Season 9 – 2025/26
“Magisterra At The Museum”
“Tales in Three”
April 8, 2026
Program Notes
Darius MILHAUD
(1892 - 1974)
Suite Op. 157b
for clarinet, violin, and piano
Ouverture
Divertissement
Jeu
Introduction et Final
Early 20th century French music saw a strong resistance against German Romanticism and Impressionism endorsed by composers such as Richard Wagner and Claude Debussy respectively, which are seen to be the trajectory of contemporary western art music. Specifically, it rejects the mere enjoyment and pleasure of music and art and the inner emotions it invokes, but rather placed emphasis on valuing the content of the music and intellectual stimulation. Darius Milhaud, along with five other French composers including Georges Auric, Louis Durey, Arthur Honegger, Francis Poulenc, and Germain Tailleferre make up Les Six, which is a group of six French composers that rejects German Romanticism and Impressionism. Instead, they embraced anti-sentimental aesthetics and drew inspiration from Erik Satie’s music and Jean Cocteau’s poetry, valuing simplicity, clarity and directness.
Darius Milhaud was born on September 4, 1892, and grew up in Aix-en-Provence, France. He began learning the violin at the age of 7 and started composing at the age of 13 in 1905 before studying composition at the Paris Conservatoire in 1909 with Xavier Leroux, Paul Dukas and Vincent d’Indy. When Milhaud began to compose, he was already aware of Impressionism and found its over-sentimental aesthetics unappealing. It was, therefore, natural for Milhaud to gravitate towards Erik Satie’s direct and simple music, and an affinity for la clarité, clarity, an attribute prevalent in French literature and poetry. Milhaud also developed his own harmonic language. For example, the use of polytonality, which involves two or more tonal areas simultaneously in a piece that creates complex harmonic textures that are jarring and convey feelings of conflict.
Moreover, upon visiting London and touring the United States in the 1920s, he discovered jazz was captivated by the simplicity and authenticity, the syncopated rhythm and the freedom that jazz improvisation allowed for Milhaud to explore in his compositions. He therefore regarded jazz and other non-western art music genres as serious music alongside western art music and incorporated them within his compositions. His jazz influences have led him to compose his most famous works including Le Bœf sur le Toit (The ox on the roof) for small orchestra and was then used for ballet, La création du monde a ballet for small orchestra and saxophone, and Scaramouche for saxophone and piano. Milhaud also wrote much incidental music for 24 plays and 16 movies. As an educator, Milhaud migrated to the United States in 1940 and started teaching composition at Mills College, and after the Second World War, he taught alternate years at Mills College, and at his alma mater, Paris Conservatoire.
The Suite for clarinet, violin and piano is in four movements. The thematic material has been taken from the incidental music Milhaud composed for the play The Traveler without Luggage by Jean Anouilh, in which a First World War veteran explores his identity after suffering from amnesia. The first movement, Ouverture, is lively and bright with instances of darker utterances of the opening material. This opening movement embodies the ironic character of the play. The second movement, Divertissement, opens with the violin and clarinet engaging in a conversational dialogue that is more lighthearted and delicate. The piano and clarinet then state a more stable and calmer second theme, in which the violin joins.
The third movement, Jeu (French for play), is a quick and sharp hoedown duet between the violin and clarinet that restores the character of the first movement. A less animated and flowing section is inserted before the repeat of the hoedown. The clarinet plays a more folk-like melody while the violin provides a calmer and more relaxed pizzicato, which then leads to a playful ending. The fourth movement, Introduction et final, opens with a stately and grounded introduction with rhythmical unison between the violin and clarinet. This gives way to a buoyant dance-like finale based on the melody of “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow.” Jazz inspirations are also apparent in the second half of the finale with cheeky syncopated rhythms and sudden bold interjections.
Program Notes by Cordelia Poon
Hans GAL
(1890 - 1987)
Trio, Op. 97 (1950)
for clarinet, violin and piano
Moderato assai
Andantino capriccioso, poco sostenuto
Tema con Variazioni
Hans Gál was an Austro-Hungarian composer born on 5th August 1890 in Brunn am Gebirge, a village just outside Vienna. He started studying piano, music history and harmony under Richard Roberts at the age of 15 at the New Vienna Conservatory until he was 18 when was appointed as a teacher of harmony and piano at the same institution. This greatly benefitted him, making it financially possible for him to continue his compositional studies focusing on musical form and counterpoint with Eusebius Mandyczewski, who was a close friend of Johannes Brahms.
