Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet Overture: 3 themes and Shakespearean connections!

00:00:00

John Banther: I'm John Banther, and this is Classical Breakdown. From WETA Classical in Washington, we're your guide to classical music. In this episode, I'm joined by WETA Classical's resident Shakespeare enthusiast, James Jacobs, and we're talking all about Tchaikovsky's Romeo and Juliet Overture. It has one of the most famous melodies for sure, but there is so much more to discover. We analyze the themes Tchaikovsky chose, James pairs text from the play with musical moments, and we find Shakespearean effects that Tchaikovsky uses in the music. Plus we learn which famous actor James shared the stage with in a production of Romeo and Juliet, and we read your reviews from Apple Podcasts.

Oh, Tchaikovsky, Tchaikovsky, where for art thou Tchaikovsky? You know, James, even though Tchaikovsky and Romeo, they each have three syllables, it's just not quite the same. It doesn't land as well with Tchaikovsky. I feel like someone may say, " Gesundheit," after I say that. This is a very popular work. It has one of the most popular or most recognizable melodies, and I think that's for pretty much anyone, whether they like classical music or not, because it's been used so much in commercials and movies and cartoons, whether they're interested in music or not. And there is so much more as we'll discover to this piece than just that, well, big theme and Bugs Bunny- type moments.

But despite its popularity today, it wasn't a sensation when it first premiered in 1869. Tchaikovsky wrote at the dinner after the performance he was hoping for some kind of kind words or appreciation, but no one said a word about the overture. He went on to make a second revision for the following year, and then he made a third one, and then the final one in 1880, and that's the one we enjoy today. But let's talk Shakespeare for a moment, James, because for the uninitiated it might seem like, well, Tchaikovsky, this Russian composer, and then these plays by Shakespeare, he loves him. What's the connection here, and how much was Tchaikovsky really obsessed?

00:02:06

James Jacobs: Oh, he loved Shakespeare, and part of that is just him being Russian. In 19th century Russia, Shakespeare was extremely popular, his plays were as produced as much as they were in English- speaking countries. But Tchaikovsky took it to the next level and frequently while traveling, the only book he would take would be a volume of Shakespeare's complete plays. But I would also say that he, like many composers, had a special place for this play, Romeo and Juliet.

It's interesting because no one would call this Shakespeare's greatest play. It's construction is a big mess, Romeo is an impossible role to act believably, there are these long expository speeches that just stop everything dead in its tracks, and that whole business with the sleeping potion is like bad science fiction. But there's something about the passion of it all that overrides all of that.

Its messiness adds to its power because it captures the messiness and the danger of adolescence in a way that no other work of art does as well as this play. Shakespeare managed to convey how it must feel to meet someone and live out your whole life with them in three days, which is a powerful metaphor for that dangerous and exciting time when you're suddenly as tall as your parents and you have just enough life skills to function independently, but without any wisdom or experience and with a lot of hormones and peer pressure.

And this is when you're a danger to yourself and others, and every action you take and decision you make has the potential to alter the course of your life. And I think there's an analogous place in the development of an artist. It's not when they're a teenager, but when they've been active for a few years and need to feel that what they do matters and to show that to the world. And it could be any time, usually between late 20s and early 40s when they need to make that big messy statement that breaks all the rules. And in fact, Shakespeare wrote this play in his early 30s. Tchaikovsky wrote the first version of this piece when he was 29, but then revised it throughout his 30s.

And then Berlioz wrote his Romeo and Juliet in his 30s, and Bernstein wrote West Side Story in his 30s, which is his version of this play. And Prokofiev, well, he had some issues that prolonged his musical adolescence, and he wrote his Romeo and Juliet in his early 40s, but it had the same relationship to his body of work. And for that matter, Beethoven was 29 when he wrote his first string quartet and he said that the slow movement was inspired by the tomb scene in Romeo and Juliet. It's a rite of passage, and we can hear that in every bar of this piece, that he kept reworking it so that he put everything he had into this piece.

00:04:30

John Banther: Wow. I feel like I should be writing some kind of Shakespeare and Romeo and Juliet while I still have time now in my 30s.

00:04:37

James Jacobs: Come on, John.

