In 1823, Schubert was commissioned to compose music for a play called “Rosamunde, Princess of Cypress.” Nearing the deadline for completion, and without an overture written, he opted for repurposing his overture from an earlier opera, “Alfonso und Estrella.” But after his death, for unknown and confusing reasons, a publisher took an overture from yet another Schubert opera, “The Magic Harp,” and renamed it the “Rosamunde” overture.
The overture, in a modified sonata form, begins with a dramatic opening which then becomes lively and lyrical. Schubert borrowed from his own, earlier operatic work, “in the Italian style.”
Although a very prolific and successful composer in a short life — 600 vocal works, seven complete symphonies, sacred music, operas, piano and chamber music — his efforts to compose for the musical theatre were haphazard disasters. The collaborations with the libretti were poor and the performances were few. Fortunately, the “Rosamunde” Overture has survived and become one of his most popular works.
In 1839, 26-year-old Richard Wagner was employed as a conductor at the Court Theatre in Riga, Latvia. With the retirement of his actress wife and overwhelming debts from their extravagant lifestyle, they fled their creditors by boarding a ship for Paris with the dream of his making a fortune selling compositions for the Paris Opera. Their sea journey was hindered by storms and high seas, turning the eight day trip into three weeks. Wagner’s experience in Paris was also disastrous. He was unable to get work as a conductor, and the Opera did not want to produce his work. His harrowing sea voyage inspired the theme of the Flying Dutchman. Its premiere performance in 1843 was his first great success and played a central role in establishing his reputation.
The legend of the Flying Dutchman is the story of a ghost ship, with black masts and blood-red sails, condemned forever to seafaring on the turbulent high seas. The captain can only be rescued from this doom by finding his true love. The overture is one of the most impressive and enthralling storm scenes in music.
Wagner is credited with popularizing and extensively using the “leitmotif,” a musical theme associated with a character, object, emotion, or event. A recent popular example is in the “Star Wars” series. Many leitmotifs are woven into Wagner’s overture, including:
The Dutchman’s Theme: Played by the trombones and low brass, conveying a sense of foreboding and mystery, it represents the character of the Flying Dutchman himself.
Senta’s Theme: Senta, the opera’s heroine, has her own leitmotif representing her longing for and fascination with the Dutchman. It appears in a more lyrical and romantic form, introduced by the English Horn.
The Sailors Chorus: Played by a wind band, it celebrates their safe return to land.
The Storm Theme: This motif evokes the turbulent wind and sea, and the supernatural elements of the story. It is characterized by dramatic orchestration, with swirling strings, creating a sense of chaos and danger. Wagner’s Flying Dutchman elevates a scary old folk tale into a powerful composition of love and redemption.
Can youheara sunrise and sunset? Besides his well-known six symphonies, Danish composerCarl Nielsenwrote many short orchestral works, including the“Helios Overture.”
In 1902, Nielsen signed a contract with the publisher Wilhelm Hansen, which allowed him to go to Athens, Greece to join his wife Anne Marie Carl-Nielsen, a sculptor who was making copies of the bas-reliefs and statues in the Acropolis Museum. From his practice room in Athens, he watched the sun rising and setting over the Aegean Sea, and was inspired to write an overture after the Greek god of the sun.
While theHelios Overturewas inspired by triumphant Greek myths, it’s easy to hear the influence of his Danish roots— listen for the opening horn tones echoing through frozen fjords!
On the score, Nielsen wrote,
“Silence and darkness,
The sun rises with a joyous song of praise,
It wanders its golden way
and sinks quietly into the sea.”
The 25-year old Mozart composed his comic opera, The Abduction from the Seraglio, in 1781-2, shortly after his move from Salzburg to Vienna. The opera is set in a Turkish harem. Belmonte, a Spanish nobleman, seeks to free his fianceé, Konstanze, and their servants from the harem where they are imprisoned after having been captured by pirates and sold into slavery. In keeping with the opera’s oriental theme, Mozart added a number of “Turkish-style” instruments to the orchestra — bass drum, cymbals, triangle and piccolo. The Overture is witty and sparkling, with alternating loud and soft passages and a short reflective interlude in the middle.
Prokofiev composed the original version of the Overture on Hebrew Themes during his sojourn in New York in 1920. He composed it for a chamber group that specialized in Klezmer and other Jewish music; the original orchestration was for clarinet, string quartet and piano. The piece became so popular that he was later asked to arrange it for full orchestra. It consists of two main melodies ostensibly taken from Jewish folk tunes – the first very much in the Klezmer tradition, prominently featuring the clarinet and hairpin dynamics; the second a melody played at Jewish weddings and featuring the ‘cellos and horn.
Mozart’s signature comedic opera, The Marriage of Figaro, opened to great acclaim in Vienna in 1786. Mozart himself conducted the premiere, and it became an instant hit. The opera’s plot, revolving around servants outwitting their aristocratic masters, was socially revolutionary at the time. The sparkling overture, written just two days before the Vienna premiere, is a fitting prologue to Mozart’s brilliant opera.
Francis Poulenc was part of a prominent group of early 20th-century French composers dubbed “Les Six.” A self-taught composer, his music is unconventional, with understated wit and simplicity. In 1918, while serving in the French army, he wrote a four-hand sonata for piano which was premiered in 1919 and revised in 1939. Darius Milhaud (also a member of “Les Six”) was much taken by Poulenc’s sonata, and orchestrated the last movement for a concert he conducted in 1923 with the Philadelphia Orchestra.
It is a short, playful work. As a contemporary reviewer put, “High spirits, wit and animal grace break out of the merry brass in the ‘Overture.’”
This delightful overture is the precursor to Mozart’s last opera, and indeed one of his last compositions. It opens with three grand chords and a slow adagio evoking the high priest Sarastro and his attendants. A lively allegro, built on four repeated notes, is taken up in turn by strings, winds and brass.
The overture’s contrasting elements, by turns grandiose and playful, make a perfect introduction to the opera which also embodies them.
Johannes Brahms composed The Tragic Overture, Op 81 in the fall of 1880 as a companion to the Academic Festival Overture, Op. 80 written a few months earlier. In a letter to Karl Reinecke, Brahms wrote: “one [overture] weeps while the other laughs”.
According to the writer and music critic Max Kalbeck, the Tragic Overture was inspired by Goethe’s Faust for which Brahms is said to have intended to write incidental music (a claim denied by the composer). The dramatic and contrasting character of the two main themes of the overture is more than evident and the themes’ very individual and character-like qualities support Kalbeck’s claim.
The formal organization of the overture also seems to support Kalbeck’s theory. The two main themes are both “square” with their 8-measure structure and both have their preliminary development in the exposition. The development section is designed as a separate section with its own austere (Molto Piu Moderato) character. It borrows material from the first theme of the exposition, but is reshaped in a completely different manner. Another interesting moment in the overture is the beginning of the recapitulation where the first theme is omitted in favor of a differently orchestrated second theme.
The overture ends in a manner similar to the ending of Beethoven’s Fourth Symphony – a deceptive retreat, followed by sudden intensity.
