Symphony Band Chamber Winds Michael Haithcock, Conductor

Nicholas Balla, Kimberly Fleming & JoAnn Wieszczyk, Graduate Student Conductors

Friday, March 12, 2021 Hill Auditorium 8:00 pm

Aria della battaglia (published 1590) Andrea Gabrieli (ca. 1533–1585) ed. Mark Scatterday Kimberly Fleming, conductor

Fanfare after Seventeenth Century Dances (1965/1973) Donal Michalsky Paul Peuerl – “Newe Padouan, Intrada, Däntz und Galliarda” (1611) (1928–1975) Johann Hermann Schein – “Banchetto Musicale” (1617) Isaac Posch – “Musicalische Ehrenfreudt” (1618) Nicholas Balla, conductor

Schism (2010/2015) David Biedenbender (b. 1984) Point Blank (2010/2012/2020) Paul Dooley (b. 1983) JoAnn Wieszczyk, conductor

Intégrales (1925) Edgar Varèse (1883–1965)

Little Threepenny Music: Suite from The Threepenny Opera (1929) Kurt Weill Overture (1900–1950) Moritat of Mack the Knife Instead-of Song Ballad of the Easy Life Polly’s Song Tango-Ballade Army Song Threepenny Finale

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. GABRIELI, ARIA DELLA BATTAGLIA

Composer and organist Andrea Gabrieli was an important musical figure in Renaissance Italy. He and his nephew, Giovanni Gabrieli, both held the position of principal organist at St. Mark’s Cathedral in Venice and wrote pieces to be performed there. Andrea Gabrieli composed in all the major musical genres of the day, including masses, motets, madrigals, theatre music, and keyboard works.

“Aria della battaglia” (“Battle Song”) is from the Dialoghi musicali de diversi eccelentissimi au- tori, published in Venice in 1590. One of only two surviving Gabrieli pieces designated for large instrumental ensemble, the work is subtitled “per sonare d’instrumenti da fiato” (“to be played by wind instruments”), although an exact scoring is not specified. Following Clément Janequin’s La Guerre (“The War”) and preceding Monteverdi’s Madrigali guerrieri et amorosi (“Madrigals of War and Love”), “Aria della battaglia” reflects the popular sixteenth-century tra- dition of programmatic music depicting battle or warfare. This piece does not depict a specific battle, but instead alternates the expected fanfares and imitations of conflict with passages of song and dance. Note by Patricia Cornett

MICHALSKY, FANFARE AFTER SEVENTEENTH CENTURY DANCES

Born in 1928, American composer Donal Michalsky was a native of California. He studied music theory and composition at the University of Southern California, where he received bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees. Michalsky studied music theory with Halsey Stevens and orchestration with Ingolf Dahl. In the time during and after World War II, Los Angeles was a burgeoning epicenter of American culture. While Michalsky was a student at USC, such composers as Igor Stravinsky and Arnold Schoenberg were active in the Los Angeles new music community. In 1960, Michalsky joined the faculty at California State University, Fullerton, where he taught composition, theory, and music history. He was influential in the new music scene of the Southlands area of Los Angeles. Similar to Stravinsky’s new music Monday con- certs at the University of California, Los Angeles, Michalsky hosted concerts and premiered new works of his own and other composers on the campus of Cal State Fullerton. Among his awards are a BMI Award (1968), a Fulbright scholarship to Germany, and seven consecutive ASCAP awards (1967 to 1972). His music is characterized by lyric, emotive melodic lines and effective counterpoint. Like many composers in Los Angeles at the time, Michalsky echoed traditional formal structures and experimented with dodecaphonic procedures, although he generally employed a more conservative harmonic language.

Fanfare After Seventeenth Century Dances was commissioned for the 1965 Ojai Music Festival and its artistic director Ingolf Dahl, Michalsky’s former mentor. The piece opened the summer festival’s first concert, an evening outdoor program for winds. The composition celebrates the nascency of the variation suite of the early Baroque period. Each of the three movements of the Fanfare are based on the dances of three innovative composers. Paul Peuerl (1570–1625), Johann Hermann Schein (1586–1630), and Isaac Posch (ca. 1591–ca. 1623) were each im- portant figures in the development of the Baroque instrumental variation suite. Building upon compositional traditions of the Renaissance period, composer and organist Paul Peuerl is cred- ited with the creation of the variation suite. His suites include four dances: a newe padouan (a relative of the pavane), an intrada, a däntz (the central movement on which all others are based), and a galliarda. Johann Hermann Schein composed twenty numbered sets of dances, and Isaac Posch’s Musicalishe Ehrnfreudt, included, in addition to dance suites, four Balletas meant exclusively to accompany aristocratic meals. Written in four- and five-part harmony, these suites were meant to be performed by any available consort of instrumentalists. Fanfare After Seventeenth Century Dances includes three consorts within the ensemble, which continu- ally pass around musical material. Michalsky uses octave displacement, overlapping harmonies, added counterpoint, alternating dance sections, shortened and extended meters, dynamic and tempo alterations, and hocket to create a compositional parody of the original dance forms. Note by Nicholas Balla