00:04:38

John Banther: And it's so great how Shakespeare takes you on that full ride you just described, and you're not even totally aware of it. And something you said at the very beginning of that, which I read and found so funny, Tchaikovsky would travel with volumes of Shakespeare, and I even read that on a long tour he was missing one or forgot one and was writing his brother desperately, " I am missing one, you have to send it," or something like that. I mean pick up a newspaper, Tchaikovsky, you'll survive without-

00:05:06

James Jacobs: He's probably already read it 10 times anyway.

00:05:08

John Banther: That's true. So Tchaikovsky gives us three big themes that align with Shakespeare's play, Romeo and Juliet. And the first theme happens right from the beginning in this chorale and the clarinets and bassoons. This is the theme for Friar Laurence, and we're going to hear it a couple of times in different ways throughout the overture. In this whole opening, you hear it's monorhythmic or homorhythmic, they're all playing the same rhythm, moving to each note together. Much in the same way, James, when I think of monks chanting and walking along.

00:05:46

James Jacobs: Yeah. Exactly. It really evokes that cloistered environment that you hear in those Franciscan Friars.

00:06:00

John Banther: And then you hear a clear contrast a moment later when the music continues and the strings start to enter one by one. And he really leans in the opposite direction here as now it seems like nobody is moving together or at the same time. So it creates some uncertainty, some tension, and then later I think he adds in the harp to give us some misty dreaminess. I don't know, lull us into the story that we've heard so many times. But, James, already in the music, are there any Shakespearean aspects to this already that we may not know? I'm wondering if audiences would've also picked up on this aspect right away, a chorale and then something different?

00:06:40

James Jacobs: Well, the great thing about an overture is that you don't necessarily have to tell the story in chronological order. In the play we don't meet Friar Laurence until act two, scene three, when so much has already happened, and that's at least 45 minutes into the play. But what he says when he first appears doesn't really fit the music, " The gray- eyed morn smiles on the frowning night, checkering the eastern clouds with streaks of light."

When I hear those portentous chords in the woodwinds at the beginning, I'm not hearing anything smiling, but it is interesting that the weather comes back at the end of the play because what this music sounds like is the last speech of the play is spoken by the prince in response to Friar Laurence's long narration of what happened. " The sun, for sorrow, will not show his head. Go hence, to have more talk of these sad things. Some shall be pardoned, and some punished for never was a story of more woe than this of Juliet and her Romeo."

And that to me sounds like the beginning of this piece. That Tchaikovsky is not starting at the beginning, but at the ending of the play, and the rest of it is a flashback, like a story Friar Laurence is narrating. So perhaps the way to think of the beginning is as a prologue, a man about to tell this tragic story of what already happened in which he played a role that he feels guilty about. And I think you can hear that guilt in the woodwinds too, like he could have done something else, he could have done more that could have saved these poor crazy kids' lives and he screwed up.

And by the way, it's interesting that he is a friar because that helps date the story. At one point he says, " Holy St. Francis." The first order of St. Francis was established in the 13th century, but those first friars were instructed to live in poverty and beg for food while they performed their good works, whereas Friar Laurence is a gardener and an apothecary and a therapist, and he holds office hours, and he knows all the powerful people. He performs weddings, he's probably a notary public. He seems to be living comfortably and have some power in the community.

So this presents a contradiction because Shakespeare's source material for this story puts it in the 14th century when it was plausible to have a walled Italian city state being dominated by two families. That whole scenario would've been to Shakespeare's time what the Wild West is to us. But the kind of friar that Friar Laurence was could not have existed much before Shakespeare's own time. He's a renaissance character in a medieval story.

Friars aren't monks, they aren't priests, they can perform marriages, but obviously giving Juliet that potion and trying to plan her escape with Romeo was way out of line, and it's possible that we also hear in those opening chords a man realizing that he's about to lose everything. He would've certainly been excommunicated for what he does in the play, and the prince probably would've done to him what he did to Romeo, which is to banish him for crimes that someone else could have executed him for.

00:09:33

John Banther: Wow, that is so interesting. And what a way to hear this. I mean we've all heard this so many times, this overture, and what you were saying there, it almost makes me think it's like the Friar's breaking the fourth wall at the beginning with the chorale, " Here is this terrible tale, I wish I could have done something different." That adds so much to it. And Friar Laurence's chorale, it comes and goes. It returns especially here with pizzicato accompaniment in the strings that really build in volume and come down, very Tchaikovsky- esque and how he's teasing us musically.

