Symphony Band Chamber Winds
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SYMPHONY BAND CHAMBER WINDS COURTNEY SNYDER, CONDUCTOR CHRISTINE LUNDAHL, GRADUATE STUDENT CONDUCTOR Monday, November 2, 2020 Hill Auditorium 8:45 PM The Battell Suite (1590) William Byrd The Souldier’s Summons (ca. 1539–1623) The Burying of the Dead arr. Makoto Onodera The Retraite The Earl of Oxford’s March Christine Lundahl, conductor Drama (1996) Guo Wenjing VI. (b. 1956) Serenade in C Minor, KV 388 (1783) Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Allegro (1756–1791) Andante Menuetto in canone Allegro THe use of all cameras and recording devices is strictly prohibited. Please turn off all cell phones and pagers or set ringers to silent mode. BYRD, THE BATTELL SUITE Born in London circa 1539, William Byrd was an English organist and composer of the Shake- spearean age who is best known for his development of the English madrigal. He also wrote virginal and organ music that elevated the English keyboard style. He was a pupil and protégé of the organist and composer Thomas Tallis, and his first official appointment was as organist at Lincoln Cathedral. In 1572, he returned to London to take up his post as a gentleman of the Chapel Royal, where he shared the duties of organist with Tallis. After the death of Tallis in 1585, Byrd published four collections of his own music: Psalmes, Sonets, & Songs of Sadnes and Pietie, Songs of Sundrie Natures, and two further books of Cantiones sacrae. In 1593, Byrd moved with his family to Stondon Massey, Essex, where he lived for the rest of his life. Byrd wrote extensively for every medium then available except the lute. His virginal and organ music brought the English keyboard style to new heights and paved the way for the achieve- ments of other English composers, such as John Bull, Giles Farnaby, Orlando Gibbons, and Thomas Tomkins. He also played an extremely important role in music for viol consort, pio- neering the development of the freely composed fantasia, which was to become the most important form of Jacobean and later composers. Although he admired Italian madrigals and as a publisher helped introduce them to England, Byrd’s own secular vocal music is distinctly conservative; much of it is conceived for the old-fashioned medium of solo voice accompanied by viol consort, which was later abandoned by the English madrigalists, with Thomas Morley (Byrd’s pupil) at their head. Makoto Onodera wrote THe Battell Suite for brass septet and percussion using music from two of William Byrd’s pieces. The first three movements are fromTH e Battell (1590), which was composed at the end of the renaissance during a time of religious unrest in England. The Ro- man Catholic Church had been replaced by the Church of England, and many English Catho- lics were being persecuted, made to convert, or forced to worship in secrecy. This was also a time when polyphonic vocal music was at its zenith and keyboard music was becoming more prevalent. The piece was written for virginal, a small, rectangular harpsichord-like instrument, that could be placed on a tabletop. The piece contains thirteen short movements that depict the events leading up to a battle, the battle itself, and the aftermath. The Battell stands as one of the earliest examples of programmatic music. The fourth movement of THe Battell Suite uses music from Byrd’s THe Earle of Oxford’s March (1581). It is one of the best known pieces of the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, the collection of over 300 keyboard works from the Elizabethan period of the sixteenth century. Note by Christine Lundahl WENJING, DRAMA Guo Wenjing was born in 1956 in Chongqing, an ancient city of China’s mountainous Sich- uan province. In 1978, Guo was one of a hundred students admitted out of 17,000 applicants to Beijing’s reopened Central Conservatory of Music. Unlike many colleagues from this ac- claimed class (Tan Dun, Chen Yi, and Zhou Long), Guo remained in China after graduation, except for a short stay in New York on an Asian Cultural Council grant. Guo’s music first became known in the west in 1983, when Suspended Ancient Coffins on the Cliffs on Sichuan was premiered in Berkeley, California. The piece clearly pays tribute to Béla Bartók, highlighting two solo pianos with a battery of percussion instruments, but the strong imprint of Guo’s own Sichuanese roots is unmistakable in the orchestral writing. He has been honored among the Top 100 Living Artists of China, and his works have been featured at festi- vals in Amsterdam, Berlin, Glasgow, Paris, New York, Aspen, London, Hong Kong, and War- saw, and at venues like the Frankfurt Opera, the Berlin Konzerthaus, Amsterdam’s Concertge- bouw, and New York’s Lincoln Center. He has written works for internationally distinguished ensembles like the Atlas Ensemble, Cincinnati Percussion Group, Kronos Quartet, Arditti String Quartet, Ensemble Modern, and Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra. He serves on the composition faculty of the Central Conservatory. Apart from his