By 1915, he had made a name for himself as a composer, having his works performed in Austria and Germany, and winning the then newly created State Prize for Composition. Yet further flourishing of his career was put on hold as he was drafted in the army for the First World War, first serving in Serbia, then the Polish Carpathians in autumn of 1917. A major work of Gál was created during his time at the Carpathians, which was the comic opera Der Arzt Der Sobeide (“Sobeide’s Doctor”). His early works led him to enjoy great success in the 1920s, including having his operas becoming standard repertoire, appointed as a music theory lecturer at the University of Vienna, director of the Conservatory in Mainz, and worked as a scholar alongside Mandyczewski to create the Complete Edition of the works of Brahms. The rise of Nazis in 1933 abruptly ended Gál’s musical career in Germany, banning his music and was dismissed from his position at the Mainz Conservatory. Consequently, he migrated to the United Kingdom in 1938 and was interned at Huyton near Liverpool and Isle of Man during the Second World War.
After the Second World War, he resided in Edinburgh and continued composing many works and was appointed as a professor of music at the University of Edinburgh in 1945. Gál’s compositional style is rooted in Austro-German tradition due to his affinities with Brahms for his restrained lyricism of the romantic period, and Bach for his counterpoint. Resultantly, his music has a sense of balance, clarity and precision, through inventive use of harmony that is complex yet refreshing and has a transparent and powerful sound. In this manner, Gál’s tonal music was considered conservative in light of the trajectory of modern western art music that is post-tonal, and his music did not garner as much attention as in the 1920s. However, since the 2000s, there has been a revival of Gál’s music, with violinist Annette-Barbara Vogel releasing two-volume recordings of all violins works composed by Hans Gál.
The Trio for clarinet, violin and piano was composed during his professorship at the University, however, it was not published until 1971. The trio is in three movements. The first movement begins with a flowing melody from the clarinet and joined by the violin and piano. It then gives way to a more animated and buoyant second theme. Gál demonstrates his skillful use of balanced traditional musical forms and ingenious melodic writing. The second movement begins with a spirited and buoyant theme from the piano and violin that is played in a lively and capricious manner. This is interjected by a warmer and tranquil melody by the clarinet and violin, before the more spirited and capricious theme returns. The third and final movement begins on a minor theme played by the clarinet with the violin joining a little later on imitating that theme presented by the clarinet. The variations embellish the theme through grander, animated and spirited expansions, with increasing urgency that leads to its conclusion.
Program Notes by Cordelia Poon
Francis POULENC
(1899 - 1963)
Sonata FP 184 (1962)
for clarinet and piano
Allegro tristamente (Allegretto - Très calme - Tempo allegretto)
Romanza (Très calme)
Allegro con fuoco (Très animé)
Francis POULENC was born in Paris on January 7, 1899, to a deeply religious Catholic father who loved Beethoven, and an amateur pianist mother, who came from a family of Parisian artisans, and idolized Mozart, Schubert and Chopin. The contrasting characters and musical affinities of each parent shaped Poulenc’s composition style, creating a unique musical personality apparent in many of his compositions that are at times sentimental and religious, yet simultaneously juxtaposed by his wit and use of “street music”.
Poulenc began his piano studies at 5 years old with his mother before taking piano lessons with the Spanish piano virtuoso Ricardo Viñes in 1914. In 1915, Poulenc met and became friends with Darius Milhaud, which was previously explored that they will then come together along with four other French composers to make up Les Six, a group of six French composers that rejected heavy German Romanticism, which is apparent in Poulenc’s dislike for Wagner and Beethoven, and instead endorsed the music and anti-sentimental aesthetic of Erik Satie and Jean Cocteau. Poulenc’s plans to attend Paris Conservatoire fell through due to his parents’ death and the First World War, and his subsequent rejection. Although Poulenc never received formal music education, he was able to take composition lessons for four years with Charles Koechlin, during which he was able to consolidate his musical personality. Another facet of Poulenc’s unique musical voice emerged after the death of a fellow composer and his visit to a sanctuary in Rocamadour, France. These events led Poulenc to reconnect with his childhood faith, Catholicism, and to compose works of religious devotion.
The Sonata for clarinet and piano is an exemplar of Poulenc’s unique fusion of religious devotion, lyricism and popular material of circuses and cabarets. The Sonata was completed in 1962, and was dedicated to his late friend and fellow composer of Les Six, Arthur Honegger, and was commissioned by Benny Goodman, who was an American jazz clarinetist and bandleader, and who frequently ventured into western art music. The premier performance was set to be performed by Benny Goodman and Poulenc. However, Poulenc suffered a heart attack in January 1963 which resulted in his death. The Sonata therefore premiered at Carnegie Hall on 10th April 1963 with Benny Goodman and Leonard Bernstein on piano.
The Sonata is in three movements. The first movement begins with a capricious statement with anticipation of imminent drama and urgency. Many sudden changes follow in this movement, and allusions to Prokofiev’s music, specifically the warmer and tender themes of his ballet, Romeo and Juliet. The second movement, Romanza, is a calm and melancholic lamentation, featuring long flowing mournful melodies. The third movement is virtuosic and mischievous, with the jaunty melody evoking music of circuses and Poulenc’s use of popular material. This is contrasted by a more animated lyrical middle section.
