Beethoven, Brahms & Beauty – March 2025
Program notes by Sanford Dole
Welcome friends and music lovers! I am beyond excited to be presenting this program and to have you here to witness the premiere of my latest composition. Unlike my 35-minute oratorio A Song for St. Cecilia, which we premiered in December 2022 in a version that was reduced from the work’s initial large orchestra format to organ, piano, and percussion, you will hear All is Beauty as it was originally conceived.
The genesis of this entire program came about when I learned that the German publishing house Carus-Verlag has created a catalog of major works with reduced orchestrations so that smaller choirs, such as Bay Choral Guild, can present these great masterpieces. Not only do the original orchestrations cost substantially more to produce, they also require larger choirs in order to balance the volume produced by the increased number of instruments. For comparison, as conceived by Beethoven, the Mass in C calls for 12 brass and wind players along with anywhere from 22 to 40 strings, organ and timpani. Using modern instruments, as we are today, rather than the lighter-sounding period instruments of the Baroque era, would require a chorus of 80–100 singers. Happily, we now have the chance to present the exquisite music of Beethoven and Brahms with our much smaller company of choristers, using only wind quintet, 10 strings, and timpani, plus the four vocal soloists.
Ludwig van Beethoven composed his Mass in C in 1807 on a commission from Prince Nikolaus Esterházy. Since the mid-1790s, the prince had celebrated the name day of his wife every year with a new mass. For years, these were composed by Joseph Haydn, the court’s longtime music director, but by 1803, Haydn’s health forced him to stop composing. He suggested others to continue the tradition, including Beethoven, one of his former students. Despite Beethoven’s anxiety about composing something that could match Haydn’s high standard, he accepted the commission.
To put his anxiety in context, Beethoven was at the time in a highly productive and mature compositional phase—his output for 1806 included the three “Razumovsky” string quartets, the “Appassionata” piano sonata, the Fourth Symphony, the Fourth Piano Concerto, and the Violin Concerto. Nevertheless, he was awed at the prospect of following in his former teacher’s footsteps, and he approached the composition of his first mass with hesitancy. He began the project right away, then put it aside. Tormented by headaches, he spent the summer in Baden and Heiligenstadt, where he endured numerous futile and unpleasant treatments. He wrote the prince to excuse his slow progress, even enclosing a letter from his doctor, and promised that he would finish the mass in time for Princess Maria Hermenegild’s name day service: “I shall hand you the Mass with considerable apprehension, since you, most excellent prince, are accustomed to have the inimitable masterpieces of the great Haydn performed for you.”
Beethoven did complete the work in time; however, the first performance, on September 13, 1807, at the prince’s estate outside Vienna, proved to be a disappointment for all concerned. Due in part to Beethoven’s poor conducting skills, his already advanced hearing loss, and surly demeanor, the court musicians were badly under-rehearsed. Upset choristers had walked out of earlier rehearsals, so that four of the five altos in the chorus had to sight-sing their parts. The prince seemed confused by Beethoven’s approach, and Johann Hummel, who had taken over Haydn’s position as the court music director, actually laughed at it. In private, the prince complained even more harshly, calling the work “ridiculous” and feeling “angry and mortified” about it.
Later audiences have wondered at the initial negative responses. Listeners at the time were probably not prepared for a mass to have elements that we now see as typical of Beethoven, such as sudden changes in tempo and dynamics, sometimes in the space of a single word. They may also have sensed his less than orthodox religious views. Although baptized a Catholic, Beethoven rarely attended church and seemed to seek the divine in the world around him more than in religious services. (Brahms had a similar view on spiritual matters. His German Requiem does set Biblical texts but not those of the Catholic Mass for the Dead. Rather, his requiem presents no doctrine, instead offering hope and solace without judgment or terror.) Compared with more familiar works expressing Haydn’s deep faith, Beethoven’s first mass may even have struck the original audience as shocking.
