The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, Saturday, 20, May 1978, I.A O
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Great Composers Concert IV I.A. O'Shauqhnessy Auditorium The College of St. Catherine, St. Paul Saturday, 20 May 1978 8 p.m. Lou Harrison, featured composer - The Dale Warland Singers, Dennis Russell Davies, piano now in their sixth season, Romuald Tecco, violin have become one of the fore- The Dale Warland Singers most choral groups in the Dale Warland, director central USA and are rapidly William McGlaughlin, Exxon/Arts Endowment attaining national and world- Conductor wide recognition. Comprising 38 singers from the St. Paul- Minneapolis area, they have esta blished an envia ble repu- tation for their musicality, versatility and diverse pro- gramming. The Dale Warland Suite for Violin, Piano and Small Orchestra Singers appear regularly Romuald Tecco, violin with the Saint Paul Chamber Dennis Russell Davies, piano Orchestra and the Minnesota Opera Company. They give concerts throughout the Mid- west and broadcast regularly Suite from Marriage at the Eiffel Tower over public radio. At the invi- tation of the Swedish govern- ment.JheSingers toured INTERMISSION Sweden and-Norway in July 1977. They haverecorded incidental music for two Ear- ~ radio drama productions Mass to Saint Anthony ~ " ational Public Radio and .. ave made two recordings of 20th-century choral music. The choir has given a perfor- mance in honor of Sweden's King Carl Gustav, as well as concerts with tenor Ernst Haefliger, the American Brass Quintet, the Minnesota Orchestra and for the Minne- sota Bicentennial Commission. Lou Harrison (b. Portland, Oregon, 14 May 1917) Lou Harr-ison was raised in Oregon and California. He spent a decade in New York studying with Henry Cowell, Arnold Schoenberg and Virgil Thomson. He has received grants from the Rockefeller Founda tion and from the- The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra records on Nonesuch. 29 Phoebe Thorne Foundation. He is a mem- American composers to provide a score ber of the National Institute of Arts and on a similar basis. When Bonnie Bird Letters and has taught at San Jose State revised the work at Reed College and- University, Black Mountain College in later in New York, I was at hand to North Carolina, Reed College, Stanford produce, almost inadvertently, a com- University and the University of South- plete score, the first, so faras I know, ern California. Mr. Harrison hasa great written by a single composer for this interest in Asian music and has studied ballet. ' in Korea and Taiwan; and in recent This is my most light-heartedly Euro- years he has had a special fascination American work, containing elements of with the Javanese gamelan. He has long good-natured popular music commonly experimented with new instruments and used in earlier days and no longer com- I tunings, and was among those who were monly heard. The suite which I extract- first interested in the music of Charles ed from the ballet is, for concert Ives, some of whose works he has purposes, re-arranged from the original arranged. Mr. Harrison has lived for the order. The text is also excerpted, so that past 25 years in Aptos, California, each section of the dialogue, which was where he is closely associated with the originally uttered from imitation "morn- Cabrillo Music Festival. ing glory" phonograph horns at either side of the stage, now merely leads Mr. Harrison bas kindly provided the notes for this program. briefly up to each piece. Suite for Violin, Piano and Small Orchestra Mass to Saint Anthony This piece was commissioned in the ear- My only mass was composed over a ly '50s by Anahid and Maro Ajemian, number of years and was intended for who gave its first performance and also high liturgical use. It origina ted in a recorded it with Leopold Stokowski. It W.P.A.study which indicated that the reflected my growing interest in East/ Franciscan fathers in California had West fusions, and contains Balinese- received Indians into the missions style gamelan evocations and Middle replete with their own chants and per- Eastern technical procedures, which in cussion instruments. The fathers ther-: the last movement are combined with taught them a kind of rhythmized Cre Western chorale style. I meant only to rian chant, while retaining the percus- put the s910violin and piano into relief sion accompaniment. At this point I was against the chamber orchestra, and not entranced and started work immediately on a mass for unison chorus of limited to produce a "concerto" in the old sense. -" Thus, for example, the orchestra lacks range and chantlike characteristics with .any violins because one of the soloists is an accompaniment for large modern a violinist. percussion orchestra. Ibegan the vocal part on the day that Hitler marched into Poland, and produced a kind of cry of anguish accompanied by a terrifying Suite from "Marriage at the Eiffel death march on bass drums and snare Tower" drums. I went on to write the entire This music was written in 1948 or '49 at vocal score and finished most of the Reed College, where the choreographer percussion accompaniment to the Glo- Bonnie Bird produced the entire ballet in ria, which was to have sounded "with the then new Dudley Fitts translation. all the church bells of the world." Many , e Before that, she had produced the work years later, I decided to "clean up" the with John Cage who, imitating the orga- work for liturgical use, and wrote the niza tion of the original score (a colla bo- contrapuntal version for trumpet, harp ration by Les Six), invited a group of and string orchestra heard tonight. , 30 ~..