Farewells. Music for Partings, Journeys & Goodbyes.

The Music

The Words

Hello everyone. Welcome to another episode of the ‘Classical For Everyone’ Podcast… five hundred years of incredible music.

My name is Peter Cudlipp and a couple of years ago I started a radio show called,  perhaps not surprisingly, ‘Classical For Everyone’. I wanted to bring the perspective of an enthusiast… to introducing classical music to audiences that might be curious but perhaps also might be a little hesitant. I’m not a teacher or a critic and I’m certainly not a musician… just a regular concert-goer who is lucky enough to have been touched, moved, excited and uplifted by this music since he was a kid. And that enthusiasm led to the radio show and now, with the podcast… I’m after a bigger audience.

If you enjoy any music at all then I’m convinced you can enjoy classical music. You don’t have to… and you don’t need to… but there really is some amazing music just waiting for you to discover or to rediscover! All you need are ears. No expertise is necessary. If you’ve ever been even slightly curious about classical music then this is the podcast for you.

There’s a lot of music out there to get to grips with so each one hour episode has something of a loose theme connecting the pieces I am going to play. For today it is… ‘Farewells’… where composers have used the instances of saying goodbye… sometimes to someone beginning a journey… and sometimes under sadder circumstances. I have for you sections of a symphony by Josef Haydn, eight minutes of a Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart opera, a Felix Mendelssohn overture, maybe one of the saddest farewells ever written… from Henry Purcell, and an Adagio by Samuel Barber.

Ok.. some music. In the summer of 1772 the Austrian composer Joseph Haydn was employed by Count Esterhazy and Haydn and the small group of musicians he had at his disposal… essentially part of the Count’s retinue of servants… were at the count’s summer palace… about a day’s travel from the town of Eisenstadt where many of them had their families. The story goes that rather than let the musicians take some time off as was the custom, the Count kept extending his stay at the summer palace and therefore his requirement for the musicians… who by now were very keen to spend some time with their families. Haydn’s subtle way to bring the musicians’ frustrations to the Count’s attention was to compose a symphony where, in the final section, the number of instruments required slowly diminishes and once each of the musicians had finished playing their bit they would quietly leave the stage… so that at the end just two violinists remained. Apparently the strategy worked, the Count got the message and Haydn and his players were allowed to return home for the holidays. A successful example of pre-modern industrial relations. The symphony was Haydn’s 45th but is better known as the ‘Farewell’ Symphony.

Here is the final section with the ending of the symphony where the number of instruments playing slowly decreases. It is about 7 minutes long and here is the group Il Giardino Armonico directed by Giovanni Antonini.

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That was the final section of Joseph Haydn’s ‘Farewell’ Symphony. It was performed by the group Il Giardino Armonico directed by Giovanni Antonini. Next up in this episode based around music for farewells is eight minutes of the opera ‘Cosi Fan Tutte’ with music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and words by Lorenzo Da Ponte from 1790 … It is a darkly cynical comedy about the weakness of the bonds of  fidelity amongst four young people in love… Incidentally, the opera is almost never given its title in English… perhaps because ‘Cosi Fan Tutte’ can be roughly translated into English as the astonishingly misogynistic ‘Women Are All Like That’. In the scene I am going to play the two male leads have told their beloved partners that they must leave Naples and go off to war. In the ten minutes that follow there are beautiful and sad farewells and a final song… "Soave sia il vento"—"May the wind be gentle" as the ship carrying the men sails away. The women are unaware that the men are not actually going to war but will return in mere minutes (in stage time anyway) disguised as Albanians… which in a good production is pretty damn funny. But I won’t give any more of the plot away than that. Here is the final ten minutes of the first scene of the Mozart & Da Ponte opera… Cosi Fan Tutte. The Orchestra is the Concerto Cologne, the conductor is Rene Jacobs and the singers are Bernarda Fink, Veronique Gens, Werner Güra and Marcel Boone.

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That was the final ten minutes of the first scene of the Mozart & Da Ponte opera… Cosi Fan Tutte.  The Orchestra was the Concerto Cologne, the conductor was Rene Jacobs (Yacobs) and the singers were Bernarda Fink, Veronique Gens, Werner Güra and Marcel Boone.

So, if the two leading men from Cosi Fan Tutte have just sailed off over the horizon from Naples then that is a good segue in this ‘Farewells’ inspired episode to play Felix Mendelssohn’s 13 minute piece for orchestra from 1828  he called ‘Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage’.  It was called a ‘concert overture’ which meant a short piece inspired by a literary source but NOT the opening to a longer stage work as the overture to an opera would be. The title ‘Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage’ comes from two poems by Johann Von Goethe that Mendelssohn used for quite direct inspiration… According to Wikipedia…Mendelssohn described his interpretation of Goethe’s calm sea as follows; “a pitch gently sustained by the strings for a long while hovers here and there and trembles, barely audible… The whole stirs sluggishly from the passage with heavy tedium. Finally, it comes to a halt with thick chords and the Prosperous Voyage sets out.” Goethe was certainly impressed, and after hearing a performance he wrote to Mendelssohn “Sail well in your music, and may your voyages ever be as prosperous.” This is Claudio Abbado conducting the London Symphony Orchestra. Felix Mendelssohn’s ‘Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage’

