Ravinia 2026 Issue 5

Seeing a commercial opportunity, Beethoven rushed to compose a set of 10 variations on a popular duet from Salieri’s opera. “La stessa, la stessissima” (“The very same, the exact same”) comes from Act 1, scene 5, when Alice and Meg realize that Falstaff has sent them identical love letters, with nothing altered except their names. Beethoven’s variations place greater emphasis on the duet’s harmonic foundation than its vocal dialogue. With the exception of the minor-key fifth variation, all are in B-flat major. The com- poser’s quick work paid off: Artaria published the complete score in February 1799, with a ded- ication to the Countess Anna Louise Barbara von Keglevich (known as “Babette”), his piano pupil and later dedicatee of the Piano Concerto No. 1 in C major. On a local note, Chicago Opera Theater recent- ly presented the Chicago premiere of Salieri’s Falstaff, ossia Le tre burle in December 2025, in a production staged by Robin Guarino and conducted by Christine Brandes. ROBERT SCHUMANN (1810–1856) Carnaval (Scènes mignonnes sur quatre notes) , op. 9 Infatuation for a fellow piano student residing in the Leipzig household of Friedrich Wieck in- spired Schumann to compose Carnaval , op. 9, between 1833 and 1835. Schumann described the young enchantress, Ernestine, as “daughter of a rich Bohemian, Baron von Fricken—her mother was a Gräfin Zettwitz—a wonderfully pure, childlike character, delicate and thoughtful. … She is remarkably musical—everything, in a word, that I might wish my wife to be. … If the future asked me whom I would choose I would answer with decision, ‘This one.’ ” Ernestine and Robert were secretly betrothed, but, when Schumann later discovered that she was the bar- on’s illegitimate daughter, he deserted her. A collection of 21 short piano pieces, Carna- val bears the revealing subtitle “Delicate Scenes on Four Pitches.” Schumann based every Ernestine von Fricken (c. 1835) movement (except the Préambule ) on a four- note motive derived from the name of Ernes- tine’s hometown, Asch. The corresponding mu- sical acronym contains the pitches A, E-flat (Es, in German), C, and B-natural (H, in German). Rearranging these pitches to SCHA uncovers the musical letters in his own name, SCHumAnn. Three permutations of this motive are revealed in the Sphinxes’ silent riddles, which the pianist is to read but not perform. Several movements personify great Romantic musicians—Chopin, Paganini, and Schumann’s own alter-egos, the introverted Eusebius and gregarious Florestan. Stock characters drawn from Italian commedia dell’arte suggest a hidden romance: the lovers Pantalon and Colombine are chaperoned by Arlequin (Colombine’s father) and the clownish Pierrot. Ernestine emerges from among the dancers as Estrella. The young Clara Wieck, Schumann’s future wife, makes a cameo appearance as Chiarina. Schumann con- cludes with a brief invective against the “Philis- tines” of the musical world in the March of the Society of David against the Philistines . CLAUDE DEBUSSY (1862–1918) Feux d’artifice (Fireworks) from Préludes , Book II “My soul is as romantic as a Chopin Ballade!” wrote the 31-year-old Debussy to his friend Er- nest Chausson. Debussy imagined himself a direct musical descendant of the Polish pia- nist and composer whose career thrived within early-19th-century Parisian salons. As a boy, Debussy studied piano with Mme. Antoinette Maurté de Fleurville, the mother-in-law of poet Paul Verlaine, who claimed to have been a student of Chopin. Her technical anecdotes remained with Debussy throughout his life. More than once, he invoked Maurté de Fleurvi- lle’s name when defending the “Chopinesque” practice of sparse pedaling. This devotion to Chopin extended to editing his piano works for the French publisher Durand. Debussy demonstrated his compositional rev- erence for Chopin in two books of 12 preludes (1910 and 1912–13) and a collection of études (1915), categories ennobled by the Polish pia- nist. In the preludes, Debussy differed from his predecessor by assigning programmatic titles, which appeared at the end of each prelude, as if to encourage an aural journey before revealing the literary or artistic inspiration. He did not arrange the preludes according to technical or tonal considerations, as Chopin had done, but with character contrast in mind. Having announced a Book I of Préludes , Debussy committed himself to providing a com- panion volume, which he completed between September 1912 and April 1913, building on two previously existing preludes. Two musical ad- vancements in this second book involved an increased complexity of harmonic vocabulary and a new preference for octatonic scales (alter- nating whole steps and half steps) over the whole-tone scales of the first book. The primary display of fireworks in ear- ly-20th-century Paris took place on La Fête Nationale (a.k.a., Bastille Day), a national hol- iday legally instituted on July 6, 1880, to honor the storming of the Bastille on July 14, 1789, and the Fête de la Fédération one year later. The use of fireworks dated back more than a century to the multiday celebration surround- ing the original Fête de la Fédération. “Feux d’artifice” (Fireworks) likely reflects Debussy’s presence at the annual display, since it crackles and explodes with the sounds of pyrotechnics. ALEXANDER SCRIABIN (1872–1915) Two selections from Eight Etudes, op. 42 Scriabin’s financial indebtedness to his publish- er, Mitrofan P. Belaieff, reached an alarming point by January 1, 1903. According to Belaieff ’s accounting, payouts to the composer over the previous three years had totaled 5,450 rubles, while income from the sales of his composi- tions netted a scant 2,400 rubles. Unable to car- ry the debt any longer, Balaieff informed Scri- abin that no further advances were forthcoming until he submitted new compositions valued at 3,000 rubles. The pianist-composer found himself utterly trapped by competing profes- sional obligations. Teaching and inspection re- sponsibilities at the Moscow Conservatory and Moscow School of the Order of St. Catherine consumed all his daytime hours, “in a word, music from two o’clock in the afternoon to mid- night.” Scriabin composed through the night “as though in defiance.” Still, more time was need- ed to meet his obligations to Belaieff. He re- signed from St. Catherine in 1903 and, not long after, from the Moscow Conservatory—amid a scandal involving an affair with his 20-year-old pupil Tatiana Fyodorovna de Schloezer—to de- vote himself fully to composition. Claude Debussy (1909) RAVINIA.ORG • RAVINIAMAGAZINE 83