THEDEPARTMENTOFMUSIC VASSARCOLLEGE

Senior Recital Emma Bauchner '21, piano

Saturday, 15 May 2021 4:00 PM Martel Recital Hall Skinner Hall of Music Please note, Skinner Hall of Music and the VC Chapel currently remain closed to the general public.

The only way to view these Senior Recitals is on the Vassar Music webcast page at: music.vassar.edu/concerts/webcast

Skinner Recital Hall is equipped with a LOOP Hearing System. The loop will offer improved clarity for persons with hearing loss who wear telecoil —or T-coil—equipped hearing aids.

Please all cell phones or other personal electronic devices and refrain from texting. Use of these instruments will disturb other audience members and cause interference with in-house recording and webcasting. Program

Railroad (Travel Song) Meredith Monk (b. 1942)

Danza de la moza donosa from Danzas , op. 2 (1916-1983)

Musica ricercata György Ligeti III. Allegro con spirito (1923-2006)

La cathédrale engloutie (1862-1918)

Prelude no. 9 (1901-1953)

Sonata in E minor Florence Price II. Andante (1887-1953)

Vingt regards sur l'enfant-Jésus XI. Première communion de la vierge (1908-1992) Program Note

This is not the senior recital program you may have been expecting. I will not be playing a Bach prelude and , a Beethoven sonata, a Chopin ballade, or anything else that you can be sure to hear wafting from the practice rooms when walking through the halls of Skinner. The standard repertoire has been a crucial part of my musical education, and I admire these works as much as the next piano student. But today, I wanted to share with you some pieces with which you might be less familiar. It was also very important to me to include works by female and composers of color, who are all too often left out of the canon; my own realization last year that I had never seriously studied a piece by a non-male or non-white made this all the more of a priority. So when I serendipitously found myself studying a range of works from the 20th century, I decided to make this unique time period the focus of my recital program.

The 20th century saw a breaking down of the many rules and that had governed the so-called common practice period (1650-1900). Composers of 20th-century art music questioned accepted ideas about , , , and the very meaning of music itself. The music of the period is marked by frequent experimentation and remarkable stylistic diversity; no singular dominant style prevailed. The period also saw increased accessibility to individuals of identities that were often marginalized in the world of art music in centuries past. While the most successful composers of the century were still white and male, there were many notable exceptions, from William Grant Still to to Julius Eastman.

The seven short selections I will be playing today are demonstrative of the wide range of repertoire the 20th century has to offer; I think that there is something for everyone in this program. I hope that you enjoy hearing these pieces as much as I enjoy playing them. But most of all, I hope that you discover something new. Meredith Monk is an American composer recognized for her innovative and wide-ranging multimedia works. A vocalist first and foremost, her instrumental music is often rooted in the inflections of the human voice. Railroad (Travel Song), originally from her Specimen Days (1981), is inspired by the travel diary of Louis Moreau Gottshalk, a 19th-century American composer and virtuoso who toured the country, travelling from place to place via train with his piano in the baggage car. The piece demonstrates Monk’s unique approach to .

Alberto Ginastera was an Argentinian composer. A teacher and mentor to the celebrated tango composer , Ginastera’s music similarly took inspiration from Argentine folk idioms. Danza de la moza donosa ( of the Charming Girl) is the second of his three , op. 2 (1937), part of a period of his compositional output that he later termed “Objective Nationalism.” This colorful set of piano pieces was one of his earliest works, composed when he was just 21 years old.

György Ligeti was a Hungarian composer who made many important contributions to the musical avant-garde in his sixty-plus year career. Born to a Jewish family in Transylvania, Ligeti survived the Holocaust and was later a refugee of the Hungarian revolution before settling in . The movements of Musica ricercata (1953), numbered 1-11, correspond to the number of notes from which each piece is primarily built, with an added twist: an additional “wrong” note is introduced at some point in the piece. Movement III, for example, is built primarily on C, E-flat, and G, with E-natural introduced a few measures in. This juxtaposition of major and minor makes for a wildly humorous piece.

Claude Debussy, perhaps the most well-known name on this program, was the leader of a group of French composers at the turn of the century often labelled as “Impressionists,” though he himself rejected the term. Debussy wrote 24 , published in two volumes, in which the evocative titles appear at the end of each prelude rather than at the beginning. La cathédrale engloutie (The Sunken Cathedral) comes from the first volume, published in 1910. The piece is inspired by the legend of Ys, a mythical Breton city swallowed by the sea. According to the legend, the submerged cathedral rises up from the water on clear mornings, during which ringing bells, organs, and chanting priests can be heard from across the sea.