To modern audiences, Beethoven’s monumental Missa Solemnis (1823) has often overshadowed the more human-scale and traditional Mass in C. Still, as one music scholar has written, the latter “has a directness and an emotional content that the Missa Solemnis sometimes lacks.” In this work the concept of using the Mass text as a libretto for a symphonic concert work was clearly emerging. Beginning the Kyrie with unaccompanied bass voices is already a departure from convention, as is ending the Agnus Dei with a reminiscence of the opening phrase of the Kyrie. Beethoven’s innovative genius is clearly evident in this work, giving the Mass in C a rightful place in today’s choral/orchestral repertoire.
Johannes Brahms began work on Schicksalslied (Song of Destiny) in 1868. This was just months after the premiere of A German Requiem, which he had worked on for over a decade. Brahms was enormously encouraged by the warm reception accorded his Requiem. During the next half-dozen years a stream of wonderful choral works flowed from his pen, including the Alto Rhapsody, Schicksalslied, Nänie, and Gesang der Parzen, among others. Clearly, A German Requiem had unleashed a fount of ideas.
In the summer of 1868, Brahms visited two musician friends, Albert Dietrich and Carl Reinthaler, in Bremen. Dietrich related in his memoirs that one day, as the three of them went on a trip to see the naval station at Wilhelmshaven, Brahms was surprisingly silent all day. That morning he had found, on Dietrich’s bookshelf, Friedrich Hölderlin's epistolary novel Hyperion, which idealizes the culture and humanity of Ancient Greece. Buried in the middle of the 1797 novel is the poem Hyperions Schicksalslied. As described by blogger Timothy Judd, “The poem’s two verses contrast the lives of eternally blissful Immortals enjoying ‘luminous, heavenly breezes’ with the restless existence of human beings, who are subject to the cruel whims of fate.” Brahms was deeply moved by Hölderlin’s poem. Dietrich’s memoir continues, “Later on, after spending a long time walking round and visiting all the points of interest, we were sitting resting by the sea, when we discovered Brahms a long way off sitting by himself on the shore writing. It was the first sketch for the Schicksalslied, which appeared fairly soon afterwards. A lovely excursion which we had arranged to the Urwald was never carried out. He hurried back to Hamburg, in order to give himself up to his work.”
In spite of this impulsive start, it took Brahms about three years to complete Schicksalslied. One of the main difficulties he had was connected to the bleak closing of the poem. After trying out various other solutions, he wrote a purely orchestral postlude, which, after the depiction of the cruelty of human destiny, reintroduced heavenly bliss in a soothing C major. In the program for the Karlsruhe premiere, the words Nachspiel des Orchesters (“Orchestral Postlude") were printed after the text, in order to emphasize the degree to which this ending was to be regarded as an extension of the poem.
Bay Choral Guild’s 2024-25 season is my 25th as Artistic Director. To celebrate this milestone I have decided to program my compositions on each of the season’s three programs. In December we performed some of my earliest choral works. Our June concert will include a communion motet I wrote for the choir at St. Gregory’s 10 years ago. For me, the highlight of this programming trifecta is today’s premiere.
Knowing we would have the chamber orchestra and soloists present for this program, I was thrilled to compose an extended work using the specific instrumentation and singers we would need for the 19th-century works. My goal was to use secular texts and write in a style that was accessible on a first hearing while still expressing my musical point of view.
Here is a little insight into my creative process: I did not know exactly what the piece would become when we announced the season a year ago. I simply chose the word “Beauty” for use in the program title, because I liked the alliteration with Beethoven and Brahms. At the time, I was thinking about the role of artists and the need to bring beauty into the world as a balm for the stresses of modern life. After searching for poetry about beauty, without finding any that truly spoke to me, I thought about where I personally find the most beauty. Much like Beethoven and Brahms, I feel closest to God when I am in nature. The beauty of the natural world is to be celebrated and, of course, cherished, as climate change continues unabated.
As it happens, I attended John Muir Elementary School in Berkeley when I was a child. Scottish-born naturalist John Muir was a prominent figure in my early life, in part because my family’s annual summer vacation was two weeks spent in the High Sierra. Those trips instilled a love for nature, a love well expressed in Muir’s writings, which I hope comes through in the music you’ll hear accompanying his ideas.
Being a life-long member of the Sierra Club, I turned to the club’s website, where I found some two dozen quotes extracted from Muir’s many books. The six excerpts I’ve selected for this piece reflect my own connection to nature, most especially to my love for the Sierra Nevada.
