Tchaikovsky - Symphony No. 4 in F minor, Opus 36 - Complete Program Notes by Aaron J. Marx
Of all the European powers it was Russia that modernized the latest. While other cultural centers were forming robust and distinctive modern musical styles, most notably Germany, Italy, and France, Russia remained a feudal land of folk song and ancient church chant. Russian Baroque and Classical composers were few and far between, rare individuals sent to cosmopolitan centers in order to absorb the new styles and report back to the courts and chapels of reform-minded monarchs like Peter the Great and Catherine I. Russia did not develop its own Baroque or Classical musical traditions. It was Romanticism that finally connected with the musicians of Russia and created a distinctive national school and style in one fell swoop. This process was fraught with challenge and some Russian composers found themselves caught up in a cultural tug of war.
On one hand musical Romanticism was a natural fit for the Russian soul with its poetic longing, penchant for landscape, and grandiosity. As such, the Russians experienced the same challenges as German Romantics given the difficulties of synthesizing the emotional sweep of the new outlook with the academic rigor of older forms and practices. But Russia’s national art presented the further peculiarity of expressing in static, episodic forms like triptych altar pieces, more suitable for contemplation than the dynamic argumentation of academic or dramatic forms that came much more naturally to the thinking of the already modernized societies. Nineteenth century musical Russia split into two factions - the Nationalists and the academics. The nationalists, as exemplified by the composers of the Mighty Handful and their supporters, promoted a rougher and highly visceral manner of composition that delighted in the freedom and evocative visual suggestiveness granted by genres like the symphonic poem. On the other hand were the academics, who advanced the more learned approaches through a new system of Russian conservatories, cultivated traditional genres like the symphony and concerto, and prized a more restrained and well-proportioned formal rigor and technical mastery. The academics produced fewer notable creative figures and their music can be rather dry and uninspired, but they were a major cultural force. The two schools of thought were often wary and suspicious of one another, and reconciling these competing sensibilities seemed impossible, save for the considerable and earnest efforts of one central and remarkable figure, Pyotr Ilitch Tchaikovsky.
In Tchaikovsky’s mature works we hear the best attempts at synthesizing these opposing approaches that were ever found in Russian Romantic music, and it was a synthesis that laid the groundwork for all subsequent Russian and Soviet styles of art music. Tchaikovsky combined the nationalist penchant for folk song and picturesque grandeur with Germanic formal rigor through a truly inspired and disciplined approach. He showed that it was possible to honor the ancient Russian soul and and also pay homage to his beloved German models (his absolute favorite being Mozart), all made possible by a conscientious mastery of orchestration and formal command, surcharged by his willingness, or perhaps personal need, to infuse an intense autobiographical emotion into the mix. His first three symphonies of 1866, 1872, and 1875 respectively, attempted with varying degrees of effectiveness to bring all these influences together, but it was the mighty Fourth Symphony of 1878 that was the first great success of its kind, and his final two symphonies, the Fifth and Sixth, build in various ways on this breakthrough of musical artistry and architecture.
The massive first movement begins with a bold, powerful brass fanfare that Tchaikovsky called the imposition of “fate”, an acknowledged reference to Beethoven’s Fifth. This imposing leitmotif serves as an ingenious unifying device, appearing again at key points in the movement, and also making a stunning return at the climax of the symphony’s finale as well. The anxious and restless main theme of the first movement, in triple meter (extraordinary for a symphonic opening), briefly finds reprieve in the mellowness of the second theme, but then provides ample fodder for an impassioned development section that approaches the urgent climax.
The second movement is a canzona, that is a “lyrical song”, that matches the intensity of the first movement through the power of its emotional depth and passionate longing. The melody is first stated by a plaintive oboe solo and is then taken up by the strings and fellow woodwinds. Other themes build intensity and bring the movement to a soaring apotheosis. In this arching melodic material we glimpse the even more assured and conspicuous emotional heights of Tchaikovsky’s final symphony, the “Pathetique”, composed 15 years later, just before his untimely death.
The breezy third movement scherzo hearkens to Beethoven’s symphonic scherzi but adds a distinctly Russian character. The first section is pervaded by the playful freshness of the strings’ pizzicato colors, and the trio evokes the childlike nature of certain episodes from the Nutcracker, with the winds and horns matching the levity of the strings’ opening. It seems that Tchaikovsky thought it best to provide relief from the emotional intensity of the rest of the symphony through this charming movement.
The intensity returns fully throughout the tour-de-force of a finale. Tchaikovsky again reminds us of the artistic and structural problem he is solving through the use of a classic Russian folk song, the Birch Tree, subjecting it to a process akin to, but not quite achieving, true symphonic development. The resulting movement is somewhere between sonata form and variations on a theme. The melody and motives of the song are easy to follow throughout the movement, contrasted with furious scalar passages, as the various instruments of the orchestra introduce all manner of figuration on the way to the climactic final appearance of the initial “fate” motive, just before this exhilarating symphonic finale draws to a spectacular close and Tchaikovsky brings his nationalist-academic argument to a rest.