Bernard Hoffer
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Bernard Hoffer Acknowledgments This recording was made at the National Concert Hall, Dublin, Ireland, June 8-9, 2011. Engineer: Anton Timoney Assistant Engineer: Richard McCullough Synthesizer Sounds: Ronan O’Reilly Edited, mixed, and mastered by Tom Hamilton at the Pickle Factory, New York, New York Produced by Bernard Hoffer and Tom Hamilton Cover image (detail of Radiance) and inside images by Richard Pousette-Dart (1916-1992), a member of the New York expressionists. Images courtesy of the estate of Richard Pousette-Dart. www.albanyrecords.com TROY1356 albany records u.s. ¦ ¦ 915 broadway, albany, ny 12207 MacNeil/Lehrer Variations Elegy for a Friend tel: 518.436.8814 fax: 518.436.0643 albany records u.k. Elegy for Violin and String Orchestra ¦ ¦ Symphony “Pousette-Dart” box 137, kendal, cumbria la8 0xd tel: 01539 824008 © 2012 albany records made in the usa ddd Alan Smale, violin ¦ ¦ Deborah Clifford, English horn waRning: cOpyrighT subsisTs in all Recordings issued undeR This label. RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra ¦ ¦ Richard Pittman, conductor The Composer The Music Bernard Hoffer was born October 14, l934 in Zurich, Switzerland. He MacNeil/Lehrer Variations received early musical training at the Dalcroze School in New York, and In 1975 the Public Broadcasting System stations in New York and Washington endeavored to create a revolution- attended Eastman School of Music (BM-MM) in Rochester, New York ary format for a daily evening news program. It would take one major news story and cover it in depth through where he studied composition with Bernard Rogers and Wayne Barlow, and interviews, analysis, and commentary. The anchors were to be Robert MacNeil in New York and Jim Lehrer in conducting with Paul White and Herman Genhart. After serving as arranger Washington. I was invited to submit an entry for the theme music for this program. At my request a meeting with for the U.S. Army Field Band of Washington, D.C., he came to New York as the principals was held where I played records and discussed the type of music that would be appropriate. It was a freelance musician/pianist, composer, conductor, and arranger. decided that the music should be “contemporary” sounding with rock influences. The following days I submitted He has written extensively for films, television, and commercials for three pieces of which the second was chosen to be the theme. A recording session was then planned and the which he has won several Emmy nominations, including the music for the music was recorded the following week. The instrumentation was two trumpets, two horns, and a “rock” rhythm MacNeil-Lehrer News Hour on PBS. His commercials have won six Clio section that consisted of electric guitar, electric piano, electric (Fender) bass and percussion. The result was a Awards. He has scored the hit children’s’ cartoon series “Thundercats” and Jazz-Rock Waltz in five bar phrases, which became the Theme Music for the MacNeil/Lehrer Report. This music “Silverhawks” and orchestrated the Emmy Award winning theme to PBS’s was subsequently nominated for an Emmy Award but lost out in the finals to the theme for another show for which “The American Experience.” He has received grants from Meet the Composer and the Margaret Fairbanks Jory I had also done the arrangements, orchestrations and recording. Copying Assistance Program. Eight years later the show, already a PBS network staple was to be enlarged to an hour. It was decided that Concert works have been performed by the New York Philharmonic, the Spokane Symphony, the Greenwich the theme music was to be retained but was to be “upgraded” to a more “classical” format. A symphonic orchestra (CT) Symphony Orchestra, the Amherst Saxophone Quartet, the Boston Musica Viva, and the Composers String was to be used and the “Jazz-Rock” influences were to be downplayed. The result was the music that we hear Quartet. Divertimento for Octet (1988) was awarded second prize in the 1994 New Music Delaware Competition. today, although all the thematic materials remained true to the original. Concerto for Viola and Orchestra received its premiere at the International Viola Congress in Chicago on June 26, When the opportunity arose for me to create a large orchestra work based on the MacNeil/Lehrer Theme 1993. Capriccio “Settembre Musica” (1994) for solo violin and Jazz ensemble, written for the Boston Musica Viva, I jumped at it because I enjoy working with materials that are both familiar to me and to my audience. After was awarded a prize in the 1997 New Music Delaware. all how many “serious” composers can work on new music that is already familiar to listeners throughout the His recordings include St. Lucia Morning for Symphonic Band with the West Texas AM University Band; Suite United States and Canada—which leads