Unlike Ludwig and Johannes, I’m happy to report that I did not experience any struggles in creating this work. It all came together last summer. In part because my summer vacation was planned for October, I decided I would stay home and be a full-time composer during July and August. The work needed to be completed before Labor Day, because once the season begins I find it difficult to find the time and focus for composition. When I sat down at the computer that first day—I use software that allows me to enter all the notes into the full score and hear it played back using simulated instrumental sounds—all I had were the six quotes and a vision that the piece would begin with a single note played by a French horn. But once I entered that horn note, the rest of the piece just seemed to flow. In fact, I completed the 17-minute work in just seven weeks.
It turns out that the opening horn solo represents the stillness of night before sunrise in the mountains. The prologue, which introduces first the strings, followed by the chorus, the soloists and the woodwinds, is a representation of sunrise. It culminates in a loud roll on the timpani which, for me, is that moment when the sun finally appears over the top of the mountain and begins to warm up the deep mountain canyons.
From here the six quotes of John Muir unfold in what are basically different movements. However, the entire work unspools as one long piece with the solo horn note returning between sections to tie it all together. At the very end, just before the last phrase, there is one final horn call, this time fortissimo; a final, jubilant, celebration of the mountains.
The structure of the work is something of a palindrome, although I had not planned it that way from the start. The first three “movements” each have unique musical themes and rhythmic identities: an energetic romp in 4/4, a lilting section in 6/8, then a stately waltz. There follows a textless interlude that is very still and “spacey,” representing my memories of lying in a sleeping bag at night staring up at the vast heavens, hoping to see shooting stars amongst the billions of stars and planets. After the interlude we hear the remaining three quotes. Although they are new and distinct, they also use and develop musical material we’ve heard in the first three movements, but in reverse order. The finale completes the palindrome, recapitulating music from the opening “sunrise” prologue, now in a loud, ecstatic send-off.
Thank you for attending our concert and for supporting Bay Choral Guild. It takes a lot to present this kind of program, not the least of which is your enthusiastic engagement while listening to the music as well as your support through ticket sales and donations. We look forward to continuing this at our next concert, “If Music be the Food of Love,” on June 7 and 8. That program will include shorter works, mostly unaccompanied, exploring the themes of—you guessed it—Music, Food, and Love. See you then!
The genesis of this entire program came about when I learned that the German publishing house Carus-Verlag has created a catalog of major works with reduced orchestrations so that smaller choirs, such as Bay Choral Guild, can present these great masterpieces. Not only do the original orchestrations cost substantially more to produce, they also require larger choirs in order to balance the volume produced by the increased number of instruments. For comparison, as conceived by Beethoven, the Mass in C calls for 12 brass and wind players along with anywhere from 22 to 40 strings, organ and timpani. Using modern instruments, as we are today, rather than the lighter-sounding period instruments of the Baroque era, would require a chorus of 80–100 singers. Happily, we now have the chance to present the exquisite music of Beethoven and Brahms with our much smaller company of choristers, using only wind quintet, 10 strings, and timpani, plus the four vocal soloists.
Ludwig van Beethoven composed his Mass in C in 1807 on a commission from Prince Nikolaus Esterházy. Since the mid-1790s, the prince had celebrated the name day of his wife every year with a new mass. For years, these were composed by Joseph Haydn, the court’s longtime music director, but by 1803, Haydn’s health forced him to stop composing. He suggested others to continue the tradition, including Beethoven, one of his former students. Despite Beethoven’s anxiety about composing something that could match Haydn’s high standard, he accepted the commission.
To put his anxiety in context, Beethoven was at the time in a highly productive and mature compositional phase—his output for 1806 included the three “Razumovsky” string quartets, the “Appassionata” piano sonata, the Fourth Symphony, the Fourth Piano Concerto, and the Violin Concerto. Nevertheless, he was awed at the prospect of following in his former teacher’s footsteps, and he approached the composition of his first mass with hesitancy. He began the project right away, then put it aside. Tormented by headaches, he spent the summer in Baden and Heiligenstadt, where he endured numerous futile and unpleasant treatments. He wrote the prince to excuse his slow progress, even enclosing a letter from his doctor, and promised that he would finish the mass in time for Princess Maria Hermenegild’s name day service: “I shall hand you the Mass with considerable apprehension, since you, most excellent prince, are accustomed to have the inimitable masterpieces of the great Haydn performed for you.”
