Program

One HunDReD TwenTy-FiRST SeASOn Chicago symphony Music Director Pierre Boulez Helen Regenstein Conductor emeritus Yo-Yo ma Judson and Joyce Green Creative Consultant Global Sponsor of the CSO

Thursday, February 2, 2012, at 8:00 Friday, February 3, 2012, at 8:00 Saturday, February 4, 2012, at 8:00 Tuesday, February 7, 2012, at 7:30 riccardo muti Conductor Honegger Bates Alternative Energy Ford’s Farm, 1896— Chicago, 2012 Xinjiang Province, 2112— Reykjavik, 2222 Commissioned for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra by the Louise Durham Mead Fund for New Music World premiere

IntermIssIon Franck Symphony in D Minor Lento—Allegro non troppo Allegretto Allegro non troppo

CSO Tuesday series concerts are sponsored by United Airlines. This program is partially supported by grants from the Illinois Arts Council, a state agency, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Comments by PHi LLiP HuSCHeR

Born March 10, 1892, Le Havre, France. Died November 27, 1955, Paris, France.

Pacific 231, mouvement symphonique no. 1

have always had a passion for and served as its spiritual mentor. Ilocomotives,” Arthur Honegger In I Am a Composer, he writes, “I wrote after Pacific 231, his high- am what the language of passports speed tone poem named after a calls of ‘dual nationality,’ that is to locomotive, became a runaway hit. say, a combination of French and “To me they are living beings, and Swiss.” Born in Le Havre, he had I love them as others love women studied composition first in Zurich, or horses.” his parents’ hometown, and then Honegger first attracted attention commuted to Paris for two years in the early twenties as a member to work at the conservatory. In of the group of French compos- 1913—Honegger was nineteen—he ers known as , although settled in Paris, a city bursting with history has cut that number in avant-garde surprises, later claim- half, remembering just Honegger, ing that, despite his Swiss upbring- along with Darius Milhaud and ing, “all the rest—my intellectual Francis Poulenc. Honegger was blossoming, the sharpening of my something of an outsider in Les moral and spiritual values—I owe six—he got involved almost by to France.” Among the qualities accident, and he never could he owed to Switzerland, Honegger stomach the pranksterish music of listed “a naïve sense of honesty” and Eric Satie, who inspired the group his knowledge of the Bible, though

ComPosed most reCent InstrumentatIon 1923 Cso PerFormanCes two and piccolo, two December 9, 1930, and english horn, FIrst PerFormanCe Orchestra Hall. Frederick two and bass May 8, 1924, Paris, France Stock conducting , two and , four horns, July 26, 1964, FIrst Cso three , three Ravinia Festival. Seiji PerFormanCe and , cymbal, Ozawa conducting October 17, 1924, , , Orchestra Hall. Frederick Cso PerFormanCes tam-tam, strings Stock conducting ConduCted BY aPProxImate Honegger PerFormanCe tIme March 15 & 16, 1929, 6 minutes Orchestra Hall

2 he might also have mentioned the noise of the pistons, the his lifelong love of Bach, whose screeching of the brakes, the hiss- cantatas he regularly heard in the ing of steam, the commotion of the Protestant church of his youth. front wheels, etc., etc.,” Honegger Honegger achieved almost over- later wrote. This was the height of night fame in 1921 for his Europe’s fascination with the age Le roi (King David), but he of the machine, and Pacific 231 caused a real stir two years later was hailed as one of its landmarks. with Pacific 231. This short orches- (Actually, one critic, misunder- tral work began life as one of three standing the title, discerned in so-called symphonic movements, Honegger’s high-powered writ- but Honegger quickly realized ing the smells of the open sea.) that, in a city still reeling from the Honegger quickly became known shock of The Rite of Spring, his title as the man who wrote the piece was, as he put it, a bit colorless. about the train, even though, in “Suddenly a romantic idea crossed fact, he hadn’t. my mind, and when the work was When Honegger conducted finished I wrote the title, Pacific Pacific 231 in Chicago, at the 231, which indicates a locomotive conclusion of a program entirely of for heavy loads and high speed,” he his own works performed by the later recalled. Chicago Symphony in 1929, he was once again praised as a master tone To tell the truth, in PacificI was painter—“the snorting, throbbing, pursuing a very abstract and tumultuous progress of a railroad quite unalloyed idea, by giving engine is depicted with extraordi- the feeling of a mathematical nary skill,” one local critic wrote. acceleration of rhythm, while By then, Honegger had decided to the actual motion of the piece play along with Pacific 231’s many slowed down. In musical terms, new fans. In the published score, I composed a huge, formal cho- he described the overall shape of rale, strewn with counterpoint the piece: “the quiet breathing of in the manner of J. S. Bach. the machine at rest, its effort in starting, then the gathering speed, But audiences and critics could the progress from mood to mood, only hear the locomotive. “People as a 300-ton train hurtles through of great talent wrote wonderful the dark night, racing 120 miles articles describing the driving rods, an hour.”

