Today's listening: Vasilij Kalinnikov – Symphony No. 1 in a minor sol
by Marialuisa Veneziano
Before you start music
There are composers who seem to have had all the time in the world.
Long career. Ten years of research. The possibility of correcting, rethinking, starting again.
And then there is Vasilij Kalinnikov.
Born in 1866, died in 1901, a few days before thirty-five years. A life crossed by economic difficulties, illness and talent that still managed to find his voice.
When he composes his First Symphony, between 1894 and 1895, he is in Jalta, Crimea, where he moved to hope that the climate can alleviate tuberculosis.
We do not imagine, however, a music necessarily folded on suffering.
That would be too simple.
And a little unfair.
Because when the orchestra attacks, something surprising happens.
The melody opens.
Breathe.
He stretches.
It seems to want to go through a much larger space than life has given its author.
And here comes the first question of our Sunday:
can a man know deeply the fragility and, at the same time, write a music that seems in love with life?
Kalinnikov does not give us a philosophical answer.
He gives us a symphony.
And maybe that's much better.
🎧 Open listening. Then he keeps reading
This page is designed to be read with music next door.
To accompany our guide, I propose the recording of the USSR State Symphony Orchestra conducted by Evgenij Svetlanov, available on YouTube with the synchronized score. It is particularly useful because it allows you to visually follow the orchestral writing, in addition to listening to it.
(click on the black arrow to make the listening appear)
Start the music.
And for a few moments don't try to understand everything.
Just let the first melody reach you.
Because she's the one who's coming back.
And when he does, he won't be exactly the same.
Inside the score
When four movements become one story
The First Symphony is in a minor sol and is divided into the four movements of the nineteenth century symphonic tradition. But its most significant building principle is the cyclical form: the thematic material of previous movements returns to the Final, undergoing transformations that give the whole composition a sense of unity.
A fundamental detail: we pass from the initial minor to the final major.
It is not enough, alone, to tell the whole musical story, but it is an important element of the expressive journey.
The shade preserves its fundamental.
Changes the way the fundamental one is illuminated.
And this is exactly what I want to invite you to listen.
I. Allegro Moderate
The birth of a melody
From the beginning to 14:12
The symphony begins without a long introduction.
The main theme is presented by the arches in unison.
It is a wide, cantabile melody, with an immediate recognizable profile, which recalls the breath of the Russian melodic tradition.
We have no impression that the orchestra is simply announcing an idea.
It looks like he found a voice.
Observe the way the phrase stretches: it does not proceed through small isolated fragments, but builds an arc that asks for space to develop.
Writing lets emerge that quality that we often associate with the great Russian symphony: a cantability capable of preserving an almost popular dimension without sacrificing culture.
But Kalinnikov is not limited to repeating a pleasant melody.
The first movement adopts the form-sound.
After the presentation of the first theme group, there is a second idea, more relaxed and lyrical, also entrusted to the arches, with the coloristic contribution of the wood. It follows a development in which the material is reworked also through counterpointing procedures.
Here it is important to distinguish two levels.
The melody involves us emotionally.
The form, however, organizes that involvement in time.
The listener recognizes, loses, finds, waits.
In other words, it begins to remember.
And a symphony that can make us remember something while we are still listening to it has already established a relationship with us.
🎧 Listen to this.
During the first movement, try to distinguish three moments:
- The initial theme display: store the profile.
- The arrival of the second idea: known how the character changes, especially in greater melodic distension.
- The return of the initial material: listen to what was recognizable after development.
Don't just look for a beautiful melody.
Look for a melody that can become a memory.
Because the Final will need it.
II. Commode Andante
The delicacy of what continues to live
From 14:12 to 21:41
If the first movement is a great landscape, the second seems to narrow the frame suddenly.
We are no longer in front of a horizon.
We're close to something.
Maybe a person.
Maybe a memory.
