Various Rhapsody

Description

George Enescu (1881 - 1955) Rhapsody Rumanian Rhapsody Op. 11, No.1 Rumanian Rhapsody Op. 11, No.2Antonin Dvořak (1841 - 1904) Slavonic Rhapsody Op. 45, No.3 Franz Liszt (1811 - 1886) Hungarian Rhapsody, No.2 (No.12)Maurice Ravel (1875 - 1937) Spanish RhapsodyIn ancient Greece, The source of the word, a rhapsody was part of anepisodic poem, chanted by the rhapsodist, one section stitched, as it were, tothe next. The early nineteenth century found a new use for the word. In Praguethe Bohemian composer Vaclav Tomasek plundered the vocabulary of classicalGreece for his piano Eclogues, Dithyrambs and a series of fifteen Rhapsodies.The last term, at least, caught on, and the century saw a continuing use of theword to describe composition in free form, often highly dramatic and equallyoften turning to national themes.Franz Liszt added particularly to the rhapsodic repertoire with hisnineteen Hungarian Rhapsodies. Misunderstanding the nature of the music heimitated and transformed, he considered his Rhapsodies an embodiment of gypsymusic, untrammelled by the trappings of the conventional world. It took thetwentieth century Hungarian composer and enthusiastic folk-music collector BelaBarlok to draw attention to Liszt's mistake, What passed in Hungary for gypsymusic was largely written by those of a more privileged class, but played bythe gypsies to entertain their betters. So-called Hungarian gypsy music was, infact, popular art music, but none the less Hungarian for that. The most popularof Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsodies, No.2in the orchestral arrangements the composer made with the aid of Franz Doppler,and No.12 in the set of 19 for piano, was composed in 1853 and dedicated to theyoung virtuoso violinist Joseph Joachim, who that year had brought Brahms tovisit him. It is based on earlier versions made by Liszt in the 1840s, evidenceof the composer's growing loyalty to a country that he had left in childhood,and the language of which he had never learned. With the growing success ofHungarian nationalism within the Habsburg Empire, Liszt was to become somethingof a national hero, a position that the popular Rhapsodies did much to justify.For Liszt and for many of his contemporaries in Paris the words gypsyand Bohemian were synonymous. Antonin Dvořak was no gypsy, but of soundBohemian village stock, the son of a butcher-cum-innkeeper. In spite of earlydifficulties, he succeeded in making his way in Prague, where he worked for anumber of years as an orchestral viola-player, before turning primarily tocomposition as a means of earning a living. In this latter course he had theencouragement of Brahms, whose own piano duet HungarianDances led to Dvořak's equally successful Slavonic Dances. The three Slavonic Rhapsodies were written in thesame year as the first series of dances, 1878. The third of the set opens witha passage for the harp, the prelude to some bardic song, followed by thewoodwind, deployed with the composer's usual skill. The violin