Scherzo from Symphony No. 2 for String Orchestra

John Corigliano composed his Second Symphony in 2000 on a commission from the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and it was first performed by the BSO the same year under the direction of Seiji Ozawa. For his string orchestra Corigliano specifies a minimum of 6 first violins, 5 seconds, 4 violas, 4 cellos, and 2 basses.

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Corigliano’s Second Symphony won the Pulitzer Prize in 2001; about the work as a whole, he writes: “Having proclaimed as a young composer that I would ‘never write a symphony,’ I look with some surprise at the premiere of my second. My thought then was that there were so many great symphonies in the repertoire that I could satisfy only my ego by writing yet another. Only the death of countless friends from AIDS prompted me to write in our largest orchestral form. Mahler once described writing a symphony as creating a world; my Symphony No. 1 was about world-scale tragedy and, I felt, needed a comparably epic form.

This second symphony has a different genesis. The Boston Symphony contacted my publisher with a request that I write a second symphony to honor the 100th anniversary of their justly famous Symphony Hall. At first I declined, stating my earlier reservations about writing in this form, and offered another kind of orchestral piece—but they were quite insistent.

“I started thinking about what I could do that would feel truly symphonic, and my thoughts turned to the String Quartet I composed for the farewell tour of the Cleveland Quartet in 1996.

“Two things about the quartet-as-symphony intrigued me. Firstly, the Quartet, as with the Symphony No. 1, drew from very intense human feelings. The symphony dealt with inadvertent loss: death. The quartet, written as it was as the valedictory piece for the disbanding Cleveland Quartet, dealt with chosen loss: farewell.

“Secondly, I knew even as I was composing it that the string writing had acquired a very orchestral quality. Just as Beethoven’s Grosse Fugue stretches quartet playing past its limits, so does my quartet stretch the players’ range, dynamics, emotional energy and technique. And, interestingly, the Beethoven is often played by orchestral strings in the concert hall.

“Once I decided that the quartet was indeed ripe for orchestral expansion I wrestled with how that should best be accomplished. Rescoring it for full orchestra—or even strings and percussion—would certainly expand the piece’s timbral palette. But wouldn’t that in fact diminish the intensity of the work, even as its dynamic range widened? Part of the intensity of strings derives from their relative limited (say, compared to brass) dynamic range. Fortissimos must be achieved by intensity, not volume. If even the Grosse Fugue were redone for full orchestra, tension would yield to bombast. So my final choice was to leave the work in the strings, rewriting it when necessary and adding to it when the opportunity arose. And, to come full circle, this also satisfied my reservations about writing another symphony in a repertoire of masterpieces: the string symphony is another animal entirely and there aren’t many of them.”

“Architecturally, the 35-minute work is in five movements that bear a superficial resemblance to the arch-form principles of Bartók’s Fourth Quartet (Movements I and V are related and movements II and IV are related, with III as a central ‘night music’), but in fact all five movements of the symphony are also united by similar motives and thematic content. Specifically, the symphony is based upon a motto composed of even repetitions of a single tone, and a sequence of disjunct minor thirds. There are also four pitch centers recurring throughout the work: C, C-sharp, G and G-sharp.”

Corigliano describes the second movement Scherzo of the Symphony: “Slashing evenly-repeated chords for full strings begin the movement and are counterpoised against a suddenly-faster solo quartet playing in a manic, almost pop-like manner. They alternate and build into a rapid 16th-note passage using both the repeated single-tone motive and the disjunct minor thirds. A recapitulation of the slashing chords leads to a gentle trio: a chaconne based upon the chordal fragments in the prelude is played by a concertino group, while the other players provide lyrical counterpoint. A return to the opening material and an even larger and wilder recapitulation of earlier material brings the movement to a frenetic end.”