This montage is no longer available on Pod-O-Matic. It can be heard or downloaded from the Internet Archive at the following address / Ce montage n'est plus disponible en baladodiffusion sur Pod-O-Matic. Vous pouvez le retrouver ici:
http://archive.org/details/DieAlpenUndDerSchweiz
http://archive.org/details/DieAlpenUndDerSchweiz
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English Commentary – le commentaire français suit.
We embark into the penultimate stage of our musical trek through Western Europe, starting off from Linz (where we part ways with Mozart) and will go through Austria, the Alps, Switzerland and to the foot of the Matterhorn.
Here is your (cheesy) musical itinerary.
Follow the Von Trapps
The Trapp Family Singers, whose life was fictionalized in the musical The Sound of Music, are indeed real people. In 1935, Georg Ludwig von Trapp lost his money as the result of a bank failure. To survive, the Trapps sent away most of their servants, moved into the top floor of their home, and rented the empty rooms to students. This is also when the family started singing.
Soprano Lotte Lehmann heard the family sing, and suggested they perform at concerts. After performing at a festival in 1935, they became a popular touring act. Shortly before the German annexation of Austria in 1938, the family traveled to Italy and then to the United States for a concert tour. During that time, their home was confiscated by the Nazis.
For artistic and dramatic effect, details of the history of the von Trapp family were altered for the musical. For example, the real Maria von Trapp was sent to be a tutor to one of the children, not a governess to all of them. The Captain's oldest child was a boy, not a girl, and the names of the children were changed, at least partly, to avoid confusion.
The von Trapps spent some years in Austria after Maria and the Captain married – they did not leave there right away. They did not flee there; they merely boarded the train to Italy, not Switzerland. However, the scene in which he summons the children with a boatswain's whistle to introduce them is taken from her 1949 book The Story of the Trapp Family Singers.
The Rodgers and Hammerstein musical (1959) has been lauded and underwent countless revivals on stages around the world, as well as an unforgettable film adaptation (1965). Robert Russell Bennett, who collaborated many times with Richard Rodgers – most notably in the television project Victory at Sea - put together a medley of highlights from the musical – see which songs you recognize!
Eleven Hours in the Mountains
Richard Strauss’ Eine Alpensinfonie (An Alpine Symphony) is a 1915 tone poem - though labelled as a symphony by the composer.
This piece forgoes the conventions of the traditional multi-movement symphony and consists of twenty-two continuous sections of music, depicting the experiences of eleven hours (from twilight just before dawn to the following nightfall) spent climbing an Alpine mountain.
Here are the sections of the work, which describe each phase of the Alpine journey in chronological order, as included in Strauss’ score:
- Nacht (Night)
- Sonnenaufgang (Sunrise)
- Der Anstieg (The Ascent)
- Eintritt in den Wald (Entry into the Wood)
- Wanderung neben dem Bache (Wandering by the Brook)
- Am Wasserfall (At the Waterfall)
- Erscheinung (Apparition)
- Auf blumigen Wiesen (On Flowering Meadows)
- Auf der Alm (On the Alpine Pasture)
- Durch Dickicht und Gestrüpp auf Irrwegen (Wrong Path Through the Thicket and Undergrowth)
- Auf dem Gletscher (On the Glacier)
- Gefahrvolle Augenblicke (Dangerous Moments)
- Auf dem Gipfel (On the Summit)
- Vision (Vision)
- Nebel steigen auf (Mists Rise)
- Die Sonne verdüstert sich allmählich (The Sun Gradually Becomes Obscured)
- Elegie (Elegy)
- Stille vor dem Sturm (Calm Before the Storm)
- Gewitter und Sturm, Abstieg (Thunder and Tempest, Descent)
- Sonnenuntergang (Sunset)
- Ausklang (Waning Tones/Dying Away of Sound)
- Nacht (Night)
A Straight Shooter
Shooting an apple off one's child's head, also known as apple-shot (from German Apfelschuss) is a feat of marksmanship with a bow or crossbow that occurs as a motif in a number of legends in Germanic folklore (and has been connected with non-European folklore).
