Program Notes: From Mozart to Matthews

By Catherine Case

Paul Chihara was born in Seattle, Washington, in 1938. During the Second World War, his family was among the thousands of Japanese Americans who were forcibly removed from their homes and sent to prison camps known as War Relocation Centers. Chihara grew up in the Minidoka camp in Idaho, listening to American pop and big band music on the radio. As a teenager during the Korean War, he joined a USO troop and entertained soldiers as a violinist. Throughout his 60-year career as a composer, Chihara has written extensively for film and television as well as ballets, symphonies, concertos and chamber music. His influences draw from his childhood love of Duke Ellington and his time studying with Nadia Boulanger in Paris, where he absorbed the impressionistic sounds of Debussy.   

The Viola Sonata was composed in 1991 as a love letter to Chihara’s violist wife, Carol. The three-movement work begins with the viola diving into a beautifully romantic melody. The second theme is taken from the love song “Born to Be Together” from Chihara’s musical, Shogun. The second movement also uses this song as thematic material in an impassioned minuet. A quote from Mozart’s Violin Sonata in E-minor, K. 304, appears seamlessly within the texture and adds a ghostly aura to the ending. The third movement was added in 2009 and provides a finale of brilliant virtuosity.  

Acclaimed pianist and composer Rachel Matthews will perform her own work for us this evening joined by Laura DeLuca on clarinet. Matthews has made her home in Seattle for over 15 years and maintains an active teaching studio and composing schedule. Voices of Trees was written in 2006 and inspired by a comment that Matthews heard in her youth about the clarinet’s sound resembling “the sound of a tree singing.” In her notes about the piece, Matthews states that the movement titles are “not intended to be taken too literally, although they do point towards the sort of pre-verbal ideas from which the music sprang.”  

The first movement, titled “Listen through the rustling leaves,” begins with the piano acting as the wind that awakens the clarinet as it emerges from the texture with a pastoral melody. From here, the music unfolds with an organic naturalness and comes to a peaceful conclusion. The next movement, “Night scherzo,” according to Matthews, “evokes the intense energy and activity, for the most part unseen by us, within and around the (seemingly static) tree.” Rhythmically disjointed phrases built around an octatonic scale are exchanged playfully between clarinet and piano in this whimsical nocturnal scene. The final movement, “Witness,” begins with an extended clarinet solo and addresses the trees in relation to human activity. Matthews writes that this movement is a “laying bare of the truth: it speaks to the collective life of trees that were here before us, have seen all, and will bear witness until the end.” 

In 18th-century Europe, many aristocratic families employed wind ensembles, known as Harmonie in German, to provide background music for dinners, private concerts and outdoor events. In Vienna, the Emperor Joseph II kept a renowned octet of professional wind players on staff that inspired a wealth of new repertoire including Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Serenades K. 375 and K. 388. Many composers of the time also arranged popular works of opera for wind bands, allowing audiences to hear the familiar and beloved melodies of famous opera composers within a less formal setting. This arrangement of the Overture to The Magic Flute comes from a manuscript dated 1800, almost a decade after Mozart composed the full opera. There is no record of the arranger, who is attributed as Hagner, but it is believed to have been written to accompany another arrangement of 18 arias from the same opera.  

The Magic Flute was Mozart’s last opera and premiered just three months before he died at the age of 35. The plot is inspired by German and Austrian fairytales that were popular at the time. The heroic Prince Tamino and his companion Papageno, who is half-man and half-bird, are sent on a quest to rescue the Queen of the Night’s daughter, Pamina. Magical instruments help them through various trials and tribulations and love blossoms between Tamino and Pamina.  

The Overture opens with three declamatory chords and a slow, somber introduction. The proceeding Allegro is a joyful fugal passage full of offbeat accents and dynamic changes. The opening three chords return to interrupt the activity in a moment of reflection before the music rushes off again in a brilliant display of counterpoint and melodic development.  

In 1792, the 22-year-old Ludwig van Beethoven moved to Vienna from his home in Bonn and began writing music that reflected the traditional forms of the day, exploring the classical works of Haydn and Mozart before forging his own more experimental path toward Romanticism. Harmoniemusik, music composed for the popular wind bands that existed to entertain high society, was one such tradition that Beethoven set out to emulate. The Sextet in E flat was composed in 1796 and lay dormant for a decade. It was first performed at a benefit concert for Beethoven’s friend Ignaz Schuppanzigh, a violinist who premiered many of the composer’s string quartets. The prominent music journal of the time, Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung, reviewed the concert and described the Sextet as “a composition which shines resplendent by reason of its lively melodies, unconstrained harmonies, and a wealth of new and surprising ideas.”  

The four-movement Sextet begins with a slow introduction followed by a charmingly energetic Allegro in classic sonata form. The second movement’s Adagio features the bassoon in a lilting melody that is taken up by the clarinets. Bassoons and clarinets continue to interact, gracefully exchanging melodic material as though in conversation with each other. The Minuet that follows offers a tonal contrast by bringing the horns to the forefront with a playful theme. The final movement is a Rondo with a sprightly recurring theme played by the whole ensemble. Distinct episodes veer into different key signatures with virtuosic passagework between clarinets and bassoons before the coda brings all six instruments together for a rousing conclusion.