BIEDENBENDER, SCHISM

David Biedenbender has written music for the concert stage, as well as for dance and multi- media collaborations, and his work is often influenced by his diverse musical experiences in rock and jazz bands as a bassist; in wind, jazz, and New Orleans-style brass bands as a eupho- nium, trombone, and tuba player; and by study of Indian carnatic music. His present creative interests include working with everyone and everything, from classically trained musicians to improvisers, acoustic chamber music to large ensembles, and interactive electronic interfaces to live brain data. He has had the privilege of collaborating with and being commissioned by many renowned performers and ensembles, including Alarm Will Sound, the PRISM Saxo- phone Quartet, the Albany Symphony Orchestra, the Stenhammar String Quartet, the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, the U.S. Navy Band, Philharmonie Baden-Baden (Germany), VocalEssence, and the Eastman Wind Ensemble, among many others. He is currently Assistant Professor of Composition in the College of Music at Michigan State University, and he holds degrees in composition from the University of Michigan and Central Michigan University. He has also studied at the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study, the Aspen Music Festival, and in India, where he studied carnatic music.

Biedenbender offers the following insights into this composition:

“Schism is about divisions. I wrote the work during 2010 in the midst of the turbulent national mid-term elections, a time that, in the context of more recent political tur- moil, actually seems quite tame. I was overwhelmingly frustrated by the sophomoric mud-slinging and ridiculous lies being told by many politicians and the variously al- lied media, but I was also somewhat amused by what was nothing short of a nation- wide ‘goat rodeo’ [slang term for a chaotic situation, often one that involves several people, each with a different agenda/vision/perception of what’s going on; a situation that is very difficult, despite energy and efforts, in which to instill any sense or order].

“Much of the musical material is transcribed almost note for note from an improvisa- tion I played on the piano and recorded in the early stages of sketching the piece. I re- member being interested in combining the pointillism of Anton Webern’s music with a bluesy rock groove, so much of the piece is based on a single, simple, eighth-note- based, divided melodic line that jumps around the piano in very large leaps. I think of the musical affect as similar to the compound melodies in J.S. Bach’s Unaccompanied Cello Suites, where a single melodic line is perceptually transformed through large leaps into multiple voices, though in the end I used the ensemble to actually hold out the notes the piano could not to add color, character, and attitude to the independent voices. I also wanted to play with the notion of groove by dividing it in unusual and unexpected ways, almost like running a few of the licks and grooves through a meat grinder. “Schism was originally written for the chamber orchestra Alarm Will Sound. This ver- sion for winds and percussion was commissioned by a consortium of ensembles led by Robert Carnochan and the University of Texas at Austin Wind Symphony, as well as Michael Haithcock, University of Michigan; Chris Knighten, University of Arkansas; and Steven D. Davis, University of Missouri–Kansas City Conservatory of Music.”

DOOLEY, POINT BLANK

Paul Dooley’s music has been described as “impressive and beautiful” by American composer Steve Reich. Mr. Dooley’s path has embraced not only his Western Classical heritage, but also a cross-cultural range of contemporary music, dance, art, technology, and the interactions between the human and natural worlds.

Dooley is a lecturer in Performing Arts Technology at the University of Michigan. While at the University of Michigan, Dooley has taught courses in electronic music, co-directed the 2009 Midwest Composers Symposium, and in 2010 was coordinator of the ONCE. MORE. Festival, a 50-year anniversary of the ONCE Festival of Contemporary Music. He studied composition primarily with composers Michael Daugherty, Bright Sheng, Evan Chambers, Frank Ticheli, Stephen Hartke, and Frederick Lesemann.