3 mason Bates Born January 23, 1977, , Pennsylvania.

Alternative Energy

t a junkyard looking for electronic elements. When Bates A‘car-part instruments’ for started going to hear the Richmond Alternative Energy (a new Chicago Symphony in Virginia, where he Symphony piece coming in grew up, he suddenly made contact February),” Mason Bates wrote on with the great composers, and he Twitter last October 27. Historians began to develop an understanding who used to transcribe sketches and of the orchestra’s place in history. search composer’s diaries for clues After a traditional musical about how pieces of music came upbringing in Richmond, which into being now scan tweets and included lessons and singing YouTube videos—there is, in fact, in the , Bates studied composi- a YouTube clip of Bates on a junket tion and English literature in the to Fermilab last May, where he Columbia–Juilliard joint program. went to collect sound samples from He worked with a particle accelerator for Alternative and , and then Energy—to understand the compo- moved to the Bay Area in 2001 sition process. to enroll in the Ph.D. program at Bates first made a name for Berkeley’s Center for New Music himself as a composer who liked and Audio Technologies. His to incorporate electronics within career, like his music, is a singular orchestral music. That was not mix of old-world establishment and really unexpected from someone New Age culture: he has been lav- who first heard an orchestra ished with big-league honors, from listening to Pink Floyd and Moody institutions such as the American Blues albums and was taken by the Academy in Rome and the seamless fusion of orchestral and American Academy for Arts and

ComPosed InstrumentatIon aPProxImate 2011 three flutes, three piccolos PerFormanCe tIme and alto , three oboes 25 minutes These are the world and english horn, three bas- premiere performances. soons and contrabassoon, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones and tuba, laptop, an extensive percussion battery, harp, piano, celesta, strings

4 Letters (an award that “acknowl- fantastique or the Stravinsky edges the composer who has arrived ballets).” Bates had been tossing at his or her own voice”), and he around the ideas behind Alternative also has spent many nights as a DJ, Energy for a long time, but hear- spinning and mixing at dance clubs ing Riccardo Muti’s performance in , New York City, of the Symphonie fantastique here Berlin, and Rome. last season and getting to know his Alternative Energy, which occu- “unique understanding of dramatic pied Bates for much of 2011, marks music” brought his “energy sym- a new stage in his evolving—“and, phony” to life at last. perhaps, maturing,” as he says— Since Bates became one of approach to integrating electronics the Chicago Symphony’s Mead into the orchestra. “The sounds Composers-in-Residence last sea- coming from the speakers are as son (along with , whose carefully crafted as the sonorities Night Ferry will be premiered in the orchestra,” he says, “and the next week), the Orchestra has influences reach far beyond .” played his Music for Underground And the use of scrap metal in his Spaces and The B-Sides. Alternative large percussion battery, as well as Energy, however, is the first work the Fermilab recording, is merely written expressly for the Chicago part of Bates’s ongoing quest to Symphony and Riccardo Muti as expand—and refine—his vocabu- part of this residency. lary of sound. Offsetting high-tech electronic sounds with old car parts fits perfectly with the sense of mason Bates on passing time and changing worlds Alternative Energy that lies behind Alternative Energy. “The idea was that each movement would be separated by a hundred lternative Energy is an “energy years,” Bates says, “starting with Asymphony” spanning four old energy (the first movement movements and hundreds of years. uses scrap metal to evoke a junk- Beginning in a rustic Midwestern yard) and moving to new energy junkyard in the late nineteenth cen- (the second movement uses actual tury, the piece travels through ever recordings from Fermilab to evoke greater and more powerful forces of a particle accelerator). “ energy—a present-day particle col- Bates is, above all, a storyteller, lider, a futuristic Chinese nuclear and for him all music tells stories plant—until it reaches a future of one kind or another. “Sometimes Icelandic rain forest, where human- that story is entirely on the level ity’s last inhabitants seek a return to of pure sound,” he says, “but I find a simpler way of life. it especially exciting when fresh The idée fixe that links these orchestral writing animates an disparate worlds appears early in imaginative extramusical nar- Ford’s Farm, 1896. This melody rative (as in Berlioz’s Symphonie is heard on the fiddle—conjuring