me to the structure of the music at hand. I will give you a road map After Baroque Styles for Alto/Soprano Saxophone and String Trio with Albert Regni, sax (Sons of Sound SSPCD005); through the Variations: Variations on a Theme of Stravinsky performed by the American Saxophone Quartet (Sons of Sound SSPCD004); The Toy Chest, Ron Odrich, clarinet, with the American Saxophone Quartet (Sons of Sound SSPCD009); and two recordings on the Albany Records label (Ma Goose and Neoteric Plays Hoffer). VARIATION I: INTRODUCTION: Since I was working under the assumption that the thematic materials are VARIATION VIII: THE HAMILTON VARIATION (KALEIDOSCOPE) Tom Hamilton is an avant-garde composer already familiar to most listeners I felt that the it was not necessary to state the Theme at the beginning, or was and electronic genius friend who writes music where the thematic material is programmed into his synthesizers it necessary to state it in its entirety until such a time when it was emotionally or structurally satisfying to do so, and then is allowed to feed upon itself to form permutations or is triggered by him to form other permutations. hence, the first variation uses the theme in a dissembled form and then gradually reassembles it until it is stated Sometimes the changes are only textural and sometimes they occur as changes in the materials. The effect is completely. often Kaleidoscopic where the colors and forms change as they turn from themselves. I have tried to simulate THEME: PART I: This is the statement as it appears at the top of the television program. Added to that is the these effects with an orchestra. Instruments or combinations weave in and out. Colors are constantly changing “tail,” a suspended chord in the strings which on television leads to the next news segment but here leads to a through the addition or subtraction of instruments. Repetition is one of the basic elements and gives this variation fuller statement of the Theme. a minimalistic aura. THEME: PART II: The Theme now appears in a more complete form scored for woodwinds. VARIATION IX: This features the strings in what is an inversion of the theme, a device used successfully by VARIATION II: The last three notes of the theme are used as a basis over which horns and trumpets play a many composers most notably Rachmaninoff in his Paganini Variations, which leads me to an aside comment. The richly chorded melody. theme is inadvertently similar (intervallicly) to the famous Paganini theme that has inspired many composers and VARIATION III: This variation is an extension of the previous one only scored for winds strings and drum therefore has led me into some curious traps as I was composing. machine. VARIATION X is an enlargement and continuation of Variation IX. (Note that Variation II and Variation III were VARIATION IV: ECHOES takes the fifth and sixth notes of the theme and builds a structure out of reverbera- also materially connected.) This movement flies off to a high place and holds until we hear the Finale begin. tions of the two notes. VARIATION XI: FINALE begins with a long G chord over which all the materials are recapitulated and built to a VARIATION V: THE TWELVE WIND VARIATION is a scherzo featuring the woodwind section in a fugue of sorts. grand climax. At the very end the “tail” that is never resolved on television is resolved for us! Also heard are three triangle players. VARIATION VI: THE PERCUSSION VARIATION is an argument between two timpani players as to which one is Elegy for a Friend playing in the right key! These two are being egged on by the piano and the snare drum. A crowd gathers as the Elegy for a friend was written for a memorial concert for a close friend and colleague, George Marge. The premiere rest of the orchestra yells louder and louder until it is proven that neither timpanist is right. The trumpet then plays was given in New York by Thomas Stacy and the Composers Quartet in December of 1985. I had always felt that the theme (in the correct key). the piece should be revised for English horn and string orchestra. In the fall of 1993, another good friend, Bruce THEME: PART III: The theme is now played in the full version (including the “Bridge”) the way it appears Ferden, the conductor of the Spokane Symphony, passed away. The revised version was premiered by the Spokane under the crawl at the end of the television program. Symphony at a memorial service for Bruce in the Cathedral in Spokane, Washington. VARIATION VII: The material from the “Bridge” section of the theme is heard in large blocks of sound played very softly. Elegy for Violin and String Orchestra Symphony “Pousette-Dart” I have had a long and successful relationship with the Northeast Youth Ballet and its wonderful choreographer In the summer of 2007, I went to the Guggenheim Museum in New York to see a comprehensive showing of the Denise Cecere.