{ program notes
Absolute Jest was written for the San Francisco Symphony ’ s 100 th anniversary and premiered by that orchestra under its music director Michael Tilson Thomas on March 15 , 2012 . It was directly inspired by Adams ’ hearing the San Franciscans perform Stravinsky ’ s neo-Classical Pulcinella . “ I heard how one composer , Stravinsky , could take the material and vitality of another composer , the Italian Baroque composer Pergolesi , and weave it into his own style and language ,” he recalled . “ And I have long been a huge musical fan of the late Beethoven string quartets . Most of those quartets people know as heavy music full of gravitas , but there are these scherzo [ movements ] that are as light and as powerful and energetic as the slow movements are deep and lyrical . So I took fragments of these scherzos and wove them together into what I think is the world ’ s longest scherzo — a 25-minute high-energy scherzo .”
Adams at first thought he ’ d make this just an orchestral piece , “ but the Beethoven music is so fast and so virtuosic and it lives on this speed-of-light , laserpoint precision of playing so that the mass of the orchestra can ’ t possibly travel at that hyperspace rate . So I got the idea of incorporating the string quartet ,” specifically the renowned Canadian-American St . Lawrence String Quartet .
“ The string quartet plays a lot of the Beethoven [ quotations ],” Adams explains , “ but it ’ s Beethoven that ’ s been passed through a hall of mirrors , a kind of Einsteinian universe where the time and structure and harmonies get warped . I don ’ t mean that it ’ s been warped in a grotesque way ; in no way is it a satire or deconstruction . The music is still highly identifiable … though the orchestra sounds more like John Adams .”
At its first performance , Absolute Jest began with music based on the scherzo of Beethoven ’ s famous opus 131 C-sharp minor Quartet . But Adams soon replaced it with vivacious music in the rollicking 6 / 8 rhythmic patterns of the Ninth Symphony ’ s scherzo . About a third of the way through , the string quartet introduces the “ high-spirited triple-time scherzo to the F-Major opus 135 [ Quartet ],
Beethoven ’ s final work in that medium . … It becomes the dominant motivic material for the remainder of the piece , interrupted only by a brief slow section that interweaves fragments of the Grosse Fuge with the opening fugue theme of the C-sharp-minor Quartet .”
Though the title Absolute Jest might suggest the piece is intended as a joke , Adams stresses that is not the case . “ The ‘ jest ’ … should be understood in terms of its Latin meaning : ‘ gesta ’ equals ‘ doings , deeds , exploits .’ I like to think of ‘ jest ’ as indicating an exercise of one ’ s wit by means of imagination and invention . … The act of composing the work … was the most extended experience in pure ‘ invention ’ that I ’ ve ever undertaken . Its creation for me was a thrilling lesson in counterpoint , thematic transformation , and formal design .”
Instrumentation : Two flutes , piccolo , two oboes , English horn , two clarinets , bass clarinet , two bassoons , contrabassoon , four horns , two trumpets , two trombones , timpani , percussion , harp , piano , celesta and strings .
Since his teenage years , Beethoven had loved this verse , written in 1785 by his favorite poet , and planned to set it to music .
Symphony No . 9 in D minor
Ludwig van Beethoven
Born in Bonn , Germany , December 16 , 1770 ; died in Vienna , Austria , March 26 , 1827
The Ninth Symphony comes from the visionary last years of Beethoven ’ s life during which he also created the Missa solemnis and his celebrated late string quartets . He had not written a symphony since the Eighth in 1812 . The years that followed had been a period of emotional struggle and artistic stasis . Only when Beethoven resolved the battle for custody of his nephew Karl in 1820 did his creative powers flow freely again . Now virtually stone deaf , he had , in biographer Maynard Solomon ’ s words , “ reached a stage where he had become wholly possessed by his art .”
Nevertheless , before devoting himself fully to the creation of this most ambitious of all his works , he had been sketching ideas for a grand symphony in the dramatic key of D minor for at least a decade . Beethoven always believed music had a higher purpose than merely the making of beautiful sounds , that it could express and inspire human aspirations toward a more exalted life , in closer harmony with neighbors and strangers alike , and ultimately with God . In the Ninth , he drove home this message by crowning his instrumental symphony with an unprecedented choral finale : a setting of Friedrich Schiller ’ s poem “ Ode to Joy ,” in which joy is defined as a state in which “ all men are made brothers .” Since his teenage years , Beethoven had loved this verse , written in 1785 by his favorite poet , and planned to set it to music . He was not the first , for by the 1820s this poem in the German traditional style of the “ geselliges Lied ”— a social song to be sung by groups of friends usually with a glass in hand — had already been set more than 40 times , including by the young Franz Schubert . When Beethoven made the unprecedented decision to risk a vocal movement for the Ninth ’ s finale , he edited this poem to make it express a higher joy for mankind than could be found in any tavern .
Premiered at Vienna ’ s Kärtnertor Theater on May 7 , 1824 , the first performance reportedly moved its audience to tears as well as cheers . Beethoven was on the podium , but the real conductor was Michael Umlauf ; the musicians had been instructed to follow only his beat and ignore the deaf Beethoven ’ s . The performance would probably have sounded terrible to us today : orchestra and singers had had only two rehearsals together of a work that many found beyond their capabilities . And yet the magic of the Ninth somehow won out . At the end of the Symphony , the alto soloist , Caroline Unger , had to turn Beethoven around to see the audience ’ s tumult ; unable to hear them , he had remained hunched over his score .
September – November 2016 | Overture 51