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That was Claudio Abbado conducting the London Symphony Orchestra with Felix Mendelssohn’s ‘Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage’

Now the next piece I am going to play you is about a Farewell… and also about another sea voyage. But the story behind the music is much darker. And much sadder. A bit of background and apologies for reducing a 10,000 line poem to a paragraph. The poem is ‘The Aeneid’ by the Roman poet Virgil and is about the Trojan prince Aeneas who is one of the few  people to escape the destruction of Troy. After a long sea voyage to escape from a storm he takes refuge at Carthage on the north coast of Africa. There he and the Carthaginian queen Dido fall in love and Aeneas indicates that he will marry her and settle in Africa. But the gods have other plans and Aeneas secretly prepares to leave Carthage for Italy. But Dido discovers the deception and in great rage and distress at the betrayal, commits suicide.  In 1688 the English composer Henry Purcell and the writer Nahum Tate composed a short opera based on this story called ‘Dido and Aeneas’. At the end of the opera Dido as Queen Dido dies she asks her servant Belinda to taker her hand and then sings what has become known as ‘Dido’s Lament’ the words of which are worth quoting…

When I am laid, am laid in earth, May my wrongs create
No trouble, no trouble in thy breast;
Remember me, remember me, but ah! forget my fate.

After her song, the opera concludes with the chorus calling for cupids to scatter roses on her tomb and for her not to be forgotten. Here is William Christie conducting his ensemble ‘Les Arts Florissants’ and Dido is sung by Guillemette Laurens. In terms of musical farewells… even three hundred and fifty years after it was written this is about the most emotion packed. The conclusion of Henry Purcell and Nahum Tate’s opera ‘Dido & Aeneas’

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That was William Christie conducting his ensemble ‘Les Arts Florissants’ with the end of Henry Purcell and Nahum Tate’s opera ‘Dido & Aeneas’ featuring Dido’s Lament ‘When I am laid in Earth. And Dido was sung by Guillemette Laurens.

To finish today and leaping forward to the 20^th century here is another piece of beautiful music that has come to be associated with farewells though that was probably not the intention of the composer. In 1936 the American composer Samuel Barber wrote his 2^nd  String Quartet. The same year he orchestrated the 2^nd part of it and sent it to the conductor Arturo Toscanini. He called it ‘Adagio for Strings’… just meaning… ‘some slow music for arranged for a group of string instruments.’ In 1938 Toscanini performed the world premiere for the radio audience of NBC live from Studio 8H of the Rockefeller Center in New York. If that sounds oddly familiar it might be because for the last 50 years that studio has been the home of the TV show Saturday Night Live. Then in 1945 the piece was broadcast after the announcement of the death of the US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Since then this piece has been used to say farewell to many, many people and probably used in a few too many TV shows and films. But that does not stop it being well worth a listen. Here is Samuel Barber’s ‘Adagio For Strings’… and this is the Australian Chamber Orchestra directed by Richard Tognetti.

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That was Samuel Barber’s ‘Adagio For Strings’… performed by the Australian Chamber Orchestra directed by Richard Tognetti.

My name is Peter Cudlipp and you have been listening to The ‘Classical for Everyone’ Podcast. If you would like to listen to past episodes or get details of the music I’ve played please head to the website classicalforeveryone.net. That web address again is classicalforeveryone.net. There you will also find some mini-episodes that address some of what I want to call the vexing questions for a listener new to Classical Music like… ‘Are conductors actually important?’; ‘Why does the word ‘sonata’ keep turning up?’ and ‘Why is some classical music so damn long?’. That web address again is classicalforeveryone.net. I hope you have enjoyed this episode of ‘Classical For Everyone’. If you want to make sure you don’t miss the shows as they are released then please Subscribe or Follow wherever you get your podcasts. That would also mean the search algorithms will smile more benignly on the show and it might reach a few more people. For that I would be very grateful. And if you want to get in touch then you can email… info@classicalforeveryone.net. Thanks for your time and I look forward to playing you some more incredible music on the next ‘Classical For Everyone’.                  

This podcast is made with Audacity Software for editing, Wikipedia for Research, Claude for Artificial Intelligence and Apple, Sennheiser, Sony, Rode and Logitech for hardware… The music played is licensed through AMCOS / APRA. Classical For Everyone is a production of Mending Wall Studios and began life on Radio 2BBB in Bellingen NSW, Australia thanks to the late, great Mr Jeffrey Sanders. The producers do not receive any gifts or support of any kind from any organisation or individual mentioned in the show. But, never say never.

And if you have listened to the credits… here is a little bonus for you… The happy outcome of some farewells is that the person or people who have gone away come back. In 1809 Ludwig Van Beethoven wrote a three part piano sonata that came to be known as ‘The Farewell’. As much as can be known he was actually saying farewell to his patron and friend the Archduke Rudolph who left Vienna along with the rest of the royal family as Napoleon’s Grand Army was approaching. But then they came back and the third part of the sonata is called ‘Das Wiedersehen’… or ‘The Reunion’. It is about four minutes long and here is the pianist Wilhelm Kempff playing ‘The Reunion’ from Beethoven’s Piano Sonata no. 26. Thanks for listening.