chamber music for traditional western string quartets and percussion ensem- bles, Guo also has composed Late Spring (1995) for Chinese ensemble and Sound from Tibet (2001), combining instruments from China and the west. Among his most performed cham- ber works are Drama (1995, a trio for three percussionists who also speak and sing), Inscriptions on Bone (1996, for alto singer and fifteen instruments), andParade (2004, a sequel to Drama, for three percussionists). Drama is a fascinating piece for three performers. Over the course of six movements, it explores the various sounds that can be produced with Chinese Xiabo, Naobo, and Chuanbo cymbals mixed with vocal sounds. Commissioned by Percussion Group Cincinnati, Guo wrote this piece to sound like a Chinese drama. Note with material from Ricordi website MOZART, SERENADE IN C MINOR, KV 388 In the later eighteenth century, music for winds (known as Harmoniemusik) was popular across continental Europe and England, and even experienced a so-called “Golden Era” from 1770 to 1820. This repertoire initially comprised works for entertainment, then developed in sophisti- cation throughout the period. The instrumentation varied depending on the specific court and composer, but in most cases the band, or Harmonie, consisted of two oboes, two clarinets, two French horns, and two bassoons. Mozart composed a number of works in this genre, using varied combinations of wind instru- ments. The Serenade in C Minor (KV 388) is anything but entertaining, as the key of C minor is reserved for the composer’s most tragic utterances. The work exhibits the characteristics of a Sturm und Drang symphony, as developed by Franz Joseph Haydn, complete with the expected four-movement structure. The opening movement announces its seriousness of purpose with a triadic fanfare similar to the rising triad beginning the Piano Concerto in C minor (KV 491), written a few years later. There is a constantly unsettled quality in the musical discourse, with sudden outbursts, muted responses, and a restless despondency. The sudden surge of fury in the development is brutally truncated, and the listener is telescoped back into the formal reprise long before it is expected. The lyrical second movement provides relief before the final two movements, which are clearly influenced by Haydn. TheMenuetto in canone follows Haydn’s precedent from his Symphony No. 44 in being a strict canon, while the contrasting trio section provides a double canon in which the answering voices are inverted (turned upside-down). Such contrapuntal writing is rare in serenades, and suggests that Mozart was determined that his audience really listen. The finale uses a variation structure frequently employed by Haydn and comes close to borrowing a theme from his Symphony No. 42. An intriguing succession of variations explores unusual instrumental combinations, in which every member of the ensemble enjoys a moment of glory. The rollicking final variation ends happily in C major. Note by Robert Dearling Notes Edited by Andrew Kohler SUPPORT BAND AT MICHIGAN! If you enjoyed this concert, please consider making a donation to support the band programs at the University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre & Dance! To make a gift please return this form, visit www.giving.umich.edu/give/music, or contact Ellen Aretakis at [email protected] or 734.763.0632. Enclosed is my gift of: $________ for the Friends of University Bands Fund (320745) Name:____________________________________ Phone: _________________ Address: ___________________________________________________________ City: _______________________________ State: _________ Zip: ____________ Email: ____________________________________________________________ o My check payable to the University of Michigan is enclosed. o My employer matches gifts to higher education. (please include matching gift form) Return to: Development Office, 2005 Baits Drive, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-2075 ME: 1016 SYMPHONY BAND Courtney Snyder, Associate Director of Bands BYRD Andrew Bohn, Francis Chiodo, & Adam Kim, trumpets Gretchen Bonnema, horn; Ryan Linke, bass trombone Joseph Bickel & Doug Ferguson, euphoniums Andrew Colon & Nathan Shook, tubas Will Kelley, percussion Christine Lundahl, conductor WENJING Ancel Neely, Sui Lin Tam, & Daniel Vila, percussion MOZART Jonathan Chan & Fiona Slaughter, oboes Oliver Bishop & Jesse Bruer, clarinets Aaron Brown & Daniel Zaldana, bassoons Lea Humphreys & Landon Young, horns Courtney Snyder, conductor All personnel are listed alphabetically and rotate parts during the concert. PRODUCTION STAFF DIRECTOR EQUIPMENT PUBLICITY Paul Feeny Walter Puyear Brandon Monzon Justin Stobart MANAGER PROGRAMS Erin Casler Tom Erickson LIBRARIAN SOUND ENGINEER Alizabeth Nowland Roger Arnett OPERATIONS COORDINATOR Jonathan Mashburn THe University of Michigan is a smoke-free campus. Smoking is not permitted in University buildings or on University grounds. Smoking is permitted only in personal vehicles or on the sidewalks of major thoroughfares. .