The best known version of the story is in the legend of William Tell, told first in the 15th-century White Book of Sarnen, and later the basis for Friedrich Schiller's 1804 play. Tell is arrested for failing to bow in respect to the hat that the newly appointed Austrian Vogt, Albrecht Gessler, has placed on a pole, and Gessler commands him to shoot an apple off his son's head with a single bolt from his crossbow. After splitting the apple with the single shot (supposedly on November 18, 1307),
Gioachino Rossini used Schiller's play as the basis for his 1829 opera Guillaume Tell. The William Tell Overture is one of his best-known and most frequently imitated pieces of music; in the 20th Century, the "coda" of the Overture became the theme for the radio, television, and motion picture incarnations of The Lone Ranger, a fictional Western hero.
Liszt “bums” around Switzerland
La chapelle de Guillaume Tell (William Tell's Chapel) is the first of nine pieces for solo piano that forms the first book of his Années de pèlerinage (Years of Pilgrimage). Titled Première année: Suisse (First Year: Switzerland), most of the pieces were composed between 1835 and 1836.
Our montage features a few selections, played by Italian pianist Sergio Fiorentino. On our YouTube channel, we prepared a complete performance of the suite, performed by Lazar Berman, and presented below in our French comentary.
As we approach the Matterhorn, we pause until next week’s final installment of this series.
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Commentaire français
Pour l’avant-dernier volet de notre série, nous quittons Linz (et Mozart) et traversons le reste de l’Autriche, les Alpes, la Suisse pour s’arrêter au pied du Cervin, la montagne la plus connue de Suisse aux abords de l’Italie.
Voici votre itinéraire musical.
Suivez les Von Trapp
La famille Von Trapp, qui formaient une chorale itinérante en Autriche, et plus tard en Amérique du Nord, ont vu leurs péripéties être relatées dans un livre de leur matriarche, Maria Von Trapp, et plus tard dans la comédie musicale des américains Rodgers et Hammerstein The Sound of Music (V.F., La mélodie du bonheur).
Le livret de la comédie musicale se permet une certaine latitude artistique, changeant le nom des enfants, et créant un exode de leur pays natal qui n’est pas tout à fait conforme à la réalité. Toutefois, la musique de Richard Rodgers, orchestrée par son collaborateur de longue date Robert Russell Bennett, nous propose des moments qui ont fait légende à Broadway et sur le Grand Écran. De cette musique, Bennett a tiré un pot-pourri des grands moments de l’œuvre. À vous de reconnaître vos airs favoris!
Onze heures en montagne
Eine Alpensinfonie (une symphonie alpestre) est un poème symphonique composé en 1915 par Richard Strauss. Nonobstant son appellation de symphonie – car la structure de la pièce ne suit pas du tout le modèle des quatre mouvements traditionnels – Strauss suggère une séquence de vingt-deux sections, qui relatent l’escalade d’un sommet des Alpes, depuis l’aurore jusqu’au coucher du soleil.
Voici la séquence de ces sections, tels que proposés par Strauss dans la partition :
Un franc-tireur
Tells Apfelschuss, (trad. Lit. Tell tire une pomme) est une illustration du livre Cosmographia de Sebastian Münster (1488 – 1552) datant de 1544. Ce livre, une des premières «descriptions du monde» de langue allemande, discute de la légende de Guillaume Tell, qui aurait été obligé de tirer une pomme (déposée sur la tête de son fils) avec son arbalète.
Cette légende se retrouve également dans la pièce Wilhelm Tell de Friedrich Schiller. Gioacchino Rossini basa son opéra Guillaume Tell sur cette pièce de théâtre. L’ouverture de cet opéra est l’une des pièces incontournables du répertoire musical, utilisée à toutes les sauces à la télé, au cinéma et ailleurs. L’ouverture est jouée dans notre montage d’aujourd’hui par Charles Duitoit et l’orchestre symphonique de Montréal.
Liszt se promène en Suisse
La chapelle de Guillaume Tell est la première de neuf pièces qui forment la suite pour piano seul Années de pèlerinage, Première année: Suisse dont la plupart des composantes furent composées entre 1835 et 1836.
Notre montage d’aujourd’hui présente quelques sélections jouées par Sergio Fiorentino. Nous proposons une prestation complète par Lazar Berman sur notre chaîne YouTube, et incluse ici pour votre plaisir:
À l’approche du Cervin, nous faisons une halte jusqu’à vendredi prochain, et notre dernière étape en Italie.
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