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Franz Danzi and Andre Jolivet (Bassoon Concertos)

Franz Danzi (1763-1826)

He was a German composer, son of Innocenz Danzi (Italian composer). Danzi studied piano, cello and singing with his father and at the age of 15 joined the celebrated Mannheim orchestra. Later he studied composition with G. J. Vogler.

First Experiences

• In Mannheim, Danzi had his first professional experience working in the newly established National Theatre.
• Before leaving Mannheim he wrote a duodrama, a Singspiel and incidental music for at least eight plays, including the first performance of Schiller’s drama Die Räuber, one of the early landmarks of the Romantic era.

Successfull period in Munich (1784 –1798)

• In 1784 Danzi was appointed to replace his father as principal cellist in the court orchestra at Munich. In 1790 he married the singer Margarethe Marchand. The couple traveled in several cities in Europe - Hamburg, Leipzig, Prague, Florence and Venice, spending two years in the Guardasoni company. In 1796 they returned to Munich and Danzi had the opportunity to write a comic opera for the court theatre - Die Mitternachtstunde. After the opera’s successfull premiere, Danzi was appointed vice-Kapellmeister on May 18, 1798 and placed in charge of German opera and church music. He was recognized at this time not only as one of Munich’s leading musicians, but also as a prominent member of the city’s literary circles. The next few years were marked by series of personal and professional setbacks.

Stuttgart and Karlsruhe

On the other hand, another period during which Danzi was active started in October 1807 in Stuttgart - this saved him from the dramatic experiences he had in Munich between 1798-1800. The King of Wurttemberg offered him the position of Kapellmeister and he met Carl Maria von Weber who encouraged Franz Danzi as a young composer in his compositional creation, especially in the opera genre.

The Third Musical Period of Franz Danzi was in Karlsruhe in 1812. The musical organization there was inexperienced and weak, and he spent the rest of his tenure trying to build a respectable company. He remained an active correspondent with Weber and directed his operas soon after their premieres. None of his own operas written in Karlsruhe produced a popular success, but during the last decade of his lif, Danzi found a willing outlet for his instrumental compositions in the publisher Johann Andre, for whom he provided numerous pieces of chamber music. Among them were the works for which he is best known today - Woodwind Quintets opp. 56, 57 and 68.

Other important facts about Franz Danzi:

• Danzi composed in all the major genres.

• From the early 1790s until 1825 he published chamber and orchestral works.

• He wrote Songs, partsongs, more than 100 sacred choral works.

• He anticipated the Romantic Movement by combining musical and literary activities.

• He wrote at least one opera libretto.

• Danzi made a modest contribution at the outset of the 19th century to the Romantic style. His instrumental works are characterized by a high degree of craftsmanship, pleasant, idiomic melodies and a conservative, formulaic approach to form.

• Mildly adventurous harmonic language and unexpected cross-relations and diminished sonorities resulting from chromatic part-writing, and fondness for starting movement away of tonic key.

• Despite being remembered mainly for his chamber music, Danzi was in fact one of the most important opera composers of Mozart’s generation (distinguishing features of Danzi’s operas: colourful orchestration, chromatic harmonies and cantabile melodic writing). More successful works: his comic operas Die Mitternachtstunde and Der Kuss, the early dramatic work Cleopatra which has many of the Sturm und Drang qualities.

Basson Concertos by Franz Danzi

Franz Danzi wrote 4 concertos for Bassoon.