Dooley has received a wide range of prizes for his work, including the William D. Revelli Composition Contest co-winner for Masks and Machines (2015), the 2013 Jacob Druckman Award for orchestral composition from the Aspen Music Festival for Point Blank (2012), a 2010 BMI composer award for Gradus (2009) for solo cello, and a 2008 ASCAP Morton Gould Composer Award for Dani’s Dance (2007) for piano trio. He also has received numerous commissions from a variety of ensembles and solo performers.

The composer offers the following commentary regarding this composition:

“Point Blank is inspired by the sounds, rhythms, and virtuosity of New York City- based new music ensemble Alarm Will Sound, who premiered the original version of the piece in 2010. Featuring synthetic sound worlds and tightly interlocking percus- sion ideas, the drum set and timpani whirl the ensemble through an array of electroni- cally inspired orchestrations, while the winds and brass ‘shriek for dear life.’ A 2012 version for band was commissioned by a consortium of bands organized by Gary D. Green and the University of Miami Frost Wind Ensemble. The version heard tonight was created in 2020 at the request of Michael Haithcock, Director of Bands at the University of Michigan, to be performed within the health and safety protocols related to the COVID-19 pandemic.”

VARÈSE, INTÉGRALES

There are few twentieth-century composers who are as controversial, divisive, and influential as Edgard Varèse. Generally regarded as the “Father of Electronic Music,” Varèse spent much of his life searching for new ways to expand the listener’s sonic universe, and because of this ex- perimentation his impact on twentieth-century music is hard to overstate. Although he did not have a large number of composition students—Chou Wen-Chung, Colin McPhee, and André Jolivet are among the few—a wide range of composers have pointed to him as a major influ- ence, including Milton Babbitt, Pierre Boulez, John Cage, Morton Feldman, Olivier Messiaen, Luigi Nono, Krzysztof Penderecki, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Iannis Xenakis, and Frank Zappa.

Varèse was born in France in 1883 and lived with relatives for much of his early childhood. After being reunited with his parents in the late 1880s, he moved to Italy and remained there until 1893, after which he returned to France and enrolled at both the Schola Cantorum and the Paris Conservatoire. He enlisted in the French Army during World War I only to be dis- charged due to illness, and in 1915 immigrated to the United States, ultimately becoming an American citizen in 1927.

Since almost all of Varèse’s works written prior to his time in the US were either lost or de- stroyed in a fire, those he composed there constitute the first in his published catalogue (begin- ning in 1922 with Amériques). The 1920s represented a particularly fruitful period for Varèse, due in large part to the founding of the International Composers’ Guild, which he established in conjunction with Carlos Salzedo. One of the ICG’s founding principles was a rejection of “isms” or schools of compositions. Instead, the ICG would recognize only the individual com- poser as a unique, musical voice. It was for this organization that Varèse composed Offrandes, Hyperprism, Octandre, and Intégrales.

Throughout his time in the US, Varèse showed a particular affinity for wind instruments, writing a total of five pieces for winds alone. He is also recognized as being one of the first composers to drastically expand and explore the possibilities of the percussion section. This is perhaps most evident in his landmark piece for percussion ensemble, Ionisation. Wind and percussion instruments, in Varèse’s mind, were the closest approximations to the electronic sounds he would explore later in his career. As he noted in a 1953 radio interview with regard to Intégrales: “[I] planned…for certain acoustical media that were not then in existence, but that I knew could be built and that would be available sooner or later.” Although Varèse fre- quently used electronic instruments in his music in the 1930s and ’40s (including fingerboard theremin, Ondes martenot, and magnetic tape), it was not until the 1958 Brussels World’s Fair that he presented his first fully electronic piece,Poème électronique.

In his music, Varèse constantly explores the spatial relationships of sound. After all, music in his mind was simply “bodies of intelligent sounds moving freely in space.” By exploring these possibilities, he was firmly rejecting traditional eighteenth- and nineteenth-century concepts of development in favor of juxtaposing contrasting blocks of sound, or sound masses. It is through this juxtaposition (and stark contrast) that, according to Varèse, a listener is able to evaluate and explore musical space. Traditional ideas of timbral blend are irrelevant in his mu- sic because a mixture of sound does not highlight differences, and therefore limits the musical space to be explored. Wind and percussion instruments thus prove ideal for his music because of their more heterogeneous nature, as compared to the relatively homogeneous sound of the string family. Varèse, however, not only explores musical space relative to timbre, but also ex- periments with the very limits of musical possibilities in almost every aspect of performance, including pitch, rhythm, dynamics, and articulation.

