Picturesque Scenes (Scènes pittoresques) is the fourth of Massenet’s suites for orchestra, completed in 1873. There are four short, tuneful sections: “March” (“Marche”), “Air de Ballet,” “Angelus” and “Bohemian Festival” (“Fête bohème”). The religious music of the third movement, “Angelus,” with its solemn tolling of bells, is the most popular section of this suite, frequently performed separately from the other movements.
Second only to the “Élégie” in popularity among Massenet’s best-loved melodies is the “Meditation” which comes from the opera Thaïs. This excerpt is an orchestral entr’acte with violin obbligato heard just before the first scene of the second act. The opera, libretto by Louis Gallet based on the novel of Anatole France, describes the degradation of Athanaël, a Cenobite monk, because of his unholy passion for Thaïs, a courtesan. The radiant music of the “Meditation” describes Thaïs’ renunciation of a life of pleasure for one of the spirit.
Robert McBride
Robert Guyn McBride was born in Tucson, Arizona, on February 20, 1911. As a boy he learned to play the clarinet and saxophone. He later played both instruments in various dance orchestras. In 1933 he was graduated from the University of Arizona, and a year after that received there his Master’s degree. Having studied the oboe in college, he played that instrument with the Tucson Symphony for several years. Then, after additional study of the piano, composition and voice, he joined the music faculty of Bennington College in Vermont in 1935, holding this post eleven years. During this period he received a Guggenheim Fellowship. In 1942, the American Academy of Arts and Letters awarded him a prize for creating a “new idiom in American music.” McBride has made successful use of jazz, popular and folk elements in serious chamber-music and orchestral compositions.
The Mexican Rhapsody (1936) is one of McBride’s best known works for orchestra. He wrote it in Arizona while studying at the University. It was first presented in Tucson in a two-piano arrangement, then in its definitive orchestral version, and finally as a choreographic presentation. McBride here makes a colorful and freshly conceived presentation of four Mexican folk songs familiar to many: “El Rancho Grande,” “Jarabe” (or “Hat Dance”), “Cuatro Milpas,” and “La Cucaracha.”
McBride has written several interesting compositions in a jazz style. One of the best is the Strawberry Jam (1942). This is a caricature of a jazzband jam session, but with the utilization of modern harmonies and symphonic orchestration. Stuff in G, for orchestra (1942), is in the racy, tuneful style of Tin Pan Alley, while Swing Stuff (1941) brings to the symphonic orchestra the improvisational devices and techniques and the beat of Swing music.
Harl McDonald
Harl Mcdonald was born in Boulder, Colorado, on July 27, 1899. His music study took place in Redlands, California and at the University of Southern California. The winning of prizes from the American Federation of Music Clubs for two orchestral works enabled him to go to Europe and attend the Leipzig Conservatory. In Germany, his symphonic fantasy, Mojave, was successfully introduced by the Berlin State Opera Orchestra. After returning to the United States he was appointed in 1926 to the music faculty of the University of Pennsylvania, where he later became professor of music, and finally head of the music department. At the University he conducted various choral groups which appeared with the Philadelphia Orchestra. From 1939 until his death he was manager of the Philadelphia Orchestra, which introduced many of his orchestral compositions. McDonald wrote four symphonies, a two-piano concerto, a violin concerto, and various suites and tone poems for orchestra. He died in Princeton, New Jersey, on March 30, 1955.
The Children’s Symphony was a work intended to teach children something about symphonic form through melodies they knew and loved. The form of the symphony is adhered to—in the presentation of two themes, their development, and recapitulation. Simple and unsophisticated, this symphony makes ideal listening for children, but there is enough charm here to provide considerable enjoyment to older people as well. In the first movement, McDonald uses for his two main themes, “London Bridge” and “Baa Baa Black Sheep.” In the second movement we hear “Little Bo Peep” and “Oh, Dear, What Can the Matter Be?”; in the third, “Farmer in the Dell” and “Jingle Bells”; and in the finale, “Honey Bee” and “Snow Is Falling On My Garden.”
Rhumba, for symphony orchestra, is the third movement of McDonald’s Symphony No. 2 (1935). But this movement (which in the symphony displaces the conventional scherzo) is so popular that it is often played apart from the rest of the work. The symphony itself was inspired by the turbulent 1930’s, with its labor conflicts, breadlines, unemployment, and depression. Rhumba injected a gay note into these somber proceedings, attempting to interpret “the passionate search after good times and diversions, and the restless pursuit of intoxicated pleasures,” as the composer explained. McDonald goes on to say that he here used the rumba rhythm because he liked it and because it seemed to him to be the pulse of those times.