5 a Henry Ford–like figure—and is surges bring the movement to a accompanied by junkyard percus- clangorous finish. sion and a “phantom orchestra” that Zoom a hundred years into the dark future of the Xinjiang Province, 2112 where a great deal of the Chinese energy industry is based. On an eerie wasteland, a lone flute sings a tragically distorted version of the fiddle tune, dreaming of a forgotten natural world. But a powerful industrial energy simmers to the surface, and over the ensuing hardcore techno, Mason Bates at Fermilab, May 2011 wild orchestral splashes drive us to a catastrophic meltdown. As the smoke trails the fiddler like ghosts. The clears, we find ourselves even accelerando cranking of a car motor farther into the future: an Icelandic becomes a special motif in the rain forest on a hotter planet. piece, a kind of rhythmic embodi- Gentle, out-of-tune pizzicatos ment of ever more powerful energy. accompany our fiddler, who returns Indeed, this crank motif explodes over a woody percussion ensemble in the electronics in the second to make a quiet plea for simpler movement’s present-day Chicago, times. The occasional song of future where we encounter actual record- birds whips around us, a naturalistic ings from the Fermilab particle version of the crank motif. Distant collider. Hip-hop beats, jazzy brass tribal voices call for the building of interjections, and joyous voltage a fire—our first energy source.

6 César Franck Born December 10, 1822, Liège, Belgium. Died November 8, 1890, Paris, France.

symphony in d minor

ésar Franck matured as a for advanced study in 1835. When Ccomposer very late in life, but the Paris Conservatory initially he first won acclaim as a child rejected his application because of prodigy. He was born in Liège, his Belgian birth, Nicolas-Joseph in the French-speaking Walloon sent for French naturalization district of the Netherlands; this papers. César was an exemplary heritage was reflected in the mix- student, and he walked off with ture of French and Flemish in his many top prizes. He was always name. Early on he showed unusual interested in composing, but his musical talent, which his father, father discouraged him from enter- Nicolas-Joseph, set about nurtur- ing the prestigious Prix de Rome ing, promoting, and finally exploit- competition in the hope that he ing. In 1830, his father enrolled would devote his life to concert- him in the Liège Conservatory, izing. Nicolas-Joseph even pulled and César made his first tour as a César out of school in 1842 to send virtuoso pianist at the age of eleven, him off on another recital tour, traveling throughout the newly which was highlighted by a meet- formed kingdom of Belgium. (His ing with Franz Liszt, who encour- specialty was playing variations on aged him to keep composing. popular themes à la Liszt.) Franck next won fame as an Having outgrown the Liège organist and a composer of organ Conservatory, César moved to music (his impassioned organ Paris, with his entire family in tow, improvisations were greatly

ComPosed most reCent aPProxImate 1886–1888 Cso PerFormanCe PerFormanCe tIme March 3, 2007, 41 minutes FIrst PerFormanCe Orchestra Hall. Philippe February 17, 1889, Paris Jordan conducting Cso reCordIng 1961. Pierre Monteux FIrst Cso InstrumentatIon conducting. RCA PerFormanCe two flutes, two oboes and February 2, 1900, english horn, two clarinets Theatre. Theodore and , two Thomas conducting bassoons, four horns, two trumpets and two cornets, three trombones and tuba, , harp, strings