In the original 1925 program for Intégrales, Varèse offered the following remarks, perhaps in response to constant questions about the meaning of his music:

The music is not a story, is not a picture, is not psychological nor a philosophical ab- straction. It is quite simply my music. It has definite form, which may be apprehended more justly by listening than by rationalizing about it. I repeat what I have written before: analysis is sterile. To explain by means of it is to decompose, to mutilate the spirit of the work. As to the title of a score it is of no importance. It serves as a con- venient means of cataloguing the work. I admit that I get much amusement out of choosing my titles—a sort of parental pastime, like christening a newborn child, but very different from the more intense business of begetting. I find no fun in family names. I often borrow from higher mathematics or astronomy only because these sci- ences stimulate my imagination and give me the impression of movement, of rhythm. For me there is more musical fertility in the contemplation of the stars—preferably through a telescope—and the high poetry of certain mathematical expositions than in the most sublime gossip of human passions. However, there are no planets or theorems to be looked for in my music. Music being a special form of thought can, I believe, express nothing but itself.

Intégrales is divided into six distinct sections. The first features short melodic fanfares by the E-flat clarinet, oboe, and piccolo trumpet, accompanied by interruptions in the percussion and chords in the wind section. The second section is a call and response between the horn and tenor trombone with hocketed chord structures in the upper woodwinds. The third section is a short transition with fanfare figures in the trumpets, and the fourth uses a dance-like theme before dissolving into tutti rhythmic outbursts. The fifth section is lyrical and features several extended oboe solos, while the sixth and final segment of the piece recalls material from the preceding section.

Perhaps the most striking aspect of Varèse’s music is that his innovations have stood the test of time—his music still sounds like “new music.” This enduring sense of originality is almost certainly what draws listeners toward his music, and past its harsh dissonances and somewhat austere nature. Intégrales is dedicated to Juliana Force, one of the financiers of the International Composers’ Guild, and was premiered on March 1, 1925 under the direction of Leopold Sto- kowski. Intégrales was the first and only piece to ever receive a second performance from the International Composers’ Guild. Note by Jonathan Caldwell

WEILL, LITTLE THREEPENNY MUSIC

The 1920s, which were “roaring” in the United States, were no less frenzied in the Germany of the Weimar Republic. In a country that had been run until 1918 by an autocratic Kaiser, it was a heady, freewheeling time, filled with adventure and experimentation in politics and the arts, spurred on by the creation of a democratic government. During the Weimar years, Berlin was one of the world’s most glittering cultural centers, with exciting new activity in music, the- atre, literature, and the visual arts. Of all the works created during that time, The Threepenny Opera (Die Dreigroschenoper) was both the most popular and the most enduring. It remains the most famous of several collaborations between Kurt Weill and poet/dramatist Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956). In the case of The Threepenny Opera, there were other largely silent collaborators who have generally not received credit for their work. The first production correctly noted that the work was based on John Gay’s satire The Beggar’s Opera, originally produced in 1728, in a translation by Elisabeth Hauptmann, with adaptation and song lyrics by Brecht. It is now known that more of the work was by Hauptmann herself, including a fair number of the song lyrics. This was a practice Brecht followed through much of his life—using the talents of a host of remarkable literary women, and rarely giving them any credit for their contribution.

This particular collaboration was as unlikely as it was successful. Drawn together by a desire to create operas, Brecht and Weill discovered that their views of the genre were almost totally opposite. Weill had studied with Ferruccio Busoni and written modernistic pieces like the Violin Concerto (with the accompaniment of wind orchestra) and a successful opera with the expressionist playwright Georg Kaiser, Der Zar lässt sich photographieren (The Czar Has Himself Photographed). He was regarded as one of the leading avant-garde composers of the day. Weill was interested in addressing a much broader audience than could be lured to the concerts of new music, and Brecht, a self-proclaimed Marxist, also wanted to reach the masses.

The two collaborators almost never finished their major opera, Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny (Rise and Fall of the City Mahagonny), owing to drastic differences of opinion on the function of music in opera. The Threepenny Opera, however, enjoyed an unparalleled success as a play with music that reflected the sardonic tone ofTh e Beggar’s Opera, in which criminals, prostitutes, and highwaymen were easily recognized parodies of the leading political figures of the day. Brecht’s adaptation is equally cynical in its disbelief of any noble motives among humankind. “First comes the grub,” he wrote in a song lyric, “and then come morals” (Erst kommt das Fressen, dann kommt die Moral). The play and the music were created in a few chaotic weeks and hastily mounted at the end of August 1928. Few expected it to succeed, but it has since become the most identifiable work from the short-lived Weimar Republic, which was to last only four and a half more years before the catastrophic Third Reich, which forced both Weill and Brecht into exile.