• The best known is the Bassoon Concerto no. 2 in F Major. It was published in 1963 in an edition by Dr. Robert Münster by Verlag Thomi-Berg (Leuckartiana). The concerto is scored for flute, pairs of oboes and horns, trombone and strings. The symphonic orchestral introduction, the changes between lyrical themes and virtuoso passages, the variation of major and minor and the colourful harmonic palette make the first movement a particularly fine example of Danzi’s writing. The second and third movements offer, as it was, a musical drama and in the Polonaise provide the soloist with opportunities for technical display. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ncHgOksZAk

• The Concerto in F Major no. 1 also contains 3 movements. It has a final movement of variations (there are provided highly virtuoso variations of two cadenzas) on the Austrian folk-song A Schüsserl und a Reinderl, a theme also used by Weber in his Variations for Viola and Orchestra, J. 49. The concerto is scored for pairs of oboes and horns, with strings, and was published in 1984 by Musikverlag Hans Sikorski in an edition by Joachim Veit.  First performance, 20th January 1805 in Munich with soloist Franz Lang, a member of  the Hofkapelle. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E4xB2N8P7ik

• The Concerto in C Major is in three movements with a final Rondo. The varied repetitions of the principal rondo theme are a model of the tecnique of ornamentation. The concerto was published in 1982, in an edition by Joachim Viet, by Verlag Thomi-Berg (Leuckart) and is scored for pairs of oboes and horns, with strings. It was probably written for Munich. (There is a provided cadenza for the first movement). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_E2P0zRXRc

• The Concerto in G minor is in 3 Movements, with a last movement Polonaise. Danzi’s manuscript of the solo and orchestral parts are in the Fürstlich-Fürstenberg Library in Donaueschingen. The work was probably written during Danzi’s period in Stuttgart, perhaps for the bassoonist Anton Romberg in Donaueschingen, and is scored for flute, oboes, bassoons, horns and trumpets, trombone and strings. This is my favourite Bassoon concerto by Danzi. The abundance of modulations is very characteristic of this concerto. There are very beautiful dialogues between the orchestra and the bassoon, and interesting usage of harmonies. I really like the diversity and innovations that Danzi created in this Concerto. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0qqHFlT7o4

• Overall, all four concerts tell their own individual story, which at first can be called a fairy tale and listeners could imagine its meaning themselves, which is certainly something really nice that inspires, surrounds with many emotions, warms the heart and delights the soul.

André Jolivet  (8 August 1905 – 20 December 1974)

There is nothing greater than the joy of composing something oneself and then listening to it.

Clara Schumann

ANDRÉ JOLIVET is a French composer who was born in Paris. His father was a painter and his mother was a pianist. Jolivet took cello lessons with Louis Feuillard. He set his own poem to music at 13. At 15 he designed and composed music for a ballet. The music of Debussy, Dukas and Ravel made a lasting impression on him at the Pasdeloup concerts in 1919. In 1920 the Abbé Théodas, maître de chapelle of Notre Dame de Clignancourt, Paris, accepted him as a chorister, teaching him harmony and organ. He left school that year and trained as a teacher, taking up various posts in Paris from 1927. Some early piano compositions date from this period, including Romance barbare (1920) and Sarabande sur le nom d’Eric Satie (1925). In 1928 he started lessons with Paul Le Flem, director of the Chanteurs de St Gervais, whose rigorous training in counterpoint, harmony and classical forms often drew on 15th- and 16th-century polyphonists.

First Achievements

• December 1927 at the Société Musicale Indépendante’s Schoenberg concerts at the Salle Pleyel – Jolivet’s significant exposure to atonal music occurred.

• In 1929 Varèse’s Amériques had a profound impact on him; Jolivet was struck by the large orchestral forces, dominated by percussion. Le Flem, responding to Jolivet’s enthusiasm, introduced him to Varèse, who accepted him as his only European student. Varèse’s impact is evident in Jolivet’s experimentation with sound-masses, acoustics, orchestration and atonal (though non-serial) methods.

• First Important Compositions (1930) - Air pour bercer, Suite for string trio and Trois temps.

• Varèse returned to the USA in 1933 leaving Jolivet six objects: a puppet, a magic bird, a statue of a Balinese princess, and a goat, cow and winged horse sculpted by Calder, which Jolivet regarded as fetish objects. In 1935 he composed Mana for piano, naming a movement after each object. Contrast is created between the rhythmically free portrayal of the puppet, the short halting phrases of the bird, the rhythmic momentum of the Balinese princess, and the long flexible lines evoking the cow.

