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Symphony Band Chamber Winds Michael Haithcock, Conductor 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
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