And with the pizzicato, it almost sounds a little sneaky to me, James, in a way, like the friar is off, he's in society, he's not cloistered away, but he's doing all these things in secret. He's getting the bottle, he's getting the herbs or whatever it is for the potion for that thing, and I think that's all here in the music. Tchaikovsky, is really great with percussion in this, and he's also very efficient with percussion as we know.

One aspect here I love that makes it very theatrical is his use of timpani, sneaking it in with this long roll that slowly gets louder, and it adds a chaos to the sound. Then a huge, big solo moment, it's really thunderous, and it feels Shakespearean to me because it's so dramatic. And I read that while Shakespeare was really into special effects and to do things like lightning, there might be beating of drums or rolling a cannonball around on the wood floor to make something happen.

00:11:06

James Jacobs: Yeah, absolutely. In fact, we're celebrating the 400th anniversary of the First Folio this year. And the very first line in the very first play in the First Folio, which is The Tempest, is that a tempestuous noise is heard. That's the first thing out of the gate. It's not dialogue, it's not he's on a ship, there's no visual cues. It's just what we hear and what we hear is the sound of thunder.

But it is true that sometimes they got out of hand. And during Shakespeare's very last play, which was a collaboration with John Fletcher, was Henry VIII, and at one point a cannon went off as they would do during those English history plays, and it misfired and it burned The Globe Theater to the ground, which is sad on so many levels.

00:11:55

John Banther: But that's the danger of theater.

00:11:57

James Jacobs: Yeah, great to have that thrill.

00:11:59

John Banther: So, this sets up the confrontation between Montagues and Capulets, and I think Tchaikovsky sets this scene here even before we fully realize it because he gives us this image of opposing forces. He makes them pretty clear right away with winds and strings, alternating chords, getting into the big section here, which is our second theme, which I just call the fight theme or our fight scene, if you will, lots of whirling and twisting lines, violence, racing.

I mean it sounds like an absolute brawl. There's a bunch of little motifs you can listen to and hear how they change a little bit. One, I would say to really listen for in particular is this string of two 16th notes with an 8th note. Because one section will do it and then another will do it in a different register, like very high, and it's like two sides arguing and shouting at each other.

00:12:55

James Jacobs: When I hear that passion of Tchaikovsky, I'm thinking about my own experience. I was in a production of Romeo and Juliet when I was 20 years old at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, in which, actually, dropping a little bit of a name, Kyle Maclachlan played Romeo. That was his first big role. And I was one of the musicians in the play, but during the opening scene, I had this big stick that I was supposed to use to break down people's sword fights and that sort of thing because I was an officer of the law and I had my one line, which was, " Clubs, bills, partisans, strike, beat them down."

00:13:31

John Banther: Beautiful.

00:13:32

James Jacobs: And I couldn't wear my glasses during that scene because that would've been too... So I was practically blind, wandering, and all these swords were going and plastic fruits and vegetables were being thrown. So the terror of that moment that I lived for 32 times on stage, it comes back to me whenever I hear pam paradam, pam pam, pam.

00:13:56

John Banther: So the Montagues, the Capulets, they're fighting, but they tire themselves out. The fighting slowly winds down. And that's why I mentioned that little bit before the dagedam, dagedam, dagedam motif, because you hear it here, but it's slowing down. It's getting softer in volume and also intensity. But is there anything here, James, because when I hear it, it sounds obvious. Two sides fighting. We get that. But is there anything extra Shakespearean in how they're doing it? I'm thinking like that timpani moment from earlier.

00:14:29

James Jacobs: Well, yeah. Well, I think that, as you said, whenever you hear those drums, it is evocative of the way that Shakespeare used drums, and Shakespeare used timpani. And it had a dual meaning because it was ceremonial, to get the troops in line as the parades would go by, but it was also a call to arms, and it also represented arms in the play. And I think one of the things that's so radical to me about this fight scene is that part where the orchestra goes pam pam, pam pam.

And it seems completely random, and it really represents the chaos of that moment. And it's something that Shakespeare depicts really well, right from the beginning is that no one planned this fight. And there were a lot of Montagues and Capulets, just everyday citizens that thought that the feud was ancient history, and yet it was still being perpetrated by many people within those. And all it took was someone biting their thumb at someone.