The Andante opens with an obstinate of the harp and the first violins, accompanied by descending agreements that change color through the distribution between the different orchestral sections.
The English horn contributes to the initial atmosphere; then the oboe has a wide and tender melody, supported by the pizzicati of the arches.
Let's stop here.
Because this is an orchestration lesson.
The obstinate is not only a form of accompaniment.
Creates a sound environment in which the theme can appear.
It is like a light that remains constant while objects, crossing it, acquire different colors.
The composer uses the transparency of the staff to make us feel every instrumental input.
The oboe must not force itself.
Just start singing.
And yet we are not in front of a simple contemplative page.
The melody is expanded, resumed and transformed; the movement crosses contrasting harmonic regions before rediscovering its initial atmosphere.
The tenderness here is not the absence of tension.
It consists in the possibility to cross it without losing the ability to sing.
And maybe that's why the movement moves us.
Because he doesn't want to convince us that everything is simple.
It makes us feel something delicate that continues to exist even when harmony moves away from its stability.
🎧 Listen to this.
Focus on the entrance of the oboe.
Then pay attention to what happens when the melody is resumed and distributed differently between the instruments.
Don't just listen to the notes.
Listen to the way things change when the voice changes.
Keep this theme in your memory.
In the Final we will find it in an amazing outfit.
And there we will understand how Kalinnikov is capable of transforming an idea through the orchestration.
III. I'm kidding. Allegro not too much
Life, fortunately, does not always proceed at the tip of feet
From 21:41 to 29:23
And here we are at the third movement.
After so much intimacy, Kalinnikov decides that it is time to move.
The orchestra changes attitude.
The rhythm acquires energy.
The writing recalls the character of popular dance, with accents and figurations that give the movement a very Russian imprint.
The Scherzo is not, however, a purely decorative episode.
Its structure is ternary: an energetic initial section, a contrasting central trio and the return of the Scherzo. The Trio also has its own internal joint, with a liric melody entrusted to the wood, especially to the oboe.
Again, Kalinnikov works on the contrast.
Movement and suspension.
Energy and singing.
Dance and melancholy.
And it is interesting to note that you do not need to continually invent new material to get variety.
Wealth is born above all from the treatment of ideas.
The same orchestra that just before seemed to contemplate an interior landscape now possesses an almost bodily energy.
And here we can give ourselves a little observation.
Symphonic music is often presented as a spiritually high activity, to be tackled possibly with a very serious expression.
Kalinnikov, fortunately, reminds us that spiritual elevation can also feel like dancing.
🎧 Listen to this.
It identifies the contrast between the external sections and the central trio.
When the initial material returns, ask yourself:
Do I perceive it exactly as before?
Or did the lyrical bracket change the way I listen to that same energy?
It's a simple question.
But it takes us to the heart of the entire symphony.
Returning does not necessarily mean repeating.
IV. Final: Allegro Moderate
When memory becomes future
From 29:23 to the conclusion
And here we are at the decisive point.
The Final begins with the theme material of the opening of the symphony.
The melody we had heard at first is back here.
But now it is in a different context: Kalinnikov introduces new ideas and recalls material from the previous movements, integrating it into a construction that leads to the conclusion in greater depth.
This procedure has a precise name.
Cyclic form.
A technique that crosses the romantic symphony and that allows to establish thematic relationships between different movements.
But stopping at the technical definition would be reductive.
Because what happens in the Final is not a simple demonstration of compositional skills.
It is a change of perspective.
Regarding the second movement.
That melody entrusted to the oboe seemed to belong to a delicate, almost private world.
Now listen to what happens when some previous materials are taken from orchestral groups, until they are proclaimed by the brass.
The melodic idea is not erased.
It's enlarged.
What was intimate before acquires a collective dimension.
It is a transformation especially timbre and dynamic, as well as formal.
The composer changes the sound body through which a theme is perceived.
As if a thought, born in solitude, suddenly found the possibility of being pronounced before the world.
