Tone Poems in Full Score, Series I: Don Juan, Tod Und Verklarung, & Don Quixote Review

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(More customer reviews)No music truly exists in a book.The composer puts his directions on paper, and the musician tries his best to do what the composer has directed to do.Play this note high, this note low, this note long, this note short, etc.Music is an art that really doesn't exist until it comes to life through the time it takes to perform it.Like a seed, the score of an orchestral work lies dormant until the musician(s) plant it, nurture it through performance.
For the few that can read a score like the rest of us read a newspaper, the music can come alive in the imagination of their inner ear.For the rest of us mortals, following the score while the music plays can help us 'see' the tree come to life with our ears and revel in all of the life and vitality it contains.
The tone poems of Richard Strauss are like vast, sprawling trees.There is no need to follow a score to admire the beauty of the trees.If that were so, symphony orchestras would pass out copies of the score to the audience and keep the lights on.But following the score is like climbing right up into the tree.You can see the diversity, the details, and even look down at the ground and realize where you are.
So to be able to appreciate these masterpieces on a different level, following the score can be a revelation.Dover's edition of these tone poems is inexpensive, of good quality, and I especially like the large format.If you try to follow a miniature score of these works, you best have really great eyes or a magnifying glass.These are vast, romantic works, and Strauss uses a very large orchestra. So the large format is much easier to read and follow.
So if you ever have the urge to get closer to these masterpieces, then by all means let the Dover edition of the scores be your guide.Your efforts to climb the tree will be well rewarded!

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Three of the most often performed and recorded works in entire orchestral repertoire, reproduced in full score from original editions. Study score.

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Eine Alpensinfonie and Symphonia Domestica in Full Score Review

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(More customer reviews)Dover scores another fantastic bargain with this coupling of two of Richard Strauss's orchestral works, Eine Alpensinfonie and Symphonia Domestica.Why these works are paired is a mystery--Symphonia Domestica's natural companion piece is Ein Heldenleben, but Dover already published that with Till Eulenspiegels Lustige Streiche and Also Sprach Zarathustra.The draw for this collection, though, is surely the Alpine Symphony, and that anything else at all is included is a pure bonus.Another bonus for the language-challenged among us is the English translations for the titles of sections and the musical terms.Dover's implementation of these translations is somewhat awkward, though, as the section titles are listed at the beginning of each piece, but the musical terms are all bunched together at the end of the volume, forcing you to flip repeatedly through it at least once.
These two works date from a time and place now past when a respected composer could literally write for any orchestral forces he desired.Eine Alpensinfonie is scored for a huge orchestra (150 instruments, by one count--although not 150 different instrumental parts) and includes hecklephone, windmachine, thundermachine, tenor tubas, and 20(!) French horns--12 are offstage and play only in 21 measures of the piece, for less than one minute.Symphonia Domestica is not quite as gargantuan (as the name indicates) but is still scored for a quite large ensemble, with oboe d'amore and 4 saxophones--soprano, alto, baritone, and the very rare bass saxophone added to the large wind section.These scores are bibles of orchestration--Strauss is a master of handling huge forces, surpassed only by Gustav Mahler, and that arguably.Students of orchestration can learn much about writing for large, professional orchestras from careful study of these pieces; but they are also full of important details that will be helpful for those using smaller ensembles.
Beyond the orchestration, however, lies deep and powerful music.Strauss has been criticized for being overly programmatic and literal, writing trivial music and being derivative of Richard Wagner and Gustav Mahler.But whatever truth these criticisms hold, the fact remains that Wagner, Mahler and Strauss revolutionized music.Aside from their already well-known harmonic innovations and orchestral mastery, they freed melody from its primarily vocal conception, which had limited it from its origin.Where most composers before them would follow a large leap with motion in the opposite direction, thereby restricting the melodic line in musical space, these three composed great soaring lines in which a large leap might well be followed by another leap or stepwise motion in the same direction.The resulting themes often surpass the range of a single instrument; a given melody might, for example, begin in the tuba doubled with bassoon, celli and contrabasses, move to French horns and finally end in the upper registers of flutes, oboes, and violins.Orchestration becomes not simply an assigning of instruments to particular lines, but an inseparable part of the composition of a piece.Whatever flaws Strauss's music might have (and I have to admit that the Storm Scene in the Alpine Symphony, with its wind and thunder machines and the portrayal of raindrops in the pizzicato strings is too cliched for my taste), its glories far surpass them.
Reading the score can also help determine which recording of a work is particularly good.Strauss's layers of counterpoint and his textural conceptions can suffer at the hands of an overenthusiastic brass section (this is the man who said, "Never look encouragingly at the trombones.") or an insufficiently aware conductor.To supplement this score, I enthusiastically recommend Andre Previn's rendition of Eine Alpensinfonie with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, released on Telarc and also available here at Amazon.com.

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Twolarge-scale symphonic masterworks offer a study in contrasts.Apowerful portrayal of a day in the mountains, Eine Alpensinfonie isa magnificent showcase for Strauss's sumptuous orchestration. Symphonia Domestica,a reflection of the composer'sday-to-day life at home with his wife, Pauline,has more of an intimate chamber work feeling. Features lay-flat sewn binding.

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