CWE-Prog Notes II-Sp17
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On July 24, the Infantry Regiment No. 14 military band, under the direction of THE CRANE WIND ENSEMBLE Hermann Scherchen (to whom Hindemith dedicated this work), performed Kozertmusik, alongside several other new offerings for wind band: Kleine Program Notes • 20 March 2017 Serenade für Militarorchester – Ernst Pepping, Spiel für Blasorchester, Op. 39 – Ernst Toch, and Drei lustige Märsche, Op. 44 – Ernst Krenek. A DAGIO FOR W IND O RCHESTRA Hindemith scored Konzertmusik for Military Band, a smaller instrumentation Joaquín Rodrigo drawing upon more “mellow” brass and fewer woodwinds than the standard concert band of the day. Pairs of flügelhorns and tenorhorns filled the middle Joaquín Rodrigo, along with Manuel de Falla, is one of the foremost proponents voices of the ensemble, usually reserved for saxophones. Hindemith even of the Spanish nationalist musical style. Rodrigo’s life in music may never have suggested substituting these brass band instruments for pairs of soprano taken place had tragedy not struck him early on. A diphtheria outbreak in 1904 saxophones and tenor saxophones if desired – an option taken for tonight’s severely damaged his eyesight. A subsequent and unsuccessful eye operation left performance. him totally blind thereafter. The entire work serves as an illustration of Hindemith’s neoclassic principals. After teaching himself to play piano, Rodrigo began lessons with Edouardo Lopez The opening movement “Konzertante Ouverture,” is built upon a ritornello Chavarri, a local – and eminent – folklorist and composer. It is this mentor that structure: statement-contrast-restatement. The movement commences with an engendered Rodrigo’s enthusiasm for and love of Spanish folk music. In 1927, imitative introduction, followed by a faster section wherein the trumpet and Rodrigo left Spain to study in Paris with Paul Dukas. There he became acquainted trombone play the principals in a condensed concerto grosso. The second with both Manuel de Falla and Andreas Segovia. Segovia, a guitarist, is movement is a set of six variations on the Austrian folk tune “Prince Eugene, the responsible for Rodrigo’s two most enduring works: Concierto de Aranjuez and Noble Knight.” After the theme, Hindemith presents variations using the forms Fantasia para un Gentilhombre, both for guitar and orchestra. and techniques of: fugue, metric variation, march, fanfare, funeral march and a climactic fugue in 3/8 time. The last movement, “Märsche,” is a compact ternary For the American Wind Symphony’s 1966 concert season, Robert Boudreau, their form, with the trio serving as an intimate showcase of woodwind virtuosity. conductor, commissioned Rodrigo to write Adagio for Wind Orchestra. Like most of Rodrigo’s works, the Adagio creates a Spanish ambiance – evocative harmonies and fanciful tunes that instill in the listener the flair and melancholy P ETITE S YMPHONIE inherent in Spanish folk music. The Adagio consists of two primary sections. The Charles Gounod first, slower section contains a plaintive tune in minor mode, unaccompanied at first, later with a descending harmonic progression. The following faster section The music and sensibilities of Charles Gounod fluctuated throughout his life combines an accented dance-like rhythm with a fanfare motive. These two between the poles of sacred and profane love, often ambiguously. Well-educated sections alternate ABABA, before the piece comes to a restful close. in the theory, practice, and history of music, his earliest successes as a composer came with settings of the mass in an austere, a capella style inspired by Palestrina. K ONZERTMUSIK, OP. 41 A brief flirtation with the priesthood in the late 1840s gave way to an infatuation Paul Hindemith with the famed opera singer Pauline Viardot, who led him to switch to opera, but his first efforts, marred by an effort to imitate Meyerbeer, were failures. His Paul Hindemith stands as one of the preeminent composers of the twentieth greatest mass, the Messe solennelle de Sainte Cécile of 1855, with full orchestra century. He studied both violin and composition at the Hoch Konservatorium in and soloists added to the choir, was florid, almost operatic in style, thus blending Frankfurt, emerging as an accomplished performer on both the violin and viola. the two extremes. For the next decade, Gounod was at the height of his powers, As a composer, Hindemith created his own harmonic language, writing in a style and his engagement by the Theater Lyrique in 1858 led to the composition of the deeply rooted in neoclassic structures and forms borrowed from the Baroque and five operas for which he is remembered today. Dispensing with Meyerbeerian Classical periods. In the 1920’s, he became an active participant in the pretense, Gounod embraced his natural gift for writing unpretentiously lyrical Donaueschingen Festival, both as a musical contributor and a member of its Board music, wedding it to familiar stories. His greatest success came with his 1859 of Directors. This festival, currently in its 97th season, presents “new and setting of