Name: CAPRICCIO ITALIEN, OP. 45
Duration: 16 min 21 s
Channel: PYOTR ILYICH TCHAIKOVSKY - 1880
Description: Free MP3 download. THIS IS A MUSICAL FANTASY, INFLUENCED BY THE ROMAN CARNIVALS, ITALIAN FOLK MUSIC AND STREET SONGS, COMPOSED IN 1880 BY TCHAIKOVSKY AFTER HE TOOK A TRIP TO ROME, WHERE HE SAW THE CARNIVAL IN FULL SWING. PERFORMED BY THE TMEA ALL STATE SYMPHONIC BAND.

CAPRICCIO ITALIEN, OP. 45

Symphonic Band Performances

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THIS IS A MUSICAL FANTASY, INFLUENCED BY THE ROMAN CARNIVALS, ITALIAN FOLK MUSIC AND STREET SONGS, COMPOSED IN 1880 BY TCHAIKOVSKY AFTER HE TOOK A TRIP TO ROME, WHERE HE SAW THE CARNIVAL IN FULL SWING. PERFORMED BY THE TMEA ALL STATE SYMPHONIC BAND.

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Symphonic Band Performances

Contemporary band compositions, classical music arrangements, marches, jazz, symphonies, overtures. A collection from bands that I have played in throughout hi

Hello and welcome! "Symphonic Band Performances" is a compilation of recordings from several high school and college bands that I played in including the TMEA (Texas) All State Band, the TMEA Region X All Region Band, the Interlochen Arts Academy National Music Camp, the Cal Poly Tech Band, San Luis Obispo, the USAF Golden West Band, and recordings from my h.s. band, Beaumont H.S. and a few band recordings that were passed down to me. Also included are various All State groups and college and university bands. I participated and played in the large majority of these recordings. There are no professional recordings here and every recording is Public Domain. Most are available for free download. Each song has been converted from the original analog or digital source and edited with Audacity or Dak software. In the majority of these recordings, I play the tenor sax or alto sax, b flat or e flat clarinet, or directing. I was drum major for 2 years in high school, I have a BA from Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, where I studied music ed, composition and theory. I had about 500 more recordings I was planning to digitize and upload, but this past Nov. 20th, my home was completely destroyed by fire, and all the contents, including all my music and instruments. So, this is it. Please feel free to post a comment here or on my member page. If you like, please become a fan by clicking "I'm a fan" below.

Song Info

Genre

Beats • Beats General

Charts

Peak #8

Peak in subgenre #1

Author

PYOTR ILYICH TCHAIKOVSKY - 1880

Rights

public domain

Uploaded

October 24, 2009

Track Files

MP3

MP3 22.5 MB • 192 kbps • 16:21

Story behind the song

This is performed by the 1977 TMEA (Texas) All State Symphonic Band. The conductor was Col. Arnold D. Gabriel. Arranged for band by John Cacavas.

The Capriccio Italien, op. 45 is a fantasy for orchestra composed between January and May of 1880 by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky.

The Capriccio was inspired by a trip Tchaikovsky took to Rome, during which he saw the Carnival in full swing, and is reminiscent of Italian folk music and street songs. As these elements are treated rather freely initially he intended this piece to be called Italian Fantasy. Tchaikovsky even uses as the introduction a bugle call that he overheard from his hotel played by Italian cavalry regiment. Another source of inspiration for this piece are Mikhail Glinka's Spanish Pieces.

The premiere was held in Moscow on December 18 of the same year; the orchestra was led by Nikolai Rubinstein. Although Tchaikovsky wrote to his patroness Nadezhda von Meck that the work would be successful (the piece was praised by most critics) he admitted that it was not very well composed.

Dedicated to Karl Davidov, the Capriccio was later arranged by the composer for 4-hand piano. A typical performance lasts for around 15 minutes.

Tchaikovsky's inspiration for the Capriccio Italien seems to have come almost as much from the model of one of his great Russian predecessors as from the melodies he heard everywhere around him during his 1880 trip to Rome. In a letter to his patron Nadezhda von Meck, he declared, "I want to compose something like the Spanish fantasias of Glinka." He wrote again a week later, "I have already completed the sketches for an Italian fantasia on folk tunes for which I believe a good fortune may be predicted. It will be effective, thanks to the delightful tunes which I have succeeded in assembling partly from anthologies, partly from my own ears in the streets." 

Of the five tunes that make up the thematic material of the Capriccio, only two have been identified: the opening fanfare, which the composer's brother Modest identified as a trumpet call Tchaikovsky heard every day from the barracks beside his hotel in Rome, and the final tarantella, known in Italy as "Cicuzza." Tchaikovsky biographer David Brown points to the second of Glinka's Spanish overtures as the model for the Capriccio, both make use of an abundance of folk melodies freely juxtaposed in an arrangement that evades formal rigor, favoring instead a sequence of contrasting sections. 

Where Mendelssohn's Italian music was put clearly to the service of a traditionally conceived symphonic form, Tchaikovsky found in his Italian melodies a means of escaping those formal restrictions. The recently completed Fourth Symphony had left him temporarily drained, disinclined to impose upon himself yet again the demands inherent in symphonic composition. Instead, he contented himself with a work whose principal aim, according to Brown, was "the projection of bright, warm, contrasting colors," and whatever the modesty of its ambitions, the Capriccio Italien has earned a permanent place in the orchestral repertoire.