Poulenc’s Clarinet sonata and musical style was criticized to be restricted and disjointed due to the amalgamation of melancholic expression and cheeky circus-like material. Such criticism that claimed Poulenc being insufficiently innovative was anticipated by Poulenc, in which he responded earlier that there is nothing more genuine in his music than such fusion of classical music and the music of circuses, cabarets or “street music,” as he grew up associating café tunes with classical music, and he therefore does not distinguish between them, and views both styles of music equal and admitting each other.
Program Notes by Cordelia Poon
Igor STRAVINSKY
(1882 - 1971)
Suite from “L’Histoire du Soldat” (1919)
for clarinet, violin and piano
Marche du Soldat
Le Violon du Soldat
Un Petit Concert
Tango - Valse - Ragtime
Danse du Diable
With his stylistic versatility throughout his compositional career, Igor Stravinsky was considered to be one of the leading composers of modernist western art music in the 20th century. Stravinsky was born on 17th June 1882, in Oranienbaum, near St. Petersburg, Russia. He began having piano lessons at home at 10 years old, before completing a degree in law and philosophy at St. Petersburg University. Whilst obtaining his degree, he met fellow Russian composer Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov, who gave him private lessons in composition and orchestration from 1905-1908. Due to Rimsky-Korsakov’s fame, Stravinsky was able to have his works performed, with his first serious composition being his Symphony in E-flat major.
He was soon noticed by Sergei Diaghilev who was also Rimsky-Korsakov’s former student and a ballet impresario that founded the Ballets Russes. Diaghilev demonstrated his appreciation of Stravinsky’s works by commissioning a series of ballets that led to Stravinsky’s international recognition, including the Firebird, Petrushka, and The Rite of Spring between years of 1910 and 1913. These early ballet works of Stravinsky were known for its strong dissonance and daring rhythms that deviated from the norms established during the Romantic period.
Stravinsky took refuge in Switzerland in 1914 due to the outbreak of the First World War, resulting in decreased financial resources to stage large scale ballet productions and orchestral works. During this period his compositional style became subdued and sombre yet still rhythmically adventurous. It also incorporated Russian folk texts and tunes, and other popular music or dance music. Under these circumstances, Stravinsky and Swiss writer Charles-Ferdinand Ramuz created the theatrical work L’Histoire du Soldat (“The Soldier’s Tale”) in 1918, which features narration, music and dance that can be performed by a small group in various small venues. It was inspired by a folk tale by Alexander Afanasiev, in which a soldier trades his violin for a magic book from the devil that guarantees him economic wealth, yet when he realizes that it is an ill-fated bargain he finds himself unable to escape the control of the devil.
The premiere of L’Histoire du Soldat at Théatre Municipal de Lausanne in Switzerland on 28 September 1918 was a success, however continued performance of the theatrical work did not transpire due to the Spanish flu pandemic. Stravinsky, therefore, selected five numbers of the work to create a suite for a trio consisting of a violin, clarinet and piano, and does away with the narration, acting and dancing. The Suite from “L’Histoire du Soldat” therefore premiered in 1919, with Werner Reinhard, a Swiss merchant, philanthropist and amateur clarinetist financially supporting the premiere and performing the clarinet part of the Suite. Since then, the Suite has become Stravinsky’s most cherished chamber work.
The first movement is a jaunty march that uses two keys in two instrumental parts simultaneously, and with succinct rhythmic figurations that are passed between the three instruments. The significant use of the higher register of the clarinet is also prominent and surprising, creating a grotesque and clumsy character for the march. The second movement features the violin playing rhythmical fiddle folk tunes with double stops and fast string crossings that illustrate the soldier’s violin that he subsequently trades with the devil for the magic book.
The third movement symbolizes the soldier’s brief triumph against the devil in a high stakes card game reviving the princess, resulting in a triumphant and lively character. The clarinet plays an exuberant melody filled with embellishments, whilst the violin and piano provide a highly syncopated accompaniment juxtaposing the melody. The princess performs three dances, Tango, Waltz, and Ragtime that are contained within the fourth movement. Stravinsky has acknowledged the influence and inspiration American popular music, and jazz has on L’Histoire du Soldat. The Tango begins with a sultry and improvisatory-like melody in the violin, followed by descending arpeggiated figures in the clarinet. The tango is followed by a more light-hearted and livelier waltz that is filled with ornamentation and slides. The ragtime is highly syncopated with quick exchanges between the violin and the clarinet.
The fifth movement is the dance of the devil which begins with all three instruments playing in unison a cacophonous motif followed by a rapid scalic figuration from the piano. The rest of the movement is performed in a swift manner with asymmetrical rhythmic patterns and syncopation between all the instruments.
Program Notes by Cordelia Poon
