This 250th anniversary year of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s birth is a fitting time for the world to pay homage to the master.  His childhood as a musical prodigy and rise to fame are legendary.  So, too, is his descent into poverty, obscurity, and an early death.  Recognizing his son’s gift, father Leopold gave up his own career as a musician in the court of the Archbishop of Salzburg, the city of Mozart’s birth.  He embarked on several tours of the major capitals and cultural centers of Europe, with Wolfgang and sister Nannerl giving musical performances that astounded all who witnessed them.  Mozart was 6 years old at the outset of his performing career, and was already composing. 
     Thus began a life of creating some of the most beautiful music the world would ever experience, a life which would come to an abrupt end just 35 years later.  Mozart’s career was filled with extreme highs and lows of popularity with the public, royal favor with the courts of the nobility, and financial stability.  In spite of it all, music of such unique depth, grace, and unsurpassed beauty issued forth from this imperfect man as to make him seem almost a vessel for the Divine – a conduit of sorts, delivering a message that reaches far beyond the messenger. 

    For many years now, P.D.Q. Bach, aka Peter Schickele (1935- ), has been entertaining music lovers with his “versions” of the classics and many original pieces with hilarious titles and content. Schickele lectures, conducts, plays, and sings these “lost” works of P.D.Q. Bach, which he claims to have rediscovered. He also has authored The Definitive Biography of P.D.Q. Bach (1807-1742)? and has put many of P.D.Q. Bach's works on recordings, which have won four Grammy awards for humor.
    One recording features a series of radio lampoons, targeting, Public Broadcasting, talk shows, sports shows, and everything in between. The highlight was something titled “New Horizons in Music Appreciation.” In it, the orchestra performs the first movement of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, while two sports announcers give a play-by-play description of the music, as if it were action in a football game. You'll love it.

    The Indiana Suite is composer Carl Linden’s celebration of his beloved Indiana. This suite is a four movement composition for string orchestra which was inspired by the state where the composer was born and reared. The first movement, Nature, came to the composer’s mind while hiking and exploring the Indiana Dunes. The second movement, Industry, represents Northwest Indiana’s steel mills and refineries. This highly contrapuntal machine-like music speaks of the many cogs of industry, each affecting the other. The third movement, Government, is powerful, slow, pretentious, and alludes to several songs that represent Indiana. The SOS rhythm at the beginning warns listeners to be forever vigilant of our elected officials. The last movement, Transportation, is a three part canon representing the intertwining traffic so necessary for the state’s growth and commerce. Listen for several American folk songs that are integrated into the fabric of this work.
   Carl F. Linden (b. 1949-
   Carl was born in Hammond and has live most of his adult life in Northwest Indiana. An honored violin soloist both classical and jazz, he has earned national and international recognition performing for presidents, royalty, and a pope. Currently he and his violinist wife, Mary Jane Porter, live and teach in Munster. Carl leads the acclaimed Chicago String Artists.

    In certain ways, the year 1878 was one of the worst in the life of Peter I. Tchaikovsky (1840-1893), and in other ways, it was one of the best. The composer spent most of the year in Western Europe (notably Italy and Switzerland) recovering from a shattered marriage and a near breakdown. During January, he finished the depressive Fourth
Symphony and soon afterward his operatic masterpiece, Eugene Onegin. Tchaikovsky spent March and April in the Swiss resort town of Clarens, and it was there, in a sudden burst of inspiration, that he wrote one of the most brilliant and cheerful of all his works, the Violin Concerto. For a technical advisor, Tchaikovsky had Iosef Kotek, the young Russian violinist. Within eleven days, the composer had completed sketches for
the concerto.

    Today, it seems incredible that people did not immediately take Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto to their hearts. When violinist Adolf Brodsky played the premiere in Vienna, reviews in the press were scathing. Tchaikovsky was permanently wounded by the
diatribe of Vienna's most influential critic, Eduard Hanslick, who wrote, “Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto brings to us for the first time the horrid idea that there may be music that stinks in the ear.”

    The final movement is recognizably Russian. The athletic opening theme of this threetheme form is a Trepak, a stamping Cossack dance. Continuing the national flavor, the second theme suggests a peasant or gypsy melody played to the droning accompaniment of bagpipes or a hurdy-gurdy. The third theme is more sentimental but is based on
rhythms taken from the second theme. Early on, the violin has a short cadenza, and the rest of the movement exacts from the soloist both violinistic acrobatics and panache in performing style.

    The history of the composition of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony is among the longest and most interesting of any of his compositions. As early as 1793, Ludwig van Beethoven (1770- 1827) conceived the idea of setting Schiller's Ode to Joy but did nothing about it. Nearly 20 years later, he made a note among sketches for an “overture” that read, “disjointed fragments from Schiller's Freude connected into a whole.” But as yet, there were no musical connections. The Scherzo's main theme became the first, appearing in a notebook of 1815, although at the time Beethoven was sketching the Cello Sonata, Op. 102. In 1817, Beethoven became serious about composing a new symphony, and he sketched the beginning of the Ninth's first movement. However, the composer did until 1822, when he again addressed the first movement and set down plans for the second and fourth movements, including the beginning of the famous Ode to Joy hymn theme. The following year the symphony crystallized completely. Beethoven finished the sketch by the end of 1823 and completed its orchestration the following February. It had taken the composer more than six years to complete his final symphony, and the total gestation period had exceeded 30 years!