00:15:35

John Banther: And then we get this moment where Tchaikovsky just lets us bathe in the tonality for a minute. This feels like a real palate cleanser. And it goes along with how I often say Tchaikovsky is fantastic with pacing. He knows how to give you huge moments, the right amount of time for recovery and how to prepare you for the next section. And I think that's what he does here.

And it prepares us beautifully for the first playing of our unforgettable love theme, which is our third theme. And it's played first by English horn and also violas, but it's very subdued here. This isn't very outward reaching, James, they're running to each other in a field of flowers. This feels more inward. You're admiring your beloved from afar. And the strings are muted in this section too, right?

00:16:25

James Jacobs: Oh, yeah. It's a completely different tonality, and also tone color really from anything explored in the beginning. And even through the fight scene, we still get the sense it's still tied back to the beginning. We still get the sense that Friar Laurence was narrating the story. There was still subtle callbacks to those chords and that structure, but here it's just a world of two, Romeo and Juliet in their own impossible idyllic. This is, well, there is a place for us. That's where it comes from. And Tchaikovsky depicts that so well in that change of pretty much everything. It sounds like a different orchestra came in all of a sudden.

00:17:09

John Banther: It really does feel like a different orchestra. And part of how he's smart, I think in how he's also pacing this is, think of the instruments here, English horn, which is similar, it's lower than the oboe, and then the viola another lower on the spectrum string instrument. These are lower instruments, and we get a bit higher in terms of this tamper as we go along.

And I think if it's already coming out of the gates with flutes and high violins, it might be a little too sweet with these repetitions. And so Tchaikovsky brings us back down a bit before building into the second round, the second playing of the love theme, getting bigger with flutes and oboes taking the theme. And here, this is a moment, I mean I'm a brass player, I guess James, but the horn line, it ties everything together the way the horn is just moving.

It sounds like it's just slowly cascading down. And I feel like it ties the whole thing together. Absolutely. And I think one of the reasons how this works so well is how direct Tchaikovsky is. It's straight to the heart. We don't have a lot of things happening all at once. If I think of something by Wagner, there may be several minutes of, I don't know what's happening. And Mahler sometimes too, we don't get that here with Tchaikovsky.

00:18:30

James Jacobs: Well, in a way this is kind of doing the exact opposite of what Wagner is doing. Wagner was really trying to make you feel the passage of time and make you feel that it was, that you are there, that the twilight scene from Tannhauser really feels like it's as long as a real sunset. And there's that power to that, and that's great for that place. But here we've only got 20 minutes in this piece, and Tchaikovsky crams so much into it, but he still sort of conveys that epicness. It still feels like it's taking up as much time as the play does, two and a half hours.

It still feels like you get all that. And he does that with that sort of change of, literally change of pace where all of a sudden there's a whole bunch of stuff happens for a few minutes and then nothing happens, and with that sort of change in dramatic rhythm. And I think that's one of the things that a lot of composers influenced by Shakespeare learned from Shakespeare, was that dramatic rhythm, that tension and release. And it's something that Shakespeare did so well. And it's almost like Shakespeare taught a generation of composers how to write symphonies.

00:19:47

John Banther: I was about to say, and it sounds like you're saying Shakespeare taught them.

00:19:50

James Jacobs: Yeah.

00:19:52

John Banther: And we'll get into maybe why Tchaikovsky chose these themes specifically, right after this.

Classical Breakdown, your guide to classical music is made possible by WETA Classical. Join us for the music and insightful commentary anytime, day or night. You can stream the music online at wetaclassical. org or through the WETA classical app. It's free in the App Store.

Okay. James, why did Tchaikovsky choose these three aspects from Shakespeare's play, the Friar Laurence, the fighting between Montagues and Capulets, and then the love theme?

00:20:32

James Jacobs: The lovers have this conflict in this universe of three worlds. Their families, their religious and cultural traditions represented by Friar Laurence, and one another. The sort of impossible world that they glimpse ever so briefly, but that they know is its own thing and it's very real and it's so different from anything else in their lives. And the tragedy of the story is the impossibility of ever really reconciling these conflicting interests. And they're all primal bonds.

I think that's one of the reasons why this play is so universally beloved, because that's a conflict that we all have, that we're all in a way forced to have is sort of like we feel this connection to our families and a loyalty to them. But then growing up means letting go of that to a certain extent and creating our own way. And then there's also the religious and cultural traditions and those bonds, but that might be in conflict with the other two.

