Update Title: 5E5BBA11-2125-4AC5-B250-2023B19C4850

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When I first met with Mario Venzago, the Music Director of the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, to discuss the commission of a new work to commemorate the seventy-fifth anniversary of the ISO, he proposed that I write a companion piece for the Third Symphony (the “Rhenish”) of Robert Schumann.  Mr. Venzago suggested that I incorporate references in my score both to elements of that symphony and to other works by Schumann that bear witness to his reverence for the Rhine. Maestro Venzago pointed out that not only was my piece to be premiered on the same concert that featured the “Rhenish,” but that the fourth movement of the earlier composition had also been inspired by a grand event – the installation of the Archbishop of Cologne as Cardinal in 1850.  Although, in the end, I did not follow precisely Mr. Venzago’s proposal for the commission, the resulting work is nonetheless decidedly Schumannesque in many ways and can, in fact, serve as a “companion” to any of his four symphonies.

The title itself (“Fairy-Tale Images”) is taken from a work by Schumann for viola and piano, written one year after the “Rhenish.”  It can be said of all Schumann’s symphonies that they are essentially suites of musical “pictures,” orchestrally colored.  However, the associations he creates between scenes (whether of Rhenish life or of springtime pleasures) and music are general rather than specific.  In my score, the “imagery” is provided by actual music of Schumann and two of his contemporaries.  Such “borrowings” from existing compositions, be they conscious or accidental, were not uncommon for Schumann, and his symphonies are rich in allusions to music of his forebears.  The Second Symphony, for example, contains citations of works by Bach (Musical Offering), Mozart (String Quintet in B-flat, K174) and Beethoven (“An die ferne Geliebte”).  Each movement of my own “Märchenbilder” draws its inspiration in turn from three well-known compositions for viola…which not coincidentally is the primary instrument of Maestro Venzago’s wife, Marianne.  The first makes oblique reference to the second movement of the Sonata Op. 120, No. 1 for viola and piano by Johannes Brahms.  The next uses as its structural (and motivic) basis the second “Märchenbild” of Schumann himself and provides a light-hearted foil for the more somber outer movements.

The final “image” is a parody of the “Procession of the Pilgrims” from Hector Berlioz’s Harold in Italy and is, in essence, a chaconne (a musical form based on the continuous variation of a series of chords).  The gradual unfolding and intensification of the chaconne pattern is interrupted at the movement’s climax with a modified quotation of the “Canto Religioso” from Berlioz’s work.

The orchestration of my composition, too, mirrors that of Schumann’s symphonies.  In those four works, instrumental solos are rare, and doublings between woodwinds and strings are prevalent.  Brass typically play a subordinate role in the symphonies, serving merely to punctuate loud, rhythmical passages.  Thus, in my piece, woodwinds and strings are frequently coupled, there is only one extended solo section (appropriately, for viola), and with the exception of three horns, no brass instruments are called for.   Very un-Schumannesque, however, is my use of an expanded percussion complement that provides much of the contrast in color throughout the piece.

“Märchenbilder” was commissioned jointly by the Koussevitzky Music Foundation and the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, and is dedicated to the memory of Serge and Natalie Koussevitzky.

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