Symphony - The Fantasticks
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| # | Track | Artist/Composer | Duration |
|---|---|---|---|
| Symphony No. 1 | |||
| 1. | Maestoso | Allegro | 13:29 |
| 2. | Scherzo | 5:50 | |
| 3. | Andante sostenuto | 8:40 | |
| 4. | Rondo | Finale | 7:25 |
| The Fantasticks | |||
| 5. | Song cycle | 6:18 | |
| 6. | Song cycle | 3:48 | |
| 7. | Song cycle | 2:55 | |
| 8. | Song cycle | 5:29 | |
| 9. | Song cycle | 7:10 | |
| 61:04 |
With Herrmann's Hollywood success came a new peak in prestige at CBS and a strengthening of his relationship with the New York Philharmonic. In late 1940, the network and symphony had jointly commissioned a major concert work from the composer for the following season. The result was Herrmann's only symphony, completed on March 29, 1941.
After the innovations of Kane and All That Money Can Buy and the orchestral originality of Moby Dick, Herrmann's Symphony seems in some ways a step back, a retreat to concert Neo-Romanticism. The four-movement work, dedicated to Lucille [Herrmann's then wife], would be Herrmann's last piece of nonprogrammatic music: 'For the first time I was not confined to the outline of a story. It was not necessary to depict waves, portray the anguish of a lost soul, or look for a love theme.... Consequently, working on the Symphony I had a Roman holiday.'
Although Herrmann apparently enjoyed the process of its composition ('It's just like writing cues,' Herrmann told Lyn Murray), the Symphony illustrates Herrmann's uneasiness working in a rigidly formal structure. It also suffers from the fragmentation that characterizes most of Herrmann's output, a quality ideal for radio and film but not for the concert hall. Yet the Symphony was an impressive achievement for the thirty-year-old Herrmann: a mature, brilliantly orchestrated work whose power increases on subsequent listenings. Its traditional idiom makes it the most accessible of Herrmann's concert works and the most likely candidate for rediscovery (especially in its 1973 revised form).
Like Moby Dick, it is almost unremittingly oppressive in tone-'a Sibelian symphony,' observed author-composer Christopher Palmer, 'all bleak winds and bitter Northern skies with, as Sibelius would have said, nothing of the circus about it.' 'While such stylistic antecedents are evident (the first and third movements, for example, contain a strongly Sibelian 'fate' motive for brass and several lyrical string and woodwind passages), Herrmann's personality is equally apparent, especially in the force of the brass writing, the ominous bass rhythms and textures, and the dark brilliance of the second-movement 'Hunt Scherzo,' which, in Palmer's words, evokes 'images of the accursed Huntsman and his pack of wild dogs, the 'wild hunt' of Nordic mythology and a witches' dance on Walpurgis Night all colliding and merging in quasi-surrealistic confusion.' Ghostlike string harmonics and pizzicatos are briefly overcome by an eerie graveyard serenity as an oboe beckons from afar (a passage suggested by Milton's 'Nymphs and shepherds, dance no more'), but the jocular hunt theme soon returns, bursting with skeletal string tremolos and a demonic fiddle-like violin solo (recalling Mr. Scratch?). The symphony's high point, the scherzo is not coincidentally its most programmatic section.
I. Maestoso: Allegro Pesante
Herrmann employs a number of variants of the Dies Irae plainsong chant throughout the first movement. This continues his often called upon use of this timeworn purveyor of fate, death and darkness that very much reflects his lifelong obsession with such things. The latter part of the first movement (from around 8:50-9:30) is similar to his treatment of it, done around the same time, for the finale of Citizen Kane. In both, the trumpets slip from one note to the next highlighting the unsettling harmonic shifts in an almost sickly sounding fashion.
After the innovations of Kane and All That Money Can Buy and the orchestral originality of Moby Dick, Herrmann's Symphony seems in some ways a step back, a retreat to concert Neo-Romanticism. The four-movement work, dedicated to Lucille [Herrmann's then wife], would be Herrmann's last piece of nonprogrammatic music: 'For the first time I was not confined to the outline of a story. It was not necessary to depict waves, portray the anguish of a lost soul, or look for a love theme.... Consequently, working on the Symphony I had a Roman holiday.'
Although Herrmann apparently enjoyed the process of its composition ('It's just like writing cues,' Herrmann told Lyn Murray), the Symphony illustrates Herrmann's uneasiness working in a rigidly formal structure. It also suffers from the fragmentation that characterizes most of Herrmann's output, a quality ideal for radio and film but not for the concert hall. Yet the Symphony was an impressive achievement for the thirty-year-old Herrmann: a mature, brilliantly orchestrated work whose power increases on subsequent listenings. Its traditional idiom makes it the most accessible of Herrmann's concert works and the most likely candidate for rediscovery (especially in its 1973 revised form).
Like Moby Dick, it is almost unremittingly oppressive in tone-'a Sibelian symphony,' observed author-composer Christopher Palmer, 'all bleak winds and bitter Northern skies with, as Sibelius would have said, nothing of the circus about it.' 'While such stylistic antecedents are evident (the first and third movements, for example, contain a strongly Sibelian 'fate' motive for brass and several lyrical string and woodwind passages), Herrmann's personality is equally apparent, especially in the force of the brass writing, the ominous bass rhythms and textures, and the dark brilliance of the second-movement 'Hunt Scherzo,' which, in Palmer's words, evokes 'images of the accursed Huntsman and his pack of wild dogs, the 'wild hunt' of Nordic mythology and a witches' dance on Walpurgis Night all colliding and merging in quasi-surrealistic confusion.' Ghostlike string harmonics and pizzicatos are briefly overcome by an eerie graveyard serenity as an oboe beckons from afar (a passage suggested by Milton's 'Nymphs and shepherds, dance no more'), but the jocular hunt theme soon returns, bursting with skeletal string tremolos and a demonic fiddle-like violin solo (recalling Mr. Scratch?). The symphony's high point, the scherzo is not coincidentally its most programmatic section.
I. Maestoso: Allegro Pesante
Herrmann employs a number of variants of the Dies Irae plainsong chant throughout the first movement. This continues his often called upon use of this timeworn purveyor of fate, death and darkness that very much reflects his lifelong obsession with such things. The latter part of the first movement (from around 8:50-9:30) is similar to his treatment of it, done around the same time, for the finale of Citizen Kane. In both, the trumpets slip from one note to the next highlighting the unsettling harmonic shifts in an almost sickly sounding fashion.