BRATTLEBORO — The Windham Orchestra will present “Dance of the Titans” which features Wallingford Riegger's Dance Rhythms (1954), and Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 1 in D, “Titan” (1887-88).
Riegger (1885-1961) was an American composer most well known for orchestral and modern dance music, as well as film scores.
He was born in Albany, Ga., but lived much of his life in New York City and spent much of his early career between the United States and Germany. During the 1930s, he spent several summers as a composer in residence at Bennington College, where Dance Rhythms was written.
Dance Rhythms is in D major, like the massive Mahler symphony to follow in the program. However, unlike Mahler's piece, this is a work of patterned ease and charm, unassuming even.
Gently asymmetrical and slowly revealing the importance of the harp, not a misstep is made in the harmony and cool orchestral balance.
The works of Austrian composer Gustav Mahler (1860-1911) bridged the 19th century Austro-German tradition and the modernism of the early 20th century.
Mahler was recognized as one of the leading conductors of his generation; however, his music was often neglected during his lifetime.
It was not until after 1945 that his music was rediscovered by a new generation and Mahler became one of the most frequently performed and recorded of all composers, a position he has sustained into the 21st century.
Mahler's Symphony No. 1 in D, in its final form, has four movements. He uses the melody and naive affect of “Songs of a Wayfarer” as the principal subject of the first movement of this symphony: “I tripped across the meadow this morning, dew still hung on the grass, the merry finch spoke to me: Hey! isn't it a lovely morning? A beautiful world!”
This world of joy in nature is summoned: simple, generous, benign. As the song cycle unfolds, we learn of love, passion, and loss - as we shall also in the symphony - but not immediately.
From his first to final symphony, the composer offers us pastoral scenes like this one which the listener can experience at different levels.
Frequently an overlay of complacency, nostalgia, condescension, irony, or sneering parody, the scene shifts - either subtly or intrusively - between the foreground and background as we take the “simple” rustic music in, rendering it no longer simple.
We shall meet these complexities of meaning and interpretation later in the symphony, not so much in this opening movement where a complete, beautiful, and joyful world is presented.
* * *
This melody from the “Wayfarer” songs is preceded by what seems like an act of creation from the void. In an extraordinary extended introduction, an orchestral 'A' sounds through seven octaves. Mahler says “wie ein Naturlaut” - like a sound from nature.
Against this cold, whistling backdrop, fragments emerge, evaporate, and strain for stability and coherence. A sequence of descending fourths bit by bit coalesces, and from this in turn is drawn a cuckoo call: nature now has form and reality, and in the body of the movement that is to come, man can experience that reality, much as Mahler's “wayfarer.”
The second movement is a peasant dance, earthy and joyful, with a contrasting Trio that is a ländler, the slower predecessor of the waltz. We can scan the music for irony, and maybe there is some, but it is well-hidden.
Questions around irony and meaning crowd in when we hear at the opening of the third movement a funereal tread, then a solo double bass (?) plays Frère Jacques (!) in a minor key (?!?). Parody and jarring superimpositions of style abound from here on in, the most tender and intimate of muted, flutey purrings alongside mocking shrieks and guffaws.
The final movement takes us on a saga beginning in agonized passion to triumph over circumstance and self. We revisit the beginning of the symphony and the sounds from nature that now serve as a dispassionate backdrop to the reeling drama.
The subtitle “Titan” was discarded by Mahler, along with a fifth movement. The title does not refer to any of the authorized versions that are currently played. It seems most appropriate for the final movement.