• Cinq incantions for solo flute and Cinq danses rituelles are concerned with the life-cycle and with harvest. While the former work contains shifting and flexible rhythms. Jolivet exploits the dissonant effect of the repeated diminished octaves and minor seconds in the final section of the nuptial dance.

• By focussing on ritual, incantation and initiation practices, Jolivet sought inspiration from African and East Asian traditions.

• Messiaen, a jury member of the Societe Nationale, helped to get Jolivet’s Trois temps pour piano (1930) performed by the society in 1931. In a review of Mana, Messiaaen noted the ‘novelty of its idiom and the singularity of its aesthetic’, which, in his view, seemed ‘to express the aspirations’. They both shared an interest in spiritual concerns and a desire to widen the emotional range of music.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mvv-1NVtExU - Mana for Piano (Score-Video) - Andre Jolivet

The Period from 1945 onwards

• In 1945 Jolivet published an article in Noir et Blanc entitled ‘Assez Stravinsky’, in which he declared that ‘true French music owes nothing to Stravinsky’. Poulenc replied, defending Stravinsky, with an article in Le Figaro, ‘Vive Stravinsky’. In 1946 Jolivet responded to an enquiry on musical aesthetics and technique ('Magie expérimentale in Contrepoints), in which he reaffirmed his musical aims, including his desire to rediscover music’s ‘original ancient meaning’. He also outlined his preoccupation with acoustics, particularly his use of ‘doubled basses’ in preference to the ‘artificial twelve-note system’; by selecting two bass notes, he was able to exploit the harmonies that were available from both harmonic series.

• During the World War II – Jolivet simplified his style, abandoning atonality and striving for a music for ‘evasion and relaxation’. (Examples include the comic opera Dolorès, ou Le miracle de la femme laide (1942)  and Guignol et Pandore (1943) on which he collaborated with Serge Lifar). The music is tonal, modal and simple, with repetitive rhythms and pentatonic glissandos, and tritones in the execution scene.

• Chamber works Chant de Linos and Hopi Snake Dance reveal his continuing preocupation with ritual; the former exploits the flute’s technical capabilities and the influence of Le Flem’s teaching in a contrapuntal independence of the lines.

• From about 1945 Jolivet achieved a fusion between his new-found accessibility and his earlier experimentation. Serge Gut has identified this synthesis in the First Piano Sonata (1945), written in a memory of Bartok.

• Elements of virtuosity, dissonance and rhytmic drive feature in Fantasie-Caprice for flute and piano (1953), Serenade for two guitars and the numerous concertos (including two for cello and one for violin).

• Between 1945 and 1959 Jolivet was musical director of the Comédie Française.

• He composed 14 scores for plays by Moliere, Racine, Sophocles, Shakespeare and Claudel. He had the opportunity to travel widely, to the Middle East and East Asia and to Africa; his visit to Egypt rekindled his interest in ritual in works such as Epithalame for a 12-voice ‘vocal orchestra’ (1953), based on sacred Egyptian, Hindu, Chinese and Greek texts, and the second movement of his First Symphony. The Concerto for Piano and Orchestra (1949-50) was the result of a commission from Radio France for ‘a work of colonial inspiration’ and was awarded the Grand Prix de la Ville de Paris; by drawing on musical elements from Africa, East Asia and Polynesia, Jolivet was continuing the tradition of French exoticism established by Bizet, Chabrier, Debussy, Ravel and Messiaen.

• Evidence for Jolivet’s interest in French culture is the Oratorio La vérité de Jeanne, based on a 15-th century text rehabilitating Joan of Arc, it was performed in Domrémy for her 500th anniversary. The orchestral work Les amants magnifiques (1961) also involved a homage to France’s past in Molière and Lully.

• Jolive employs Baroque dance figures, ground bass and harpsichord but reveals the individuality in emphasizing percussion, block writing, glissandos and harmonics.