And then, what do you want? What do I want? And also, what do I want not only as an individual, but in a unit with the person I love and want to share my life with? And there is no answer to that. People just muddle along and they come up with their own. And sometimes it ends badly. And that's what happens here especially. And of course, the message of the play is that that's even more likely to happen when you have a society that's so stratified, and that's what it wants to break out of.

I mean, I think that's also part of the reason why Friar Laurence is kind of an anachronism in this play, because it's also in this play kind of the Middle Ages turning into the Renaissance, right? It's like the culture saying, " Well, actually that doesn't work. And maybe if they lived in a freer society, this wouldn't have happened." So it's a little bit of a message there.

00:22:33

John Banther: Well, we were not kidding when we said that there's a lot more to this overture than just a Bugs Bunny moment, as you just described there. There's a lot more that you can see into this and how Tchaikovsky and Shakespeare were as well. The love theme can go on forever. We go back to some fighting. The low brass have some huge, powerful moments punching out, and lots of syncopation. All of this comes back here with the fragments of different themes.

And it brings us to this huge moment, which sounds like a huge plea or something from Friar Laurence. And this is what I was also meaning about Tchaikovsky being direct, because it's the trumpet playing Friar Laurence, and then the entire orchestra in unison with the rhythm, and also very loudly, they're all playing the same thing. It's the whole orchestra against trumpet. It's amazing how the trumpet has to soar over this. It's a huge moment.

00:23:26

James Jacobs: This must be a brass player's either worst nightmare or greatest dream, something like that.

00:23:32

John Banther: Tchaikovsky is absolutely one of my favorite composers to play, and probably will be for a very long time. This is such a powerful moment, and it leads us back into the fight theme again. And the strings kind of rocket us into it. And I think that's also a reason why the love theme works so well is because of how the strings, they rise so quickly into it. I mean, it's huge. It is that movie, movie moment, the horn line is transformed. It's still there. And underneath we have the triplets and the winds propelling us, pushing us forward. But we have a lot happening here with interplay between a lot of these seams coming in and out.

00:24:12

James Jacobs: Yes, yes. And I imagine that that climatic moment is that night that they finally got to spend together, that one night before Romeo has to escape through the window in the morning.

00:24:25

John Banther: And we hear in the final repeat of the love theme, it gets interrupted by the fight theme. And it's reminding us of, I guess, this tragedy that is to come because Tchaikovsky in total Tchaikovsky fashion just devastates, us just existential despair, and another thunderous timpani solo, followed by this funereal March rhythm. And things really change here because we get a new atmosphere, it's uncomfortable, and the themes seem totally transformed, like permanently. We can't go back to what we heard before.

00:25:05

James Jacobs: Right.

00:25:05

John Banther: And we have this chorale in the winds, and it feels so solemn and like nothing else we've heard.

00:25:17

James Jacobs: Right. And I think that chorale represents a very specific moment in the final scene. And by this time, the lovers have killed themselves due to misunderstandings. And Friar Laurence has narrated everything that has gone on in front of the parents and the law authorities, the Prince.

And in fact, Romeo's mother has already died of sorrow from the news, so she doesn't show up. And so they're all together on this cloudy morning having realized the folly of their ways, and that in a way Friar Laurence accomplished what he wanted to accomplish, but in the most tragic way possible. He decided to cooperate with the crazy scheme of the secret marriage between Romeo and Juliet because he wanted this feud to come to an end, and unfortunately could only come to the end with this sacrifice.

And then the patriarchs, the Capulet and Montague realized this. And of course, they've kind of realized it all along. I mean, they've already made it clear that they don't like the fact that everybody under them has been perpetuating this feud, but now it's like they're going to really put their foot down and transform the culture.

And so when you hear this chorale, which as you say is not like anything we've heard so far, it represents the moment when Capulet says, " Oh, brother Montague, give me thy hand. This is my daughter's jointure, for no more can I demand." And then Romeo's father replies, " But I can give the more for I will raise her statue in pure gold that while Verona, by that name is known, there shall no figure at such rate be set as that of true and faithful Juliet."

00:27:09

John Banther: Wow.

00:27:09

James Jacobs: Remember, this is Romeo's father saying true and faithful Juliet. It's a real moment of finally some bonding, finally some hands across the ocean and coming together. And you can actually hear that color gold in the orchestration somehow, just the way that he orchestrates those winds and brasses exactly the right way that you can hear that change in texture and color, and of the scene, and the way Tchaikovsky does that is pure genius.

