Fall Concert Program Notes

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Arnold Bax made his reputation as a major force in English music with three tone poems written during the First World War: The Garden of Fand (1916), November Woods (1917), and Tintagel (1919). His music was popular throughout the 1920s and 1930s. He was knighted in 1937 and made Master of the King's Music in 1942. An Englishman with a deep love for Ireland, Bax also wrote poetry and plays under the pseudonym Dermot O'Byrne. 

The title November Woods may be taken as much as metaphor for a stressful state of mind as an evocation of the blustery woods of late autumn. Bax wrote of the music, "I don't want it to be considered too seriously in the light of objective programme music. It may be taken as an impression of the dank and stormy music of nature in late autumn, but the whole piece and its origins are connected with certain rather troublous experiences I was going through myself at the time and the mood of the Buckinghamshire wood where the idea of this work came, seemed to sound a similar chord as it were. If there are sounds in the music which recall the screaming of the wind and the cracking of strained branches, I hope they may suggest deeper things at the same time. The middle part may be taken as a dream of happier days, such as sometimes come in the intervals of stress either physical or mental."

Bax’s “troublous experiences” had to do chiefly with his affair with the pianist Harriet Cohen, for whom he would eventually leave his wife and children. The idea for the work came, in fact, when the composer took shelter in the woods from a storm he encountered bicycling home after one of their trysts. But the tension between romantic passion and domestic responsibility is apparently not the only inspiration for the music. A quotation of the principal theme of his Second Violin Sonata, a work associated with the war, implies the sense of loss and alienation that Bax felt about a conflict for which he had little sympathy and which would claim the lives of several close friends. And then there was the ill-fated Easter Rising of 1916 in Dublin, when Irish republicans attempted to begin a rebellion against the English who still ruled the country. The leaders of the rising, several of whom were acquaintances of Bax, were executed, and lingering sorrow at that event seems to have influenced several of his works. Bax was correct to point out that even programmatic inspiration in music can have multiple sources.

As Bax’s description implies, November Woods is laid out in a large ternary form. Scored for a large orchestra, Bax revels in a breathtaking variety of textures and a musical style that nods towards Impressionism. The stormy opening section contrasts with the lyrical middle theme, introduced by a cello solo in the highest range of the instrument, doubled by oboe. This reminiscence of happier times inevitably leads back to a return of the first section, but the lyrical melody returns briefly towards the end of the movement and seems to have a calming effect on the final pages of the score, as the stormy atmosphere subsides.

Daphnis et Chloé was the fruit of collaboration between Ravel, the choreographer Michel Fokine and Serge Diaghilev, the impresario of the Ballets Russes. After two successful seasons introducing Russian opera and ballet to Parisian audiences, Diaghilev decided in 1909 to concentrate on ballet and the popularity of dancers such as Vaslav Nijinsky and Tamara Karsavina. More importantly, Diaghilev expanded the company's repertory by commissioning new works from major composers and artists in Paris, making the Ballet Russes a center of innovation in a city that was already arguably the artistic capital of Europe. Ravel's commission to write Daphnis et Chloé probably came as early as 1909, but work proceeded slowly and while he completed a full piano score of the ballet in 1910 he was still dissatisfied with the ending. It would not be completed until the 1912 season, and by that time Diaghilev seems to have soured on the project, even acting as if he wanted to sabotage the premiere, suggesting the recycling of sets and costumes from a previous Greek-themed production, postponing its performance and at one point proposing an unusually early starting time. Perhaps he was distracted by preparations for his lover Nijinsky's choreographic debut, a ballet to Debussy's tone poem Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun, a much shorter work which nevertheless received far more rehearsals than Daphnis. At its premiere on 29 May 1912, Afternoon of a Faun created a minor scandal as some regarded Nijinsky's choreography as stiff and the ending too sexually explicit. Nonetheless, the work remained in the repertory and shared the stage with Daphnis et Chloé which finally premiered on 8 June 1912. Nijinsky danced Daphinis and Karsavina Chloé. Although only performed twice in 1912 and three times the following season and lacking the notoriety of the Debussy adaptation, Daphnis et Chloé was not a failure. Ravel's score, in particular, was recognized from the outset as a major achievement.

The story of the shepherd Daphnis winning the love of Chloé goes back to a second-century romance by the writer Longus that became popular in French translations in the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries and therefore attracted the attention of French painters. It was a subject dear to Michel Fokine's heart and he forged the scenario in collaboration with Ravel. Daphnis vies with the brutish Dorcon for Chloé's love. Just as the two seem to be united, a band of pirates interrupts the celebration, abducting Chloé. It is only through the intervention of the god Pan that she is rescued and restored to Daphnis.

Ravel drew two orchestral suites from the 50-minute score. The more famous is the second suite, which presents the third part of the score in its entirety, simply omiting the chorus present in the original. While Ravel made some use of Greek modes and archaic textures in parts of the work, he mostly followed his own instincts. His musical language contains many of the elements of Debussy's impressionism, yet is also influenced by the clarity of eighteenth-century Classicism. In Ravel's own words, he sought to create "a vast musical fresco, less concerned about archaism than about faithfulness to the Greece of my dreams, which marries quite readily with that imagined and depicted by French artists at the end of the eighteenth century."

 The Second Suite begins with music depicting a sunrise, including murmuring breezes and birdsong, beautifully painted by the orchestra. Daphnis and Chloé in thanksgiving to Pan present a pantomime of Pan's courtship of the nymph Syrinx, with a prominent role for Pan's flute. Finally, all join together in a vigorous "general dance" of jubilation, a bacchanal in 5/4 meter, bringing the rhythmic element to the fore.