7 celebrated). Then, in middle age, he the Viennese classical tradition. devoted himself to teaching, and, The symphony he wrote in the in the process, influencing an entire mid-1880s, however, is the “real” generation of French composers, Franck, inspired by the music including Vincent d’Indy and of Liszt and Wagner, masters of Ernest Chausson, who were nearly thematic transformation, novel idolatrous in their devotion. Like orchestral effects, and bold new Bruckner (with whom he has some- forms. Franck also was influenced times been compared), Franck came by the French orchestral tradi- into his own as a composer late in tion, although d’Indy, ever the his career. His major works—this loyal pupil, insisted that Franck Symphony in D minor, along with completed his symphony before the violin sonata and the piano he knew Saint-Saëns’s Organ quintet, the Symphonic Variations Symphony, which was premiered in for piano and orchestra, and several May 1886. But Franck’s short-score symphonic poems—were all writ- sketch is dated September–October ten between 1880 and 1890, the 1887, so his symphony may have last decade of his life. been, at least in part, a reaction to The symphony is by far the Saint-Saëns’s striking new work. best known of Franck’s orchestral We know that Franck finished the works. Although Franck called it orchestration in August 1888, and a symphony in response to his stu- that he also arranged the symphony dents, who quite literally demanded for piano duet that year, obviously that he try his hand at the form, hoping it would be a piece people it is not so much a work in the would want to play at home. He tradition of Beethoven as a hybrid must have been as dismayed as his characteristic of Franck, combining students when the work fell flat at elements of both symphony and the premiere. symphonic poem in a thematically The D minor symphony has three unified whole. Even in the late movements, a formal layout that 1880s, the French musical public Franck used in nearly all his major was put off by the unclassifiable works (a fondness inherited by his nature of the piece. “The subscrib- students as well). The entire score ers could make neither head nor is saturated with the main theme tail of it,” d’Indy wrote of the chilly of the first movement, a three-note reception at the premiere, “and the motif that echoes the famous ques- musical authorities were in much tioning motto of Beethoven’s last the same position.” string quartet—he gave it the words Although we think of Franck Muss es sein? (Must it be?)—which as a one-symphony composer like Liszt later transformed to unforget- his countryman Georges Bizet, table effect in his symphonic poem he had in fact written an earlier Les préludes. (It also is mirrored in symphony when he was studying Wagner’s “fate” motif in The Ring.) in Paris (it was even performed in The opening movement follows the 1841) that was plainly indebted to general guidelines of sonata form,

8 but it also ranges widely, reinvent- “The finale takes up all the ing and transforming its basic themes again, as in [Beethoven’s] thematic material as it goes; it offers Ninth,” Franck wrote. “They do a tantalizing suggestion of the kind not return as quotations, how- of magic Franck must have created ever; I have elaborated them improvising at the organ. and given them the role of new The Allegretto is both slow elements.” That is the essence of movement and scherzo rolled into the entire score—music continu- one. Its main melody, unfolded at a ously revisited, transformed, and leisurely pace, is introduced by the in the process reborn. “I risked english horn, an unconventional a great deal,” Franck said of his choice that particularly offended new symphony, “but the next time one of the conservatory professors I shall risk even more.” Perhaps who attended the premiere: “Just chastened by the cool reception mention a single symphony by the work received, however, he Haydn or Beethoven with an eng- wrote no more orchestral works. lish horn,” he demanded of d’Indy It was only after his death in 1890 that night, failing to recall the quite that the D minor symphony began fantastic symphony by Berlioz that to be played more and more—a makes magical (unforgettable, one spectacular performance in Paris in would think) use of the instrument. 1893 may have marked the turn- (Actually, Haydn’s Symphony ing point—eventually becoming no. 22 [The Philosopher] calls for the most popular work in Franck’s two english horns, but it was small but prime catalog. unknown in France at the time.) Muted strings suggest the spirit of a scherzo, continuing and at the same time complementing what has Phillip Huscher is the program annota- gone before. tor for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Symphony Orchestra © 2012 Chicago

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