The symphony's program concludes with the 2nd Symphony of Finnish composer, Jean Sibelius, which I wrote about earlier (you can read it here and listen to a full performance by Finnish musicians of the Turku Philharmonic conducted by Leif Segerstam).
If it helps to be Finnish to play a definitive interpretation of Sibelius – perhaps because they’re used to the snow and the cold we associate with Finland and which presumably, if not inspired Sibelius’ music, informed his style – does it help to be Scottish to play Bruch’s Fantasy? After all, it was written by a German born along the banks of the Rhine, writing it at the request of a Spanish violinist, Pablo de Sarasate, and which premiered in Liverpool, England. Oh, and at the time, he’d never set foot in Scotland.
While Bruch’s Fantasy is based on several Scottish folk songs, he didn’t collect them in Scotland but found a copy of the Scots Musical Museum, a six-volume collection with 100 songs in each volume, originally published by James Johnson in Edinburgh between 1787 and 1803, in a library in Munich.
Judging from the title on first blush, you might think this is one of those short showcases based on folk melodies or popular airs to entertain the audience and give the soloist a chance to dazzle them with virtuosic technique. One famous example would be the “Gypsy Airs,” Ziguenerweisen, by the great Spanish violinist, Pablo de Sarasate.
Instead it’s a full four-movement work of about a half-hour’s duration for violin and orchestra with a very prominent harp part (often, the harpist is placed to the front of the orchestra just behind the soloist), each movement making use of various Scots folk songs. Rather than being a medley of neatly arranged tunes, Bruch uses them symphonically, developing them beyond merely stating the melodies as if they were original themes he’d work into his own composition. Each tune has its own specifically Scottish flavor – no comments about Scotch or haggis, please – and the work as a whole brings to mind the musical souvenir Felix Mendelssohn brought back from a visit to Scotland in 1829 where his inspiration initially came from visiting the ruins of Holyrood Castle in Edinburgh.
Curiously, Bruch’s work is not a souvenir in the same sense: he never visited Scotland until the year after the Fantasy was premiered in 1881 in Liverpool, England, where Bruch had been the conductor of the Liverpool Philharmonic Society. This would place him not that far from the Scottish border. And there’s no proof he ever did hear what a Celtic harp sounded like.
So how did a composer born in the Prussian city of Köln who spent most of his time in Berlin come to write a work based on Scottish folk songs?
Here’s one of my favorite performances of the piece, by the Russian virtuoso David Oistrakh recorded in 1962 with Jascha Horenstein and the London Symphony Orchestra:
I. Introduction: Grave. Adagio cantabile – Billed as being in E-flat Major (generally considered a bright key and, to Beethoven at least, one that could have heroic implications), the Fantasy opens with a slow, brooding introduction in the dark shadow key of E-flat Minor as if setting the scene for the tales about to be told. It was apparently inspired by reading a passage in a novel by Sir Walter Scott, “an old bard contemplating the ruins of a castle, and lamenting the glorious times of old.” Switching to the major mode, the tune of the Adagio cantabile, “Through the Wood, Laddie,” is often misidentified as “Auld Rob Morris,” a traditional tune Bruch incidentally set earlier in 1863 as one of his “12 Scottish Songs” (so you see, this was not his first time using Scots tunes in his compositions). The "Laddie" tune recurs at the end of the 2nd and 4th movements, as well.
II. Scherzo: Allegro – This is a lively dance movement, introducing “The Dusty Miller,” a tune dating back to 1700, over a bagpipe drone in the bass (a stereotypical reference to rustic music far removed from the genteel world of court and city). Laddie is apparently still working his way through the woods as Bruch makes a transition from his lively scherzo to the slow movement that follows without a break.
III. Andante sostenuto – This is the romantic core of the Fantasy and no doubt benefits from Bruch’s own experience writing for the voice (primarily known at the time as a choral composer, Bruch was nine when he wrote his very first piece, celebrating the birthday of his mother, a professional singer. The song here is a 19th-Century song (probably not technically a folksong), “I’m a’doun for lack o’Jonnie.”
IV. Finale: Allegro guerriero – The tempo indication here is a bit unusual and the only other time I’ve ever seen guerriero (“war-like”) used like this was in the finale of Mendelssohn’s Scottish Symphony. Not surprisingly, Bruch apparently wrote to a friend that’s where he found the expression and decided to use it himself. And why not? The tune here is based on an old battle song, “Hae tuti taiti,” more famous with different lyrics added by Robert Burns as “Scots wa hae wi Wallace bled” (Scots who have with Wallace bled”) [Wallace was a Scottish leader captured by the English in 1305 and drawn-and-quartered for treason against King Edward I]. Historically considered to have been sung at the Battle of Bannockburn under Robert the Bruce in 1314 and again by the Scottish troops fighting with their allies the French at the Siege of Orleans with Joan of Arc in 1429, it was long considered the unofficial Scottish anthem, later supplanted by the popularity of “Scotland the Brave.” At the end, the Laddie makes one more appearance, now presumably out of the woods, to help bring the Fantasy to a triumphant conclusion.
