On Nov. 6, at Trinity Church in Solebury, the Concordia Chamber Players will present a concert of music that matters—music by composers deemed “Degenerates” by Hitler because of their religion or skin color.
Felix Mendelssohn and Alexander Zemlinsky’s music was silenced due to their Jewish heritage.
Florence Price would have experienced the same treatment. She was the first African-American woman composer to have a symphony performed by a major U.S. orchestra. The Chicago Symphony Orchestra premiered her “Symphony No. 1” in 1933, ironically the same year in which Hitler became chancellor of the Nazi Party.
To offer a glimpse into these composers’ works, the three musicians who will join cellist/artistic director Michelle Djokic in the 3 p.m. concert: David Samuel, violist of the Alexander String Quartet; violinist Siwoo Kim, chamber musician and co-artistic director of the VIVO Chamber Music Festival; and violinist Gabriela Diaz, co-artistic director of Winsor Music and a member of multiple contemporary music chamber groups, provided input.
Mendelssohn composed his “String Quartet No. 1 in E flat Major” in 1829, when he was only 20. “The overall sound world that Mendelssohn obviously was in at this time in his life was heavily influenced by Beethoven, who was the absolute music giant at the time when he was growing up,” points out Samuel.
“There are clearly some connections with Beethoven, specifically the ‘Harp’ quartet, also in E flat major.” Like Beethoven, Mendelssohn opens with an Adagio (slow) tempo then transitions to an Allegro (fast) tempo, and ends with the first violin’s arpeggiated chords (notes sounded sequentially).
The third movement “is absolutely gorgeous. A lot of his slow writing in this period had the character of nobility…it’s very heartfelt too.” It may also be compared to the third movement of Beethoven’s Op. 132, his “Holy Song of Thanksgiving.” Samuel observes, “You see this throughout music history, where one special mind acknowledges that same special…[attribute] in a previous generation.”
Like Mendelssohn, Zemlinsky was influenced by another great composer—Johannes Brahms, who actively supported his work. Brahms recommended Zemlinsky’s music to his publisher, Simrock, starting with the Clarinet Trio of 1896, the same year in which Zemlinsky also wrote his String Quartet No. 1.
Kim, who frequently performs Brahms’ concertos and chamber music, says, “I certainly hear that [influence] in the music and see it in the score. It’s the [Second] Viennese School, turn of the century, a bridge between Brahms and Schoenberg.” Schoenberg was Zemlinsky’s brother-in-law.
“You can tell it’s cerebral, it’s not gushing with emotion. It’s pure music…My first instinct says that the way he writes the parts feels very much like four-part writing for a piano or organ,” says Kim. “It’s not four individual voices, he really treats us like a unit, much more than other quartets I’ve played. So the result becomes very sonorous with a unique texture.”
Kim also notes that in the second movement, the scherzo, a gypsy dance trio, hearkens back to Zemlinsky’s Hungarian roots. His grandfather emigrated from Hungary and married an Austrian woman.
In her String Quartet No. 2, Florence Price’s influence isn’t a particular composer, but rather the music of her ancestry—African slaves of the American South. This is apparent in the second movement, “which feels like it has some connection to the spiritual style,” comments Diaz, who has performed this work many times with Castles of Our Skins, an ensemble devoted to promoting the music of composers of color.
“The first violin gets a lot of soulful, melodic lines. Price was such a great composer of songs, always creating these beautiful, long, lyrical lines that really feel like they could be a song with words.” As in the first movement, the second violin accompaniment is “an undulating pattern that gives a feeling of time suspended.”
The third movement’s a juba dance, or hambone—an African-American dance that involves stomping as well as slapping and patting the arms, legs, chest, and cheeks. “It’s such a departure from the two prior movements…a fun, delightful little romp.”
To Diaz, the last movement “feels like a Mendelssohn last movement, with virtuosic writing for everybody, a fiery dance where everyone’s going full force, full steam-ahead.”
On Nov. 5, there will be a free, open rehearsal at New Hope Arts. Its executive director, Carol Cruickshanks, will speak about the exhibition of paintings by artists labeled as Degenerates by Hitler and his Minister of Reich Culture, Joseph Goebbels. Mounted in 1937 in Munich, the exhibition toured throughout Germany and Austria to defame the work of such great German modernists as Picasso, Mondrian, Chagall and Kandinsky.
As propaganda, it was “a telling sign of the totalitarian culture to follow,” says Cruickshanks. “The story of Degenerate Art is a cautionary tale.”
To purchase tickets, visit concordiaplayers.org.
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