Overture to The Abduction from the Seraglio, K. 384
Wolfgang Amadeus
After Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart moved to Vienna in 1781, the 25-year-old composer sought out Gottlieb Stephanie, director of Emperor Joseph II’s Nationalsingspiel. The Nationalsingspiel, a project established by the emperor in 1778, was intended to produce new German-language operas that would rival or even outshine the popular Italian operas regularly staged in Vienna.
Mozart made a positive impression on Stephanie, who agreed to create a libretto for a new German opera. As was common at the time, Stephanie “borrowed” (without the author’s permission) the outline of a pre-existing libretto, Belmont und Constanze, oder Die Entführung aus dem Serail, which had been produced in Berlin that year. Stephanie apparently made few changes to the original libretto—he did not even bother to give the primary characters, Belmont and his sweetheart Constanze, different names—and delivered it to Mozart in the summer of 1781.
The Abduction from the Seraglio references the practice of Muslim corsairs operating along the Barbary coast to kidnap passengers and crews from non-Muslim ships and hold them for ransom, or sell them into slavery. It also capitalizes on turquoiserie, the obsession for all things Turkish that had taken hold across Europe. The perceived “exoticism” of the East, particularly the Ottoman Empire, fascinated Europeans, who were familiar with the stories from One Thousand and One Nights, a collection of Middle Eastern folk tales. These stories, set in colorful foreign lands, captured Europeans’ imaginations. Across the continent, people adopted Turkish fashions in clothing, food, visual art, perfumes, and entertainment.
Mozart made a point of including so-called “Turkish” instruments—piccolo, cymbals, bass drum, and triangle—in his score. These instruments originate in the music of Turkish military (Janissary) bands and were introduced into European orchestras by Western composers intrigued by their unusual timbres. Mozart himself imitated Janissary music in other notable works, including the “Rondo alla Turca” finale of his Piano Sonata No. 11 in A Major, K. 331, where the pianist is asked to imitate the piccolo and percussion, and his Violin Concerto No. 5 in A Major, K. 219, which is often referred to as the “Turkish Concerto” due to the Janissary section in the final movement. Beethoven also famously included a Turkish march in the finale of his Ninth Symphony, indicating that his call for “all men [to] become brothers” extended beyond political boundaries.
Symphony No. 4 in G Major
Gustav Mahler
All of Gustav Mahler’s symphonies are distinct sound worlds, and each has a specific premise or subtext. Of the Fourth Symphony, Mahler told a friend, “I only wanted to write a symphonic Humoresque, and out of it came a symphony of normal dimensions.” What Mahler meant by “normal dimensions” isn’t clear, but the Fourth Symphony, which explores the world of childhood, is known as Mahler’s most approachable symphony (and one of his shortest, at just under one hour). Considering its accessibility, it is interesting that Mahler also described the Fourth Symphony in a letter as “fundamentally different from my other symphonies
The first three movements are built around and culminate with the fourth, a setting of a poem from Des Knaben Wunderhorn (The Boy’s Magic Horn), a collection of poems gathered, arranged, and otherwise tinkered with by the poets Achim von Arnim and Clemens Brentano in the early 1800s. Mahler set a number of these poems in the 1890s; among them was the poem Der Himmel hängt voll Geigen (Heaven is Hung with Violins), which Mahler renamed Das himmlische Leben (The Heavenly Life). It is a child’s concept of Heaven: full of music, dancing, and other innocent pleasure, as well as a feast of delicious foods. Various saints greet people in Heaven, including Peter, Martha, Ursula, and Cecilia, the patron saint of music.
The Fourth Symphony is the last of Mahler’s Wunderhorn Symphonies (he used melodies from his settings of other songs in each of his three previous symphonies). Mahler’s orchestration is delicately buoyant, with an emphasis on higher range instruments suggesting children’s voices, omitting trombones and tuba. The sleigh bells, which ring in the opening of the symphony, tinkle throughout the first movement, with their suggestions of winter and Christmas. The violin solo serves as a musical narrator, taking on different characters and qualities in each movement.
“Life in heaven is the tapering spire of the edifice of this Fourth Symphony,” said Mahler. He also expressed the hope that the Fourth Symphony would “bring me the only reward which I want from my work: to be heard and understood.” Unfortunately, Mahler’s critics were all too ready to attack the Fourth Symphony for what they perceived as its artificial naïveté and homage to childhood memories. Mahler-as-sunny-optimist clearly didn’t conform to what critics and audiences expected from the death-obsessed composer of the Resurrection Symphony. In a letter to Julius Buths in 1903, Mahler lamented the negative reaction to the Fourth Symphony, describing it as “this persecuted step-child that has so far known so little joy in the world.” Fortunately, one of Mahler’s contemporaries, writer and musician Arthur Seidl, did understand the Fourth Symphony. In his 1901 review, Seidl observed, “Mahler is a real ‘God Seeker.’ His most secret inner being contemplates the immensity of nature with a really religious fervor; he is inexorably drawn toward the enigma of existence . . . it is the critics who consider him with an ironic eye and find only affectation in his music; it is they who are stubborn and who cannot find the key to his naïve and childlike world.
© Elizabeth Schwartz. All rights reserved.
NOTE: These program notes are published by the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra for its patrons and other interested readers. Any other use is forbidden without specific permission from the author, who may be contacted at http://classicalmusicprogramnotes.com.
Elizabeth Schwartz is a musician, writer, and music historian based in Portland, OR. She has been a program annotator for more than 25 years, and writes for ensembles and festivals across the United States and around the world. Ms. Schwartz has also contributed to NPR’s “Performance Today,” (now heard on American Public Media). http://classicalmusicprogramnotes.com