• Jolivet founded the Centre Français d’Humanisme Musical at Aix-en-Provence in 1959 and taught composition at the Paris Conservatoire from 1961. His last commission to write an opera, Le soldat inconnu for the Palais Garnier, was incomplete at his death.

Few recordings of other works by Andre Jolivet

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMJ-2CStO5s - Algeria-Tango (Video-Score)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q9KhjZzCDqY - André Jolivet: Cinq Danses Rituelles, per orchestra (1940/1941) No.1-2 (Recording)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVy7p-9A77U - Andre Jolivet - Sidi Ya-ya (Gallet) (1934) (Video-Score)

Concerto for Bassoon, String Orchestra, Harp and Piano

• It is written in 1953-1954. The Concerto was premiered on 30 November 1954 by Maurice Allard and the Orchestre Radio-Symphonique, Paris. It lasts about 13 minutes and is considered one of the most difficult concertos in the bassoon’s repertoire.

  Overview of the concert

  The Concerto is in two movements – each featuring a slow and a fast section. Echoing the Baroque slow-fast-slow-fast Sonata da chiesa, it also displays influence from neo-classicism and jazz.

Movements: 1 A. Recitativo; 1 B. Allegro gioviale; 2 A. Largo cantabile; 2 B. Fugato;

• The opening Recitativo displays the large range of the bassoon in sparsely accompanied tirade by the soloist, beginning with quiet, tense and angular statements in the high range but becoming more and more agitated, frenetic and declamatory, often running up and down the instrument vigorously. Frequent pauses in the bassoon’s monologue and dry, harsh punctuation add to the effect of “recitativo”. The final and most turbulent statement transforms a long trill and flippant F major resolution into the second half of the movement – Allegro gioviale.

• Allegro Giovale: It features syncopated rhythms throughout. The orchestra plays a jazz-like chromatic theme and builds darkly towards the bassoon’s entry, which in turn plays an acrobatic, ironically merry (bright) theme, rejecting the first one heard in the orchestra; This humorous mood and manic character persists throughtout the movement. The bassoon eventually reprising the expository theme before “breaking character”, there are some jarring interjections foreshadowing the next movement, then series of ascending scales, thematically inverting the descending string scales in the exposition, and runs up to a top F before the movement tumbles to a close.

• The Largo Cantabile has been described as haunting, lyrical and colourful with some fine contributions of the solo violin and harp. The mood is humid, dejected and desolate, with the bassoon’s vocal top-octave lines creating a strained-voice effect of crying or wailing. The orchestra fades out, and the bassoon, alone, grimly proceeds into the last section.

• The Fugato is the final section. Despite its austere title, it includes some “enchanting” effects.The dramatic mood from the prior section of the movement focuses and becomes sinister, and there is a dark interplay between soloist and orchestra, taking on characteristics of a Danse Macabre. The fugato structure is exploited to create dialogue between the soloist and orchestra, especially between bassoon and solo violin; the sentiments of the solo line and orchestra are in much greater accord here than in the Allegro Giovale. The movement gains speed and power towards the finale (in the end unexpectedly move into D major, the bassoon howling a final high D at the close).

• Although a fairly short concerto, it calls for masterful levels of technique and control, and great variety and depth of character. It is one of the most difficult concertos in the bassoon’s repertoire and has been called a “delight for virtuosos.”

Recordings of Jolivet’s Concerto (each bassoonist performs it in a different characteristic way, which makes this composition even more special)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3x-i1TgY5HE - André Jolivet: Bassoon Concerto (1953-1954) - Bassoon: Maurice Allard; Conductor: André Jolivet; Orchestra: Orchestre Jean-François Paillard; Year of Recording: about 1954

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3Mt0L7lAdA - Matthias Racz - Fagott/bassoon Jolivet Konzert mit dem Bayerischen Rundfunk 2002

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7CHCD5O3W54 - Jolivet - Concerto for bassoon & orchestra - Sophie Dartigalongue (Dervaux)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ID_3ucwa5D4 - Jolivet Bassoon Concerto (fragments), Bram van Sambeek