Working centuries apart - yet inextricably linked in the history of German music

Composer Dates: 1685-1750 
Composition Date: 1729-1731 
Most Recent Oregon Symphony Performance: Robert King led the Oregon Symphony on December 6 & 7, 2003, at Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall 
Instrumentation: two oboes, three trumpets, timpani, continuo (organ and harpsichord), and strings 
Estimated Duration: 20 minutes 

Germans have long taken great pride in their country's musical traditions. But in the 18th century, one of the most popular styles of music in Germany originated just over the western border: French dance suites. 

From the allemande and menuet to the gavotte, sarabande, and gigue, French dance forms became pillars of social life in Baroque Germany, both on and off the dance floor. Composers across the country wrote reams of these multi-movement suites (known at the time as ouvertures), with Georg Friedrich Telemann penning at least 135 and Johann Friedrich Fasch nearly 100.  

Johann Sebastian Bach, however, only wrote a handful, given that his full-time gig for nearly three decades was directing liturgical music at Lutheran churches across Leipzig, which included the crown jewel of the city's Lutheran faith, St. Thomas Church (Thomaskirche) — hardly the ideal venue for premiering dashing new dances. Instead, the four orchestral suites we know today were the products of another gig Bach had in the 1730s.  

As director of the Leipzig Collegium Musicum, the house band at the popular Zimmerman's Coffee House, Bach was responsible for producing the ensemble's weekly Friday-night concerts. The performing level of these musicians was high, which offered Bach regular opportunities to compose new secular works, from the orchestral dance suites to a slew of keyboard concertos. 

In the Third Suite, Bach assembles an orchestra of colorful contrasts — trumpets and drums in one corner, double reeds in another, as well as a full string section and harpsichord and organ — for a collection of five dances that run the emotional gamut from melancholy longing to boundless joy. The opening movement follows the style of the French overture, kicking off with fanfares of blazing brass followed by music of complex counterpoint in which violins and oboes navigate quicksilver runs up and down their instruments.  

From the pomp and circumstance of the Overture, Bach then breaks the mold in the second movement Air by replacing the dance music audiences expected with a type of song. Here we're drawn into an enchanting sea of sound as Bach weaves elegantly ornamented lines that soar in the violins, like an operatic aria, over a gently throbbing pulse in the bass. (This movement became the work's hit single in the late 19th century when German violinist August Wilhelm arranged it as Air on the G String.) 

After the placid calm of the Air, Bach takes us back to the party with a rousing trio of dances: a stately pair of Gavottes, a Bourrée of fiery energy, and a festive Gigue that brings the Third Suite to a close with the clarion call of trumpets pealing like church bells on a Sunday morning.  

© Michael Cirigliano II

Composer Dates: 1809-1847 
Composition Date: 1840 
Most Recent Oregon Symphony Performance: First Oregon Symphony Performance 
Instrumentation: two soprano and one tenor vocal soloists, two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, timpani, organ, chorus, and strings 
Estimated Duration: 70 minutes 

By 1840, Felix Mendelssohn had become a central fixture of musical life in Leipzig. After five seasons as conductor of the city's Gewandhaus Orchestra, he had transformed the ensemble into a symphonic powerhouse — one of the finest in Germany, if not all of Europe. He was regularly engaged at the Leipzig Opera and was hard at work realizing the city's first music conservatory, which opened its doors in 1843. 

So when Leipzig officials began planning a three-day festival to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Johannes Gutenberg's invention of the movable type printing press, they turned to Mendelssohn to compose new music for the festival and lead Leipzig's finest instrumentalists and singers in the premiere performances. 

The largest of the compositions Mendelssohn wrote for the occasion was his Lobgesang (Hymn of Praise) — an 11-movement work for orchestra, choir, and three vocal soloists that set to music Old Testament passages from the Gutenberg Bible in Martin Luther's landmark German translation.  

The form of the Lobgesang was completely original for its day. Part symphony, part choral cantata, it stretched the boundaries of symphonic music even further than Ludwig van Beethoven had done in his Ninth Symphony. While Beethoven had waited until the final movement of his symphony to unleash his vocal forces for a setting of Friedrich Schiller's poetic "Ode to Joy," Mendelssohn split his hybrid work down the middle. The first three movements are scored for orchestra alone, while the following eight movements — half of the work's duration — add the chorus and soloists to deliver Luther's German text. 

Despite all the similarities with Beethoven's final symphony, Mendelssohn drew more inspiration for his Lobgesang from Johann Sebastian Bach's vast body of church music — which fit the occasion perfectly, as the work's premiere would take place in Leipzig's St. Thomas Church (Thomaskirche), where Bach served as music director for the final 27 years of his life. It was there that an audience of 2,000 assembled to hear nearly 500 musicians fill the halls of the 12th-century church with Mendelssohn's hymn of praise. 

A noble fanfare in the trombones opens the first movement — an important theme that returns at key moments throughout the work — setting the scene with music of heartfelt joy and an irrepressible energy that links directly to the second movement. Here, graceful dances dominate the texture with featherlight orchestral textures that call to mind the fairy-tale world of Mendelssohn's music for A Midsummer Night's Dream. The slow movement, appropriately titled Andante religioso, offers music of comfort and quiet rapture in the Lobgesang's final passages for orchestra alone. 

The trombone fanfare that opened the work returns to launch the cantata, serving as a call to prayer for the full choir, whose voices intone a line from Psalm 150: "Everything that has breath, praise the Lord." Following this awe-inspiring moment in which all of the musical forces are finally united, the chorus and soloists progress through Mendelssohn's tapestry of biblical texts in a spiritual journey that moves from deep darkness to radiant light, offering moments of sublime beauty that one of Mendelssohn's contemporaries, composer Robert Schumann, compared to "a glimpse into the heaven of Raphael's madonnas." 

The Lobgesang premiere proved so successful that Mendelssohn's publisher, the Leipzig-based Breitkopf & Härtel, quickly added the work to its sales catalog. At the top of the score was a quotation from Martin Luther that not only sets the scene for the music of spirituality and devotion to follow, but also speaks to the relationship between music and faith that inspired Mendelssohn's work: "I wished to see all the arts, especially music, serving Him who gave and created them." 

© Michael Cirigliano II