LOUISVILLE ORCHESTRA MakingMUSIC CONCERT GUIDE 2017-2018 Season MakingMUSIC CONCERTS CHRISTOPHER ROUNTREE, guest conductor Featuring the Association of the Louisville Orchestra’s Young Artist Competition Guest Soloists Got Rhythm? Fučík Entrance of the Gladiators Stravinsky The Firebird Suite: 1919 version, mvt. I Tchaikovsky “Waltz of the Flowers” from The Nutcracker Suite ALO’s Young Artist Competition Guest Soloists One of these will be selected for each performance Brahms Violin Concerto in D Major, 1st movement Christina Nam, violinist Saint-Saëns Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso for Violin Maya Kilburn, violinist Lalo Symphonie Espagnole for Violin, 1st movement Jina Park, violinist Anderson The Syncopated Clock J. Williams Main Title from Star Wars Alford Colonel Bogey March P. Desmond Take Five with the Landfill Orchestra Arr. Cerulli P. Williams Happy Arr. Quijada Ortíz 2 louisvilleorchestra.org INTRODUCTION Rhythm – addicting and intoxicating - is at the core of being Think about your rhythmic story – you can start with your human; our walk and our heartbeat are fundamental rhythms. name. Just saying your name is a rhythm. What if you And rhythm is at the core of music. This MakingMUSIC added your middle name, or used a nickname? Where are concert and this guide explores rhythm in its many forms the accents? What happens if you change the accents? from basic to polyrhythmic including extension ideas to Try saying your personal rhythm at the same time as your expand learning beyond the concert hall. friends say theirs – now you’ve created polyrhythms. Can you do the same thing with books? Take an opening Rhythm is one of the most natural elements of music and sentence of a book you’re reading and figure out its rhythm. the most mathematical, especially if you want to write it Take that rhythm and turn it into a math sentence using down! The easiest way to think about rhythm is to break fractions (MakingMUSIC curriculum guide – The Name it down into its basic elements: pulse, tempo, subdivision, Symphony). Keep experimenting and soon enough, you’ll accent, syncopation and polyrhythms (cross-rhythms). have created your own rhythmic symphony. Pulse is the basic beat – this is the heartbeat or the metronome of music. How fast or slow we set the pulse *Disclaimer – please be sure to review all video is the tempo. If we want to divide the pulse into smaller clips associated with the composers as well as any units, we have to subdivide and if we want to have a commentary prior to playing for students (especially specific emphasis on a note or notes, we will add accents. on Youtube). We do our utmost to provide links that If we move the accents to places where they wouldn’t will not only best highlight the composer and the normally occur, this gives us syncopation. And if we representative pieces but also maintain a level of layer two or more different rhythms simultaneously, we appropriateness. The clips that are included below get polyrhythms or cross-rhythms. While this is a fairly have been vetted for appropriateness however as simplified explanation of rhythm, in this concert you will the comments can change, please be sure to review hear how composers used these rhythmic elements to help before playing for students. them tell their musical story. louisvilleorchestra.org MakingMUSIC©2018 3 JULIUS FUČÍK (1872–1916) ENTRANCE OF THE GLADIATORS Julius Fučík composed Vjezd gladiátor or Entrance of the Gladiators in 1897. He originally titled the work Grande March Chromatique to reflect the use of chromatic scales in the piece but as he was also very interested in the Roman Empire, Fučík changed the name. A few years later, Canadian composer/ arranger Louis-Philippe Laurendeau arranged Entrance of the Gladiators for American wind bands and called it Thunder and Blazes. This is the best known arrangement of the work and came to be identified with the entrance of the clowns at a circus. 2 This military march is in cut time ( ⁄2) with the half note = 1 beat and is essentially divided into three parts. The opening is perhaps the most familiar with the melody in the trumpets. The second part gives way to the low brass before going into the trio section (third part) which is a little slower, more melodic and has a grander feel than the earlier sections. Aside from the circus affiliation, for many years the piece was also used as the entrance music for FU ÍK TIMELINE Č the St. Helens English rugby team. 1872 Fučik born in Prague, Bohemia (now Czechoslovakia) 1875 First running of the Kentucky Derby 1876 Mark Twain's The Adventures of Tom Sayer 1886 The Statue of Liberty unveiled in New York harbor 1897 Composed Entrance of Gladiators 1902 Beatrix Potter The Tale of Peter Rabbit 1909 Robert Peary discoverd the North Pole 1916 Fučik died in Berlin, Germany (age 44) 4 louisvilleorchestra.org IGOR STRAVINSKY (1882–1971) THE FIREBIRD SUITE 1919, MVT. I In 1910, impresario Sergei Diaghilev was looking for a full-length original musical score for his company Ballets Russes. After discussing ideas with designer Alexandre Benois and choreographer Michel Fokine, they settled on Russian folk tales concerning the Firebird and the character of Koschei the Deathless. Other composers were approached but it was the 28-year-old Stravinsky who got the commission. This would begin a unique collaboration between Stravinsky and Diaghilev that would produce three famous ballets; The Firebird (1910), Petrushka (1911) and The Rite of Spring (1913). The ballet is written as two tableaus with smaller “movements” in each. From the ballets, Stravinsky created several orchestral suite versions with the 1919 being the most popular. For this concert, we focus on the opening of the 1919 12 suite that is in ⁄8 with the eighth note = 1 beat. Though there are 12 beats in each measure, they are divided into 4 groups of 3 (see example). This is the introduction to the fairy tale world of Koschei and the Firebird. The story STRAVINSKY revolves around Prince Ivan who accidentally wanders into Koschei’s magical kingdom. Koschei is immortal because he keeps his soul in a magical egg that TIMELINE is hidden in a casket. Ivan captures the Firebird and she offers him a feather 1882 to summon her when he needs her. Ivan releases the Firebird and meets 13 Stranvinsky born in a suburb of St. Petersburg, Russia princesses who are under Koschei’s spell. He falls in love with one of them and confronts Koschei. When Koschei sends his minions after Ivan, Ivan calls upon 1883 Robert Louis Stevenson wrote the Firebird who sends them all into an infernal dance before making them fall Treasure Island into an enchanted sleep. The Firebird directs Ivan where to find the casket and 1910 Ivan destroys the magic egg, releasing all of those enchanted. Premiere of The Firebird ballet in Paris, France 1913 Riots at premiere of The Rite of Spring, in Paris, France 1928 My Old Kentucky Home became the official song of Kentucky 1957 Dr. Seuss wrote The Cat in the Hat 1967 The Beatles released Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band 1971 Stravinsky died in New York City (age 88) Koschei the Deathless louisvilleorchestra.org MakingMUSIC©2018 5 PYOTR TCHAIKOVSKY (1840–1893) “WALTZ OF THE FLOWERS” FROM THE NUTCRACKER SUITE Pyotr Tchaikovsky composed the ballet The Nutcracker as part of a double-bill with the opera Iolanta. The double bill premiered at the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg, Russia on December 18, 1892. Tchaikovsky turned to his collaborator for the ballet The Sleeping Beauty (1890), choreographer Marius Petipa. Petipa chose an Alexander Dumas père adaptation of E.T.A. Hoffmann’s The Nutcracker and the Mouse King as the story for the ballet. Petipa gave Tchaikovsky very specific instructions for the composition though it is unclear whether or not Petipa was able to complete the choreography due to illness. Lev Ivanov, Petipa’s assistant for seven years, stepped in and completed the choreography for the premiere. Given that today The Nutcracker is a staple of ballet companies around the world (as are Tchaikovsky’s other ballets Swan Lake and The Sleeping Beauty), it’s surprising that it wasn’t a hit when it premiered in 1892. But none of Tchaikovsky’s ballets became hits until long after his death in 1893. TCHAIKOVSKY Before the ballet’s premiere, Tchaikovsky took eight of the numbers from the TIMELINE ballet and arranged them as a suite for concert performance. This suite was 1840 premiered in March 1892 with Tchaikovsky conducting and was a hit; the Tchaikovsky born in Votkinsk, Russia Waltz of the Flowers is the finale of the suite. In the ballet, the Waltz is part of 1851 the second half where Clara and the Nutcracker have journeyed to the Land of Isaac Singer invented the sewing the Sugar Plum Fairy. machine 1865 As this is a waltz, it is in ¾ time with the quarter note = 1 beat. The introduction Lewis Carroll wrote Alice's Adventures in Wonderland opens with the melody in the oboes, clarinets, bassoons and horns followed by arpeggios in the harp that eventually lead to an extended harp cadenza 1868 before the waltz itself. The waltz begins with the melody in the horns followed The first professional baseball team "Cincinnati Red Stockings" by a solo clarinet. The next section is a sweeping melody in the strings with embellishments from the flutes and clarinets. The waltz was also part of 1876 Alexander Graham Bell invented the Disney’s Fantasia (1940) with the autumn and winter fairies changing the leaves telephone with the seasons. 1889 Auguste Rodin scuplted The Thinker 1892 Tchaikovsky's ballet The Nutcracker premiered in St.