View of Schubert's Room (Moritz von Schwind, 1868)

Notes on the Program: Small but Mighty

Julia Grella O’Connell, D.M.A., Director of Education and Community Engagement

If the symphony, that highly complex structure which reached its apotheosis around the turn of the nineteenth century, is the highest expression of music, what does it mean to call a symphony “little”? Today’s program highlights shorter works by four masters of the form, each written during its respective composer’s youth, “little” symphonies employing small forces and concise formats, but paradoxically conveying creative freedom at its most extravagant.

Béla Bartók came of age in the waning days of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and he declared it his life’s goal to serve “in every sphere and in every way the good of the Hungarian nation.” This desire was sparked by an encounter with a servant girl singing traditional songs, which inspired him to travel the Carpathian mountains to collect folk music. His Romanian Folk Dances are based on the music of Transylvania, a disputed territory encompassing multiple languages. Before World War I shattered the region along ethnic lines, Bartók, recognizing the vitality of its indigenous music, set out to fix it in time, anticipating that its freshness would breathe new life into the concert hall. 

While Bartók eschewed cosmopolitan musical conventions, Mozart was perhaps their greatest exponent. The sinfonia concertante, a Baroque form, alternates instrumental solos with full orchestra. Mozart wrote his Sinfonia Concertante in E-flat Major for Violin, Viola, and Orchestra, K. 364 in 1779 while on tour throughout Europe, and while it shows the composer at his most light-hearted, it also contains moments of great emotional depth. This mixing of dark and light, of delight with grief and resignation, is emblematic of Mozart, who used traditional forms to convey humanity at its fullest. 

The piece that gives tonight's program its title is Quinn Mason’s 2021 “Petite Symphonie de Chambre Contemporain (après Milhaud),” conceived as a conversation with another “little symphony" from 100 years earlier, the Little Chamber Symphony No. 4 of French composer Darius Milhaud. As Mason describes “Petite Symphonie,” it “follows the original form of Milhaud's work . . . [while exploring] my own compositional voice and style.” Indeed, Mason applies his trademark high-spirited dance-like rhythms, melodic lyricism, and harmonic balance to Milhaud’s distinctive spiky structure, demonstrating a mastery of the orchestra that belies his age.   

While Mozart moved to Vienna from Salzburg in search of fame and fortune, Franz Schubert was a native of the city, and despaired of inevitable comparisons to another Viennese transplant, lamenting, “Who can do anything after Beethoven?” Nevertheless, in his own “little symphony,” the Symphony No. 5 in B-flat Major, D. 485, Schubert manages to skirt the great man’s shadow. He wrote in his diary in 1816, the year of its composition: “Immortal Mozart! What countless impressions of a brighter, better life hast thou stamped upon our souls!” And indeed, one can hear Mozart’s influence, especially in the alternation between cheerfulness and contemplation, even melancholy, in the symphony’s themes, suggesting a soul more profoundly acquainted with life than one would expect of the nineteen-year-old composer.

The English artist and designer William Morris wrote of his native land: “All is little; yet not foolish . . . but serious rather, and abundant of meaning for such as choose to seek it.” We hope that, in “Little Symphonies,” you will seek – and find – an abundance of both meaning and delight.