Légende op.17
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Product ID: Sc4 05037
By Henryk Wieniawski
Publisher:
Schott Edition
Arranger:
August Wilhelmj
Genre:
Romantic Era
Line Up:
Violin & Piano (Solo: Violin)
Level: 5
Set of parts
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About this item
Légende Op. 17 is a showpiece by the Polish violin virtuoso Henryk Wieniawski, written for solo violin and orchestral accompaniment, though it is often performed using a piano reduction as a substitute for the orchestra. It is estimated to have been written in about 1860, though the exact date is unknown.[1]
Wieniawski’s Légende was instrumental in helping to secure his engagement to Isabella Hampton. Initially, Isabella’s parents did not approve of their daughter’s engagement to Wieniawski, but after they heard the piece, they were so impressed that they offered the young couple their blessing, and they were married in 1860.
Structure and Analysis
The showpiece can be divided into three main sections, loosely following an ABA format. Légende Op. 17 is in G minor, but the middle section is in the major mode. It is in 3/4 time. The mood is set from the start with a low melody in the horns, accompanied by delicate pizzicato (plucking) in the string sections. After the brief orchestral introduction, the solo violin part enters, with a soft, simple melodic line. As the piece progresses, Wieniawski intensifies the music by having the orchestral strings switch from pizzicato to arco (bowed) and by adding embellishments and turns to the solo violin part. Wieniawski further intensifies the solo violin part through usage of double stops. Within the first section, the main theme repeats itself, with the same orchestral music of the beginning of the piece serving as an interlude-like return to the repeat of the violin theme. In the repeat of the theme, the orchestral texture is varied slightly, with much more usage of pizzicato in the strings. At the end of the first section, the violin part imitates the opening melody of the horn section.
A significant cadence is reached on the tonic G, and the second section begins, this time in the major mode. The overall mood of the piece changes here, as the meter changes to duple and the tempo increases. The orchestra plays a march-like motif underneath the solo violin part, which has a swift, moving part full of double stops and chords. The playful mood is further enhanced by the violinist's usage of slides. Throughout this section, Wieniawski includes brief passages in the minor mode to foreshadow the eventual return to it in the last section. The orchestral and solo violin parts both create a long crescendo as the musical line ascends and intensifies. At the climax, the violin plays a rapid descending chromatic scale, and upon reaching the bottom, the music transitions back into the opening minor theme, again in 3/4 time.
At the start of the third section, the opening horn melody returns. After another brief orchestral interlude, the violin theme of the beginning returns. The violin part recapitulates the melody, and then executes scalar and arpeggio passages all the while making a decrescendo, ending softly on a high G (three octaves above middle C).
Instrumentation
Vioiin
Piano
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Composer
Henryk Wieniawski
Henryk Wieniawski was born in Lublin, Congress Poland (Russian Empire). His father, Tobiasz Pietruszka (Wolf Helman), was the son of a Jewish barber named Herschel Meyer Helman, from the Jewish Lublin neighborhood of Wieniawa, when barbers were also practicing dentists, healers, and bloodletters. Wolf Helman, also known as Tobiasz Pietruszka, changed his name to Tadeusz Wieniawski, taking on the name of his neighborhood to blend into his Polish environment better. Prior to obtaining his medical degree, he had converted to Catholicism. He married Regina Wolff, the daughter of a noted Jewish physician from Warsaw, and out of this marriage, Henryk was born.
Henryk's talent for playing the violin was recognized early, and in 1843 he was accepted by the Paris Conservatoire, where special exceptions were made to admit him, as he wasn't French and was only eight years old. He attended the Conservatoire from 1843 to 1846 and returned for another year in 1849. After graduation, he toured extensively and gave many recitals, where he was often accompanied by his brother Józef on piano.[2] In 1847, he published his first opus, a Grand Caprice Fantastique, the start of a catalogue of 24 opus numbers.
When his engagement to Isabella Hampton was opposed by her parents, Wieniawski wrote Légende, Op. 17; this work helped her parents change their mind, and the couple married in 1860.
At the invitation of Anton Rubinstein, Wieniawski moved to St. Petersburg, where he lived from 1860 to 1872, taught many violin students and led the Russian Musical Society's orchestra and string quartet. From 1872 to 1874, Wieniawski toured the United States with Rubinstein. Wieniawski replaced Henri Vieuxtemps as violin professor at the Conservatoire Royal de Bruxelles in 1875.
During his residence in Brussels, Wieniawski's health declined, and he often had to stop in the middle of his concerts. He started a tour of Russia in 1879 but was unable to complete it, and was taken to a hospital in Odessa after a concert. On 14 February 1880, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's patroness Nadezhda von Meck took him into her home and provided him with medical attention.[3][4] His friends also arranged a benefit concert to help provide for his family. He died in Moscow a few weeks later from a heart attack and was interred in the Powązki Cemetery in Warsaw.
His daughter Régine Wieniawski, born in Brussels the year before his death, also became a composer. She published her early works as "Irène Wieniawska", but after marrying Sir Aubrey Dean Paul and becoming a British subject, she used the pseudonym "Poldowski".[5] Another daughter, Henriette, would go on to marry Joseph Holland Loring in 1904, who was among the victims of the Titanic disaster.
Wieniawski was a player in the Beethoven Quartet Society in London, where he also performed on viola.
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