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So how did a German composer write a fantasy on Scottish folk songs for a Spanish violinist?
Pablo de Sarasate was already established as one of the leading violinists of his day when he met Max Bruch in 1871. Bruch completed his 1st Violin Concerto, the famous G Minor Concerto, in 1866 and revised it after an unsuccessful premiere with the help of the great violinist, Joseph Joachim (Friend of Brahms and a composer in his own right). It would eventually go on to become his most famous piece and one of the most popular concertos in the repertoire. So taken by Sarasate’s playing, Bruch wrote a second concerto for him, which they premiered in London in 1877 (the year, incidentally, Brahms wrote his violin concerto for Joachim).
A little over a year later, Bruch told a friend “Yesterday, when I thought vividly about Sarasate, the marvelous artistry of his playing re-emerged in me. I was lifted anew and I was able to write, in one night, almost half of the Scottish Fantasy that has been so long in my head."
When Bruch asked Sarasate for a meeting to collaborate on the new piece, knowing Sarasate had a keen interest in Scottish music, he was disappointed when Sarasate failed to respond, so he turned to Joachim instead who helped him with technical details and suggestions (he had done the same for Brahms but Brahms ignored every one of them). Bruch completed the work, then conducted the premiere with the orchestra he conducted in Liverpool but was upset by Joachim’s “poor performance” of the piece, claiming “he annihilated it.”
As a result, Bruch renewed his contact with Sarasate, they became friends again and then performed it together for the first time in London in 1883.
The score of the work, when it was published in 1880 (between the time he completed it and the premiere the following February), was “dedicated to my friend Pablo de Sarasate” but they didn’t reconcile till after the premiere, not performing it together for the first time till London in 1883. (I wonder what Bruch, an ardent conservative who favored Brahms over the modernists Wagner and Liszt, felt when their concert became a memorial tribute to the late Richard Wagner who’d died five weeks earlier?)
The official German title, as it appears on the score, is “Fantasie: für die Violine mit Orchester und Harfe unter freier Benutzung schottischer Volksmelodien, Op. 46.” or Fantasy for the Violin with Orchestra and Harp, then in much smaller print underneath, freely using Scottish folk melodies. When he performed it with Sarasate in London, it was listed on the program as “Concerto for Violin (Scotch).” At another concert in Breslau (now Wrocław in present-day Poland), also with Sarasate, it was called the “Third Violin Concerto (with free use of Scottish themes).” What eventually became Bruch’s Violin Concerto No. 3 (Op. 58) was completed in 1891.
When precisely the Scottish Fantasy became known as the “Scottish Fantasy,” I’m not sure. It did not catch on with other violinists, certainly not like his First Concerto did. The American violinist Maud Powell, who’d played Bruch’s 1st under Joachim’s baton in Berlin in 1883, included the Scottish Fantasy in her active repertoire. She also gave the American premieres of the Tchaikovsky and Sibelius concertos, and played the Dvořák concerto with the New York Philharmonic in Carnegie Hall under the composer’s supervision in 1894.
But by the early 20th Century the work had disappeared from the concert stage until Jascha Heifetz, then in his mid-40s, recorded it with William Steinberg and the RCA Victor Symphony in 1947. You can listen to it here transferred from the original 78rpm records. The sound isn’t great and the “breaks” when you’d change from one side to the next can be annoying – it took six sides to contain the whole work – but it gives you an idea of how people heard it before there were stereo LPs, digital CDs and modern day sound-file technology.
While Heifetz played it over 100 times and recorded it at least two more times in his career, even playing it live on TV in 1971 (which I got to see, much to the chagrin of my fraternity brothers who were missing a Star Trek re-run…), it eventually became part of the mainstream repertoire.
By the way, I remember being told by a friend of Scottish descent that “Scots” and “Scottish” are the preferred terms when referring to the People of Scotland: “Scotch,” he said, “is what we drink.”
I was reminded of this, seeing the reference to the “Scotch” Concerto, above. But then, in the folk song that’s the basis of Bruch’s finale, “Hae tuti taiti,” one of the lyrics used for this tune – several have been superimposed on it, including a poem by Robert Burns – contains the immortal refrain,
Fill
up
your bumpers high,
We’ll
drink a’ your barrels dry,
Out
upon him, fye! oh, fye!
That
winna do't again!
Slàinte!
– Dick Strawser
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