the love story from Goethe's Faust. Rejecting spectacle for its own sake interesting” works to the public, serving as a “flea in the fur of musical culture.” and seeking to humanize even the lesser roles, Gounod mixed song types and singing styles, formal expression and informal, to musically delineate character Kozertmusik für Blasorchester, Op. 41 received its premiere at the in ways never before seen in opera. Donaueschingen Festival of 1926, under the patronage of Furst von Furstenburg. During the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-71, he and his family took refuge in Stokowski created a sensation by conducting world premieres of avant-garde England. Success there turned to scandal when Gounod took an English opera composers such as Igor Stravinsky and Edgard Varese, and he enraged classical singer as his mistress, and his wife fled back to Paris. After suffering a stroke in purists with his lavishly Romantic orchestra transcriptions of J.S. Bach. 1874, a badly shaken Gounod ended his affair and returned to France. Thereafter Appearing as a conductor in various Hollywood films, Stokowski’s 1940 both the quality and quantity of his composing declined. After several operatic collaboration with Walt Disney in Fantasia resulted in the first stereophonic failures, he drifted back towards sacred music. An oratorio, La Rédemption, was recording of an orchestral soundtrack. performed to mixed and sometimes savage reviews. It was in Philadelphia that he created the famous “Stokowski sound,” making the Though Gounod wrote little instrumental music, the two symphonies of 1855, the orchestra sound like a pipe organ. His fascination with timbre led him to Petite Symphonie of 1885, and a handful of late string quartets are all skillfully experiment with the seating of players, moving sections of the orchestra to wrought essays in traditional forms, graceful and unpretentious. We can be different parts of the stage. These dramatic spatial arrangements appealed to the grateful to the flutist Paul Taffanel, who commissioned the Petite Symphonie for eye as well as the ear. a Paris concert series devoted to wind chamber music. Gounod took the In the mid-1920s, Stokowski organized the Band of Gold, attesting to his belief Mozartian wind octet consisting of pairs of clarinets, oboes, horns, and bassoons in the importance of wind band music as a medium of artistic expression. and added a single prominently featured flute to the mix. With an overall Incorporating members of the Philadelphia Orchestra in the band, he conducted character of elegant conversation, the work features a Haydnesque slow not only Sousa marches, but his own Bach arrangements. introduction to a lively allegro, and a slow movement like an operatic aria for flute over sonorous winds. In the Scherzo and Finale, the musical ideas are beguiling In Bells for Stokowski, I imagine Stokowski using the Liberty Bell at sunrise, and both in their charm and in the manner of their distribution amongst the players. listening to all the bells of the city resonate. The composition begins with two Note by Ron Drummond (Northwest Sinfonietta) percussionists, placed on opposite ends of the stage, performing stereophonically on identical ringing percussion instruments such as chimes, crotales, bell trees, B ELLS FOR S TOKOWSKI and various non-pitched metals. A saxophone quartet introduces an original theme that I have composed in the style of Bach. This Baroque fantasy is Michael Daugherty elaborately transformed through a series of tonal and atonal variations. Later in While composer-in-residence for the Philadelphia Orchestra in 2001, Michael the composition, I also introduce my own transcription of Bach’s C Major Prelude Daugherty composed Philadelphia Stories, premiered under the direction of from The Well-Tempered Klavier. David Zinman. In three movements, this "travelogue of the sounds and rhythms In keeping with Stokowski’s musical aesthetic, I look simultaneously to the past of Philadelphia" begins at sundown (Sundown on South Street) with a colorful and future of American concert music in Bells for Stokowski. I utilize multiple evocation of one of the most popular streets of Philadelphia. The music is canons, polyrhythms, and counterpoints to achieve a complex timbral layering. appropriately brilliant and full of energy, in a fairly eclectic, often jazzy way With unusual orchestrations and an alternation between chamber and tutti reminiscent of Leonard Bernstein’s compositions. The second movement (Tell- configurations, I recreate the musical effect of Stokowski’s experimental seating Tale Harp) is a sort of nocturne (Daugherty describes it as an arabesque for two arrangements. In the coda, I evoke the famous Stokowski sound, by making the harps and orchestra) that obliquely refers to Poe’s The Tell-Tale Heart. This symphonic band resound like an enormous, rumbling gothic organ. homage to Philadelphia and the Philadelphia Orchestra ends with a tribute to Note by Michael Daugherty Leopold Stokowski (Bells for Stokowski). A consortium of twelve university band programs commissioned the wind version of Bells for Stokowski.