Ruth Crawford Seeger was an American composer and a major figure in the ultramodernist musical movement of the 1920s and 30s. Born in Ohio and raised throughout the , she had a strong interest in American folk music that she passed on to her children, including her especially famous stepson Pete Seeger. Prelude no. 9, the final of her piano preludes, dates from 1928 and is dedicated to pianist Richard Buhlig. It is a deeply atmospheric and expressive piece, not without an ominous sense of foreboding.

Florence Price was the first African-American woman to be widely recognized as a symphonic composer. Born to a mixed-race family in Arkansas, she later settled in as part of the Great Migration, where her in E minor was premiered in 1933 by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. The second movement of her in E minor (1932) is demonstrative of her soulful compositional style, which blends European romanticism with and inspired by the blues and African-American spirituals, tinged with the sounds of the American South.

Olivier Messiaen was a French composer, , and ornithologist who developed a highly idiosyncratic musical oeuvre. Drawing from influences as varied as ancient Hindu rhythms, birdsong, Javanese music, and his own , Messiaen was fascinated with the many manifestations of symmetry in music, and created his own harmonic system called “The Modes of Limited Transposition,” based on scalar symmetry that is still used by composers and improvisers today. A devout Catholic, Messiaen wrote Vingt regards sur l'enfant-Jésus (Twenty gazes on the infant Jesus) in 1944 following his release from a Nazi prisoner-of-war camp. The eleventh movement of the nearly two-hour work, Première communion de la vierge (The First Communion of the Virgin) opens with the following inscription: “After the Annunciation, Mary adores Jesus in her…my God, my son, my Magnificat! My love without the noise of words…” Acknowledgements

I am indebted to so many people for helping make today possible. First and foremost, to Marija Ilić, for being the most encouraging, supportive, and nurturing teacher I could have asked for during my time at Vassar. Thank you for all of your wisdom and guidance, for giving me a second chance after a less-than-stellar first semester, and for always encouraging me to explore whatever repertoire interests me. To my advisor Christine Howlett, for helping me realize my passion and making it possible for me to change my major in the middle of my junior year. To Professor Jon Chenette, for guiding me on a deep dive into the music of Messiaen and the art of the program note. To all of my other professors in the department—Susan Botti, Kathryn Libin, Brian Mann, Táhirih Motazedian, Eduardo Navega, and Justin Patch—for giving me such a rich musical education. To Mary Jo Pagano, for instilling in me a love for the piano, teaching me things I’ll never forget, and exposing me to several of the composers whose works I’ll be playing today. To Kara Lu, for being a wonderful page turner and a wonderful friend. To Kim Andresen, Jane Podell, and the Media Resources team for helping to make the show go on despite the pandemic. To my parents, for their unyielding love and support for me in all of my musical endeavors. And to all of my friends at Vassar and beyond, for being the source of so much support, inspiration, and joy, especially during this exceptional year. Skinner Hall of Music Spring 2021 Virtual Webcast Series ~ Senior Recital Schedule ~

Please note, Skinner Hall of Music and the VC Chapel currently remain closed to the general public. Live webcasts* and digital program notes can be viewed at: music.vassar.edu/concerts/webcast

4/18 Sunday • 1:30 pm ~ Susannah Karron, soprano 4/18 Sunday • 3:30 pm ~ Nicholas Christenson, 4/24 Saturday • 1pm ~ Emma Stovicek, soprano 4/24 Saturday • 3 pm ~ Rachel Salvador, soprano 5/02 Sunday • 2:30 pm ~ Sydney Amspacher, soprano 5/15 Saturday • 12 pm ~ Abigail Hart Goldman, soprano 5/15 Saturday • 2 pm ~ Charlotte Waldman, 5/15 Saturday • 4 pm ~ Emma Bauchner, piano 5/16 Sunday • 12 pm ~ Bryan Smith, baritone 5/16 Sunday • 2 pm ~ Claire Furtwangler, 5/16 Sunday • 3:30 pm ~ Helen Johnson, mezzo-soprano 5/22 Saturday • 10 am ~ Christopher Triggs, jazz saxophone & flute 5/22 Saturday • 12 pm ~ Rachel Walker, mezzo-soprano 5/22 Saturday • 2 pm ~ Susanna Monroe, violin 5/23 Sunday • 12 pm ~ Drew Canning, soprano 5/23 Sunday • 2 pm ~ Michelle Kang, organ, VC Chapel 5/23 Sunday • 3:30 pm ~ Prashit Parikh, percussion & jazz drums

*Start times are approximate - please be patient. If for any reason the webcast is disrupted a recording will be provided at a later time.

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