern amphibian matter, the scientists bring several species back to life. When high-tech safety measures are sabotaged by a disgruntled computer programmer, the di- nosaurs escape on a horrifying rampage. E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial (1982). Spielberg spins a childhood fantasy about an extraterrestrial be- ing stranded on Earth after his home ship mis- takenly flies away without him. A young boy befriends the alien, making a makeshift home in his bedroom closet. The extraterrestrial also is hunted by a scientific team investigating the alien ship landing. Pollutants and homesickness overcome the creature, who apparently dies. Mi- raculously, E.T. revives, and the children rush him to the awaiting spaceship in the forest. John Williams’s score won the 1983 Academy Award. GUSTAV MAHLER (1860–1911) Symphony No. 1 in D major Scored for four flutes and two piccolos, four oboes and English horn, four clarinets and bass clarinet, three bassoons and contrabassoon, seven horns, five trumpets, four trombones, tuba, timpani, cymbals, triangle, tam- tam, bass drum, harp, and strings A new symphonic universe was born through the Symphony No. 1 by Gustav Mahler, one in which life and music remained virtually insepa- rable. This sound world invariably reflected the composer’s personal conflict, religious and phil- osophical outlook, and the current state of his psyche. As Mahler wrote in 1897: “It is only when I truly live that I compose, and only when I com- pose that I truly live.” His debut orchestral work suffered a dismal reception at its world premiere in Budapest on November 20, 1889: this “child of sorrow” remained one of Mahler’s least popular works until long after his death. Many in Bu- dapest recognized immediately the subtle and imaginative orchestration of their new opera director. Yet even a relatively sympathetic critic like August Beer would write: “He frankly stag- gers us by his virtuosity in handling the modern orchestra … yet he is easily led astray by just this technical superiority into using harsh colors and exaggerations of expression.” Mahler’s conception of Symphony No. 1 changed several times. For the Budapest premiere, the work was listed as Symphonic Poem in Two Parts . There were five movements: Part 1—I. In- troduction and Allegro comodo, II. Andante, and III. Scherzo, and Part 2—IV. À la pompes funèbres and V. Molto appassionato. Listeners, though, expected printed explanations of “sym- phonic poems,” such as those accompanying the programmatic works of Berlioz, Liszt, and Smetana. Mahler offered none to his Budapest audiences. In Hamburg (1893), Mahler expanded his pro- grammatic outline and changed the work’s name to Titan, a Tone Poem in Symphonic Form . The title Titan came from a novel by Jean Paul, whom Mahler admired for his “extravagances, his love of nature, his exaltation, and his sudden shifts from sublime to the grotesque.” Descrip- tive labels were added to all parts of the tone poem: Part 1. From the Days of Youth—I. Spring without End, II. Blumine, and III. In Full Sail, and Part 2. Commedia humana—IV. Aground (Funeral March “in the manner of Calot”) and V. Dall’ Inferno. By the time his score appeared in print (1899), Mahler had made a complete about-face in his opinion of program music. In 1896 he wrote, Gustav Mahler (Budapest, 1888) “Just as I find it banal to invent music for a pro- gram, I find it unsatisfactory and unfruitful to attempt to provide a program to a piece of mu- sic—this in spite of the fact that the immediate cause of a musical conception is certainly an experience of the author, that is to say, a fact which is surely concrete enough to be described in words.” The composer stripped away the pro- grammatic titles and excised the Blumine move- ment. A more traditional symphonic structure resulted, although the thematic allusions re- mained intact. Symphony No. 1 opens “like a sound of nature” with a single, sustained pitch. To this hushed atmosphere, Mahler first added a descending fourth, an interval that soon blossoms into cuckoo calls and the jaunty main theme. This melody is borrowed from the second piece in the composer’s song-cycle Lieder eines fahren- den Gesellen (Songs of the Wayfarer)—“Ging heut Morgen über’s Feld” (This Morning I Went through the Field). Kaleidoscopic transforma- tions of the theme build to an exhilarating end. For his Kräftig bewegt (strongly moving) scher- zo, Mahler wrote a Ländler—a triple-meter Aus- trian peasant dance. A slower trio moves more delicately, then the Ländler returns. After the double bar, Mahler calls for “a rather long pause” before the third movement. Gloomy canon- ic variations on the folksong “Brüder Martin” (better known as “Frère Jacques”), transformed into a minor key, provide a refrain for the third movement. Mahler wrote to Max Marshalk in 1896, “This is simply the cry of a deeply wound- ed heart, preceded by the ghostly, brooding op- pressiveness of the funeral march.” The first epi- sode conjures images of a slow, Hasidic wedding dance. Another tune comes from the fourth of the Songs of the Wayfarer , where the voice sings “Auf der Strasse steht ein Lindenbaum” (By the Road Stands a Linden Tree). Mahler’s expanded programmatic title, “From out of the Inferno into Paradise,” outlines the progression of temperaments in the Stürmisch Bewegt (stormy) finale. Agitated, disjunct frag- ments of familiar themes provoke a sense of rampant chaos. Order returns in the divine beauty of the violin’s second theme. Addition- al material from the first movement returns, and an enormous, triumphal coda ennobles the symphony’s introductory “nature music.” –Program notes © 2024 Todd E. Sullivan RAVINIA.ORG  • RAVINIAMAGAZINE 69