About the "Mozart and Martin" program

Mozart's Masterpiece: Symphony No. 40
The program opens with Mozart's Symphony No. 40 in G-minor, from the triptych of his last symphonies, composed in a minor key (reserved by Mozart for music of the greatest gravity) and written without known commission. At this point in Mozart's career, he was in deep financial crisis; virtually all his other creativity was channeled into projects which would guarantee income, but this symphony appears to have been written from some inner impulse. It is music of grandeur, rigor, and restrained heroism.

Martin's Moving Song-Cycle
Even more extraordinary, and the major work on the program, is a little-known, under-appreciated, remarkable orchestral song-cycle by Swiss composer Frank Martin, a wonderfully intricate and compassionate setting of an early text by celebrated author Rainer Marie Rilke titled "The Lay of the Love and Death of the Cornet Christoph Rilke."

Both guest conductor Robert Spano and Finnish mezzo-soprano soloist Monica Groop independently discovered and were overwhelmed by and fell in love with the Martin work, then later further found that they both were excited about it. Spano convinced the SPCO to program the piece so that he and Monica might perform it here in Minnesota. In the broadcast, Ms. Groop (in conversation with host Michael Barone) describes the content of Rilke's text - with musical examples - and then recites the various poems in English prior to her singing of the songs in German. (View the English text.)

Martin's delicate, intelligent music dates from 1943. It is a setting of a Rilke prose-poem from 1899 dealing with "the love and death of the Cornet Christoph Rilke." Author Rainer Maria Rilke created this tragic romantic fantasy from a fragment of recovered family history - apparently, in 1663 the land of a young Christoph von Rilke of Langenau was bequeathed to his brother Otto. Christoph had fallen in battle in Hungary. Otto was required to make declaration that the endowment would be null and void in the event that his brother should return, though according to the death certificate, said brother had died as Cornet (flag-bearer) in Baron von Pirovano's company of Imperial Austrian Heyster Regiment of Cavalry. Was Martin's impulse an antiwar urge?

Though nothing else was known of either Otto or Christoph, the author's imagination was inspired by this piece of his "history" and, in a single night in the autumn of 1899, he wrote out the text. It was revised in 1904, again in 1906, and in 1912 it was published in an inexpensive paperback edition which soon thereafter became enormously popular, especially after the outbreak of World War I in 1914.

The story tells of a high-born, naive boy of 18 who "goes off to war" for uncertain reasons, is recommended to his commander, and by him appointed "cornet" (the one who carries the flag in front of the troops-both an honor and a most dangerous assignment). He is not inherently courageous, is something of an introvert, has never been in love, has no girlfriend back home (as does a companion marquis), yet he becomes involved with a noble lady - his first intimate encounter with a woman, a magic and spiritually transforming moment - on the eve of a surprise attack and, in the ensuing battle, is killed in a poetically transformational experience.

Join us for this spectacular program on Minnesota Public Radio on Sunday, December 12, at 1:00 p.m. CT