    The story of the Ninth Symphony's premiere is a famous one. Because of his deafness, it was impossible for Beethoven to conduct. Instead, Michael Umlauf assumed those honors at the first performance, which took place on May 7, 1824. Beethoven had supervised rehearsals, and during the performance, he was on stage, following it with a score in his own way. Some choral singers omitted the grueling high notes, and the large orchestra could not have performed adequately. Nonetheless, the audience response was resounding. Beethoven, engrossed in his score, did not notice that the performance had ended. A soloist had to nudge and turn him so that he could see the audience applauding and waiving handkerchiefs.

    The opening of the first movement has often been identified with the Biblical Creation. In this prologue, the quivering, sustained open fifth might suggest void and chaos. The violin figures are furtive at first. Then they gradually take form until the unison orchestral tutti unequivocally assembles the motives and asserts them as the first theme. We do no know whether Beethoven meant to paint the Creation, but this is certainly his most arresting instrumental opening. The secondary themes that follow are either lyrical or rhythmic in nature. “Chaos” returns once more at the beginning of the development section, which then thoroughly works out the first theme. If Beethoven implied the world's beginning at the outset of the movement, the final measures may intimate its end. Annotator Edward Downes suggests that the coda “with its ominous ostinato in the
depths of the orchestra, seems an apocalyptic vision.”

    The fourfold “hammer strokes” at the opening of the Scherzo become the motto headmotive for the fugal exposition that follows. Although the main body of the melody is a running, scalar pattern, the motto keeps cropping up in accompaniments and at the beginning of new waves of activity. In the middle of the movement, the motto runs headlong into the Presto Trio section. Here, refreshing changes of meter, key, and theme are coupled with transparent textures. Following a reprise of the main Scherzo, the coda reminds us of the Trio one last time.

    “In the slow movement, Beethoven explores melody to its inmost depths,” writes Donald Tovey about the Adagio. As often happens with Beethoven, that exploration takes the form of a set of variations. This movement's form is that of double variations, and for it, Beethoven composed a pair of the most exquisite themes, which he alternately varies, decorates, and caresses. With its deeply reflective first theme and yearning second, this is one of the most expressive slow movements in all Beethoven's music.

    In the finale, Beethoven revolutionized the symphony by transcending its previous boundaries. Symphonies were supposed to be instrumental; operas, cantatas, and oratorios were supposed to be vocal. By combining the instrumental and vocal media, Beethoven redefined what a symphony could be: a statement of deep feeling or philosophy expressed both verbally and musically. Breaking down the distinction between instrumental and vocal forms of music was essentially a Romantic thing to do, and the finale to the Ninth Symphony is one of Western music's main bridges between Classicism and Romanticism.

    The movement fuses vocal and instrumental music in several ways. The first is by introducing the operatic element of recitative. However, instead of the obvious gesture with a vocal soloist, Beethoven makes his opening section a purely instrumental one. Following the crashing introductory passage, low strings take the role of soloist for a recitative that introduces a review of the main themes of the previous movements. These being swept aside, the way is cleared for a fourfold orchestral exposure of the famous Ode to Joy theme, dissolving at the end into a codetta. We are far from finished with the reference to opera, however. For now comes a restatement of the movement's opening, this time employing the bass soloist, who asks that instead of these sounds, we raise our voices with more joyful tones.

    Beethoven is now ready to start the movement proper, which is a mixture of variations, developments, fugues, and cantata/oratorio procedures. Led by the bass soloist, a series of vocal- orchestral variations on the hymn theme follows, employing the chorus and soloists, individually and in diverse combinations. Each variation sets to music a different stanza of Schiller's Ode. Of special interest is the last variation, a heroic march for tenor and chorus in which Beethoven, for the first time in a symphony, brings out the “Turkish” instruments, triangle, cymbals, and bass drum.

    The march dissolves into the first of two fugues, this one for orchestra punctuated by a grand choral reprise of the hymn theme. A meditative choral section, Andante and then Adagio, prepares the way for the second fugue, a massive double fugue for chorus (on two different stanzas of the Ode) supported by orchestral figuration. The music's momentum breaks off suddenly for what we might describe as a choral recitative, bringing to a close the central section of the movement.

    The concluding section has the feeling of a summing up. Beginning with the soloists and spreading to the chorus, excitement builds twice until it can no longer be contained. For each of those moments, Beethoven regroups at a slower tempo. The third build-up bursts into the long Prestissimo coda, emphasizing Beethoven's personal “kiss for all the world.” Again, the composer employs “Turkish” percussion, this time to add power to the coda's overwhelming final pages. Among the finest tributes to the significance of this choral finale are the words of Edward Downes: “Altogether, the finale is a structure of emotional depth and intensity, and musical splendor past description. The Symphony ranks as one of the greatest achievements of the human spirit.”