00:27:42

John Banther: Oh, that's beautiful. I love that. And it puts the music and everything here in a whole new light for myself. And I love how Tchaikovsky after this chorale sweeps us away a bit with the harps and the strings. And in my own imagination, Tchaikovsky does this a bit in also his ballets, it's kind of a, " Hey, it was just a story, nobody was harmed in the making of this overture. It's all okay." That kind of thing.

00:28:07

James Jacobs: And actually, that's sort of a Shakespearean gesture that he spells out in A Midsummer Night's Dream, which is the companion piece to Romeo and Juliet because it contains a parody of Romeo and Juliet. And it sort of flip sides of the same themes in a way, but sort of like, " No, I'm just a guy with a lion costume. I'm not really a lion. Don't worry."

00:28:32

John Banther: Yeah. This is just an extraordinary work. As we said, there's so much more happening here below the surface of the music. Now, James, if, and I'm including myself here too, I'm inspired by this, and I want to hear more of this dramatic music or whatever it is that Tchaikovsky has with Shakespeare. Where would I go next after hearing this?

00:28:54

James Jacobs: Well, he wrote two other similarly structured pieces based on The Tempest and Hamlet. And when you listen to those pieces with the same ear that you listen to Romeo and Juliet, you see a similar approach, especially in The Tempest. The Hamlet, it's more along the Berlioz line, or a list, like just kind of a character portrait in music. But The Tempest is like Romeo and Juliet, he really wants to hit all the plot points and create these different orchestral textures for different parts of the play.

But I think even more than those two pieces, you can hear Shakespeare's influence on Tchaikovsky, even in his non- Shakespearean pieces in terms of that dramatic rhythm that we were talking about, that calibration of emotion. There's something very Shakespearean about Eugene Onegin, for example, and of course Pushkin who wrote that story that opera is based on, is also heavily influenced by Shakespeare. And the piano trio, it means it's a purely instrumental work, but it's written as a memorial to a great friend of his, and it unfolds like a Shakespeare tragedy, and even as a funeral march at the end, like Hamlet.

And the way the first act of the Nutcracker seamlessly carries us from the real world to one of the imagination reminds me of Shakespeare's late romances, like The Winter's Tale and The Tempest. So in December coming up, I know everybody listens to the second act for all the great tunes, but really listen to the first act. And I think that's where you can hear this sort of Shakespearean influence. You can definitely count Tchaikovsky among those composers like Mendelssohn, Berlioz, Verdi, Britten, and many others who considered Shakespeare an artistic soul bait, just like Romeo and Juliet.

00:30:40

John Banther: Perfect. I mean, you're talking about the piano trio, which is also one of my favorite works from Tchaikovsky, and I've not really thought about it in that light, so I'm going to have to listen to that again. And I'll put some performances of those pieces you just mentioned on the show notes page, at classicalbreakdown. org.

Well, now it's time to read your reviews from Apple Podcasts. And Joey Stan gave us five stars and said, " Love the show. As someone who played bass trombone in high school, I appreciate John's insights from being a tuba player. I especially like the Pini di Roma episode, it's been one of my favorite pieces since seeing it in Fantasia 2000 as a kid, and later in high school when I saw the Fountain City Brass Band play the last movement, but I had no idea what connection it had to actual pine trees of Rome, so it was great to learn about the backstory and hear the kids' song."

Well, thank you so much, Joey Stan, for the glowing review. And we love to give those different perspectives. Yes, I play tuba and James with the cello, and then as we know, the Shakespearean actor extraordinaire.

00:31:43

James Jacobs: Shakespearean extra extraordinaire.

00:31:45

John Banther: Oh, there you go, you have to add it to your resume. But we have so many perspectives here, and it's so great to, we'll bring them all together here for you. And thank you, James, for all your perspectives here in Tchaikovsky's Romeo and Juliet.

00:31:57

James Jacobs: Absolutely. This is a lot of fun, John.

00:32:00

John Banther: Thanks for listening to Classical Breakdown, your guide to classical music. For more information on this episode, visit the show notes page, at classicalbreakdown. org. You can send me comments and episode ideas to classicalbreakdown@weta. org. And if you enjoyed this episode, leave a review in your podcast app. I'm John Banther. Thanks for listening to Classical Breakdown from WETA Classical.