And here music offers us one of his most fascinating paradoxes.
You don't always need to change your mind to change your meaning.
Sometimes it's enough the same idea to experience different experiences.
🎧 Listen to this: the great return
In the Final he looks for three moments.
First, recognize the theme of opening. You will notice that the composer wants to bring you back to the point where everything started.
Second, listen to the return of the lyric material. Pay attention to the different orchestral distribution and the way in which the timbric expansion changes its character.
Third: follow the last progression towards the conclusion. Do not listen to it only as an increase in volume: observe how the thematic material and the shade contribute to building the sense of arrival.
This is where the final sol major assumes its expressive function.
It's not just a bright deal.
It is the point of arrival of a path.
The note remains
There are melodies that come back because we haven't finished understanding them yet.
Perhaps this is what makes Kalinnikov's First Symphony so interesting.
Its thematic material does not remain immovable.
Cross movements, harmonies, logs, instruments.
Whenever he returns, he forces us to listen to him again.
Isn't that what happens to us?
We return to the places where we were happy.
We listen to a song that belonged to another season.
We find a person after many years.
We think we're meeting something we already know.
And instead we find that we have changed in the meantime.
The place is the same.
The song is the same.
Maybe even the words are the same.
But we're not the same listeners anymore.
Kalinnikov musically builds something similar.
The initial melody is preserved, but the context in which reappearance transforms our perception.
We must not necessarily interpret this path as a victory over suffering.
That would be too convenient.
The composer's life reminds us that reality does not always have a major Final.
The symphony, however, can offer us something that reality does not guarantee.
A form.
A chance to recompose what seemed lost.
A way to find a sense of continuity through memory.
And maybe that's what music is for.
Not only to tell what happens to us.
But to show us how the things we have lived can continue to transform within us.
🔎 One thing to know
A first performance to remember
Symphony No. 1 was presented in Kyiv in 1897, under the direction of Aleksandr Vinogradsky.
Success was such that the public asked the bis of the second and third movement. The composition was also performed in other European cities.
Let's picture the scene.
A young composer, sick, away from the great musical centers.
A symphony that finally reaches the audience.
And the listeners who, after hearing two movements, ask to listen again.
Today, the bis of a whole symphonic movement could seriously challenge the organization of a concert season.
But at that moment it had to be something extraordinary.
Not just a success.
The confirmation that that music, born in such difficult conditions, had found someone willing to welcome it.
There is also a later curiosity: in 1943 Arturo Toscanini directed the First Symphony with the NBC Symphony Orchestra, contributing to its diffusion through an American radio broadcast.
Another proof of the ability of the score to cross different eras and contexts.
Take him with you
When the last deal is over, try to remember the first.
That initial melody.
His breath.
Its apparent simplicity.
Then think about the path you have completed.
It passed through the development of the first movement.
He left room for the delicacy of the Andante.
He met the energy of Scherzo.
Finally, she's back.
Not to take us back.
But to show us how far we have gone.
Maybe this is the best lesson in the symphony.
Not everything that comes back leads us back to the past.
Some things come back just to allow us to move on.
A music.
A person.
A memory.
Part of us who thought we were lost.
And that one day we recognize, almost without waiting for it, in a new form.
Kalinnikov had no long life.
But he left us a music capable of suggesting that life is not the only measure of existence.
It also counts what we can make resound.
What we deliver.
What keeps reaching someone when we can't do it anymore.
His first symphony ends up on a greater scale.
The melody finds its fulfillment.
And we, who followed her, can take away a little musical certainty.
Sometimes life does not return what we have lost.
But he can teach us to listen differently to what is left.
🎧 One last listening
Before closing the page, go back to the beginning of the symphony.
Only listen to the first theme.
You know him now.
You know where he's coming.
You know that melody will go through time and return transformed.
And maybe it'll look different.
It is the small miracle of cyclic form: the last page can change the way we listen to the first.
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