Beethoven did complete the work in time; however, the first performance, on September 13, 1807, at the prince’s estate outside Vienna, proved to be a disappointment for all concerned. Due in part to Beethoven’s poor conducting skills, his already advanced hearing loss, and surly demeanor, the court musicians were badly under-rehearsed. Upset choristers had walked out of earlier rehearsals, so that four of the five altos in the chorus had to sight-sing their parts. The prince seemed confused by Beethoven’s approach, and Johann Hummel, who had taken over Haydn’s position as the court music director, actually laughed at it. In private, the prince complained even more harshly, calling the work “ridiculous” and feeling “angry and mortified” about it.
Later audiences have wondered at the initial negative responses. Listeners at the time were probably not prepared for a mass to have elements that we now see as typical of Beethoven, such as sudden changes in tempo and dynamics, sometimes in the space of a single word. They may also have sensed his less than orthodox religious views. Although baptized a Catholic, Beethoven rarely attended church and seemed to seek the divine in the world around him more than in religious services. (Brahms had a similar view on spiritual matters. His German Requiem does set Biblical texts but not those of the Catholic Mass for the Dead. Rather, his requiem presents no doctrine, instead offering hope and solace without judgment or terror.) Compared with more familiar works expressing Haydn’s deep faith, Beethoven’s first mass may even have struck the original audience as shocking.
To modern audiences, Beethoven’s monumental Missa Solemnis (1823) has often overshadowed the more human-scale and traditional Mass in C. Still, as one music scholar has written, the latter “has a directness and an emotional content that the Missa Solemnis sometimes lacks.” In this work the concept of using the Mass text as a libretto for a symphonic concert work was clearly emerging. Beginning the Kyrie with unaccompanied bass voices is already a departure from convention, as is ending the Agnus Dei with a reminiscence of the opening phrase of the Kyrie. Beethoven’s innovative genius is clearly evident in this work, giving the Mass in C a rightful place in today’s choral/orchestral repertoire.
Johannes Brahms began work on Schicksalslied (Song of Destiny) in 1868. This was just months after the premiere of A German Requiem, which he had worked on for over a decade. Brahms was enormously encouraged by the warm reception accorded his Requiem. During the next half-dozen years a stream of wonderful choral works flowed from his pen, including the Alto Rhapsody, Schicksalslied, Nänie, and Gesang der Parzen, among others. Clearly, A German Requiem had unleashed a fount of ideas.
In the summer of 1868, Brahms visited two musician friends, Albert Dietrich and Carl Reinthaler, in Bremen. Dietrich related in his memoirs that one day, as the three of them went on a trip to see the naval station at Wilhelmshaven, Brahms was surprisingly silent all day. That morning he had found, on Dietrich’s bookshelf, Friedrich Hölderlin's epistolary novel Hyperion, which idealizes the culture and humanity of Ancient Greece. Buried in the middle of the 1797 novel is the poem Hyperions Schicksalslied. As described by blogger Timothy Judd, “The poem’s two verses contrast the lives of eternally blissful Immortals enjoying ‘luminous, heavenly breezes’ with the restless existence of human beings, who are subject to the cruel whims of fate.” Brahms was deeply moved by Hölderlin’s poem. Dietrich’s memoir continues, “Later on, after spending a long time walking round and visiting all the points of interest, we were sitting resting by the sea, when we discovered Brahms a long way off sitting by himself on the shore writing. It was the first sketch for the Schicksalslied, which appeared fairly soon afterwards. A lovely excursion which we had arranged to the Urwald was never carried out. He hurried back to Hamburg, in order to give himself up to his work.”
In spite of this impulsive start, it took Brahms about three years to complete Schicksalslied. One of the main difficulties he had was connected to the bleak closing of the poem. After trying out various other solutions, he wrote a purely orchestral postlude, which, after the depiction of the cruelty of human destiny, reintroduced heavenly bliss in a soothing C major. In the program for the Karlsruhe premiere, the words Nachspiel des Orchesters (“Orchestral Postlude") were printed after the text, in order to emphasize the degree to which this ending was to be regarded as an extension of the poem.