The popular elements of The Threepenny Opera are obvious in the suite of songs that Weill created as a concert work. A medley of some of the most famous songs in the show, the suite includes popular dances rhythms such as the foxtrot, tango, and Charleston, and it is scored for instruments associated with jazz and nightclubs. The movements for the most part are direct arrangements of the show’s songs, but the second combines Weill’s most famous tune, “The Moritat of Mack the Knife” (a moritat is a type of street-ballad, usually describing a criminal’s misdeeds, and Mack the Knife is the main character), with another number, “Song of the In- sufficiency of Human Striving.” The finale comprises three (out of four) musical numbers that make up the last scene of the play.

Composers normally create an orchestral suite from a dramatic work in order to make the music more widely heard, and perhaps to induce customers to purchase tickets to the show. Conductor Otto Klemperer persuaded Weill to prepare the suite with the idea that it would be heard during the course of the Berlin Opera Ball in January 1929. For whatever reason, the planned performance did not take place, but Klemperer included the work in a symphonic program he conducted soon after that, marking the debut of the new “popular” Kurt Weill in the concert hall. Note by Donald McKinney

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ME: 1016 SYMPHONY BAND Michael Haithcock, Director of Bands Arthur F. Thurnau Professor of Music

GABRIELI Cassandra Goodwin & Mattie Levy, oboes; Jonathan Chan & Megan Wojtyla, English horns Ryan Goodwin, Liza Knight, Emily O’Donnell & Bryce Richardson, bassoons Andrew Bohn, Grace Gilpatrick & Gabriella Rock, trumpets Gretchen Bonnema, Max Braun & Dena Levy, horns Ryan Meyaard & Yuki Mori, trombones

MICHALSKY Alexis Phinney & Leonardo Viglietti, flutes; Mattie Levy, oboe; Jonathan Chan, English horn Cameron Leonardi & Everett Rutledge, clarinets; Ryan Goodwin & Eduardo Martinez, bassoons Natalie Myers & Landon Young, horns; Joel Greenfield, trumpet; Joseph Bickel, euphonium

BIEDENBENDER/DOOLEY Jordan Smith, flute; Megan Wojtyla, oboe Asher Harris, clarinet; Lia Boncoeur, bass clarinet; Bryce Richardson, bassoon Oscar Wei, soprano saxophone; Jason Frasier, alto saxophone Roberto Campa, tenor saxophone; Samuel Dishon, baritone saxophone Samuel Himes, horn; Keenan Bakowski, trumpet Ryan Meyaard, bass trombone; Alexander Tran, tuba Olivia Cirisan, Ancel Neeley, Sui Lin Tam & Hohner Porter, percussion Hyerim Lee & Jie Ren, piano

VARÈSE Danielle Kim & Jordan Smith, piccolos; Ryan Hirokawa, oboe Jesse Bruer & Nathan Rodriguez, clarinets; Lea Humphreys, horn Keenan Bakowski & Frank Chiodo, trumpets Tyler Coffman, trombone; Avery Wolf, bass trombone; Christopher Hall, tuba Ancel Neeley, Hohner Porter, Reed Puleo & Daniel Vila, percussion

WEILL Adria Cafferillo & Danielle Kim, flutes; Nathan Landers & Triniti Rives, clarinets Liza Knight & Emily O’Donnell, bassoons; Salvador Flores & Walter Puyear, saxophones Grace Gilpatrick & Gabriella Rock, trumpets; Tyler Coffman, trombone; Andrew Colon, tuba Ancel Neeley, Reed Puleo, & Daniel Vila, percussion; Yuting Ma, piano; Hannah Stater, harp

PRODUCTION STAFF

DIRECTOR EQUIPMENT PUBLICITY Paul Feeny Aidan Alcocer Brandon Monzon Joseph Lauermann MANAGER Walter Puyear PROGRAMS Erin Casler Tom Erickson

LIBRARIAN SOUND ENGINEER Alizabeth Nowland Roger Arnett

OPERATIONS COORDINATOR Jonathan Mashburn

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