Bay Choral Guild’s 2024-25 season is my 25th as Artistic Director. To celebrate this milestone I have decided to program my compositions on each of the season’s three programs. In December we performed some of my earliest choral works. Our June concert will include a communion motet I wrote for the choir at St. Gregory’s 10 years ago. For me, the highlight of this programming trifecta is today’s premiere.
Knowing we would have the chamber orchestra and soloists present for this program, I was thrilled to compose an extended work using the specific instrumentation and singers we would need for the 19th-century works. My goal was to use secular texts and write in a style that was accessible on a first hearing while still expressing my musical point of view.
Here is a little insight into my creative process: I did not know exactly what the piece would become when we announced the season a year ago. I simply chose the word “Beauty” for use in the program title, because I liked the alliteration with Beethoven and Brahms. At the time, I was thinking about the role of artists and the need to bring beauty into the world as a balm for the stresses of modern life. After searching for poetry about beauty, without finding any that truly spoke to me, I thought about where I personally find the most beauty. Much like Beethoven and Brahms, I feel closest to God when I am in nature. The beauty of the natural world is to be celebrated and, of course, cherished, as climate change continues unabated.
As it happens, I attended John Muir Elementary School in Berkeley when I was a child. Scottish-born naturalist John Muir was a prominent figure in my early life, in part because my family’s annual summer vacation was two weeks spent in the High Sierra. Those trips instilled a love for nature, a love well expressed in Muir’s writings, which I hope comes through in the music you’ll hear accompanying his ideas.
Being a life-long member of the Sierra Club, I turned to the club’s website, where I found some two dozen quotes extracted from Muir’s many books. The six excerpts I’ve selected for this piece reflect my own connection to nature, most especially to my love for the Sierra Nevada.
Unlike Ludwig and Johannes, I’m happy to report that I did not experience any struggles in creating this work. It all came together last summer. In part because my summer vacation was planned for October, I decided I would stay home and be a full-time composer during July and August. The work needed to be completed before Labor Day, because once the season begins I find it difficult to find the time and focus for composition. When I sat down at the computer that first day—I use software that allows me to enter all the notes into the full score and hear it played back using simulated instrumental sounds—all I had were the six quotes and a vision that the piece would begin with a single note played by a French horn. But once I entered that horn note, the rest of the piece just seemed to flow. In fact, I completed the 17-minute work in just seven weeks.
It turns out that the opening horn solo represents the stillness of night before sunrise in the mountains. The prologue, which introduces first the strings, followed by the chorus, the soloists and the woodwinds, is a representation of sunrise. It culminates in a loud roll on the timpani which, for me, is that moment when the sun finally appears over the top of the mountain and begins to warm up the deep mountain canyons.
From here the six quotes of John Muir unfold in what are basically different movements. However, the entire work unspools as one long piece with the solo horn note returning between sections to tie it all together. At the very end, just before the last phrase, there is one final horn call, this time fortissimo; a final, jubilant, celebration of the mountains.
The structure of the work is something of a palindrome, although I had not planned it that way from the start. The first three “movements” each have unique musical themes and rhythmic identities: an energetic romp in 4/4, a lilting section in 6/8, then a stately waltz. There follows a textless interlude that is very still and “spacey,” representing my memories of lying in a sleeping bag at night staring up at the vast heavens, hoping to see shooting stars amongst the billions of stars and planets. After the interlude we hear the remaining three quotes. Although they are new and distinct, they also use and develop musical material we’ve heard in the first three movements, but in reverse order. The finale completes the palindrome, recapitulating music from the opening “sunrise” prologue, now in a loud, ecstatic send-off.
Thank you for attending our concert and for supporting Bay Choral Guild. It takes a lot to present this kind of program, not the least of which is your enthusiastic engagement while listening to the music as well as your support through ticket sales and donations. We look forward to continuing this at our next concert, “If Music be the Food of Love,” on June 7 and 8. That program will include shorter works, mostly unaccompanied, exploring the themes of—you guessed it—Music, Food, and Love. See you then!
