CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY, NORTHRIDGE A STUDY OF FOLK SONGS IN THE WIND BAND REPERTOIRE: A CONDUCTOR AND EDUCATOR’S POINT OF VIEW A Thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements For the degree of Master of Music in Music, Conducting By Claudio D. Alcántar May 2018 The thesis of Claudio D. Alcántar is approved: _________________________________________ ____________ Prof. Mary Schliff Date _________________________________________ ____________ Prof. Gary Pratt Date _________________________________________ ____________ Dr. Lawrence Stoffel, Chair Date California State University, Northridge ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express my immense gratitude to Dr. Lawrence Stoffel for being an amazing human being and for guiding and inspiring me to pursue a career in music education. Your love for music making and your dedication and support for music education has truly inspired me. I am forever thankful for your support and mentorship over these last two years. Gary Pratt, your love and dedication to Cal State Northridge, its students and the community continues to amaze me. Thank you for being a great role model and bringing out the best out of every student over your career as a musician and educator. You have truly inspired me to follow your steps. Mary Schliff, thank you for your continuous help over these years. You keep the music education and credential program going at Cal State Northridge and I thank you for your dedication and hard work. You have created many music educators and continue to encourage me to get out there and teach! iii DEDICATION Dedicated to my family, friends, students, teachers and everyone that has played a role in my development and growth as a musician, educator, conductor and human being. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS SIGNATURE PAGE ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS iii DEDICATION iv ABSTRACT vii INTRODUCTION 1 The Conductor 1 Music Education 2 Folk Songs in Western Music 4 GRAINGER: SPOON RIVER 7 Composer Background 7 Historical Perspective 7 Composition 8 CURNOW: KOREAN FOLK RHAPSODY 18 Composer Background 18 Historical Perspective 18 Composition 22 VAUGHAN WILLIAMS: ENGLISH FOLK SONG SUITE 27 Composer Background 27 Historical Perspective 27 Composition 29 v KOZHEVNIKOV: THIRD MOVEMENT FROM SYMPHONY NO.3 46 Composer Background 46 Historical Perspective 46 Composition 48 CHAVEZ: MARCHA PROVINCIANA FROM CHAPULTEPEC 53 Composer Background 53 Historical Perspective 54 Composition 56 CONCLUSION 56 BIBLIOGRAPHY 58 APPENDIX A: Recital Program 62 APPENDIX B: CURRICULUM VITAE 70 vi ABSTRACT A STUDY OF FOLK SONGS IN THE WIND BAND REPERTOIRE: A CONDUCTOR AND EDUCATOR’S POINT OF VIEW By Claudio Daniel Alcántar Master of Music in Music, Conducting The role of the conductor draws close parallels to those of a teacher. As both a conductor and music educator one has the responsibility to choose great repertoire, comprehensive repertoire, that which stimulates a student’s musical intelligence, and educates students by exposing them to a variety of cultural music from around the world. The repertoire chosen in this thesis integrates folk song based compositions in the school wind band curriculum, which serve to broaden the student’s musical education through exposure to the culture and the history of countries from around the world. The purpose of this thesis is to illustrate an in depth study of several folk song- based compositions for the wind band: Spoon River by Percy Grainger, arranged by Glenn Cliffe Bainum; James Curnow’s Korean Folk Rhapsody; Ralph Vaughan William’s English Folk Song Suite; the third movement of Boris Kozhevnikov’s Symphony No. 3; Marcha Provinciana from “Chapultepec” by Carlos Chávez; and A Bike Ride in the City of Angels by Jeremy Stacey. The repertoire selected serves as an avenue of cultural transmission, which links the students to traditions, values, and ideas held by given cultures, through the act of music performance. In this thesis I will provide the history behind these folk songs. A study on what these melodies represent to a given culture, how the composer came about these vii melodies, and an insight on how the composer sets these melodies into our modern wind band arrangements though a form and harmonic analysis. Ultimately providing settings of folk melodies that can be used by conductors and educators to teach culture and history through the art of great music making. This thesis is in conjunction with a recital with a performance of the selected works. viii INTRODUCTION Conductor Holding the position of a conductor, a leader, a teacher is a position with a lot of responsibility. Frank Battisti, conductor Emeritus of the New England Conservatory Wind Ensemble describes that the ultimate goal of the conductor is to communicate the expressive potential of a musical composition by making interpretive decisions based on insights and knowledge gained through thoughtful and imaginative study of the score.1 Amongst the many stages of score study, the conductor must also consider the history of the music in order to truly capture the style and meaning. Eugene Ormandy, conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra believes that during the process of score study, the conductor must prepare himself both technically and artistically by being a musician, historian, stylist, orchestrator, and listener.2 Furthermore, having an understanding of composition, music theory and analysis is crucial to understanding how it works internally. In Johann Joachim Quantz’s Treatise On Playing The Flute he states, “The greatest skill required of the leader is that he have a perfect understanding of how to play all types of compositions in accordance with their style, sentiment and purpose.”3 Therefore it is desirable for the ensemble leader, now known as the conductor, to have deep understanding of a variety of musical styles in order to realize the music. 1. Frank L. Battisti, and Robert Garofalo, Guide to Score Study for the Wind Band Conductor, 1. 2. Eugene Ormandy, quoted in Elizabeth A.H. Green, and Mark Gibson, The Modern Conductor, xi. 3. Johann J. Quantz, On Playing The Flute, 205. 1 The modern day conductor-educator adds on many more tasks to the already challenging position. Estelle Jorgenson believes that teaching music is like an art and craft. In her book The Art of Teaching Music she posits that teachers are in a crucial position to help students develop as people, musicians, and lovers of music and culture.4 The ultimate goal of music making is to express the intentions of the composer. To bring out the good, the true and the beauty in music which ultimately connects us all as human beings. Having the students connect to music can be achieved by creating a bridge between music and culture. Providing a historical perspective to the body of repertoire that the students are working on can help them further appreciated it from a new perspective. Furthermore, the integration of folk music with the Western Art form can provide a body of work rich with history and meaning. The notions of the good, the true and the beautiful are all understood in terms of the particular traditions they represent.5 Each culture too has a separate set of traditions and values, and through their folk music we are able to learn and develop an understanding of their culture and music aesthetics. Music Education Music education should be an essential component of the human experience. Howard Gardner states that an understanding of music may be the key for understanding all human thinking, and that to understand the human condition we must take music 4. Estelle R. Jorgensen, The Art of Teaching Music, ix. 5. Ibid., 32. 2 seriously into account.6 Music is central to human life and plays an important role to the human experience and connection. In A Philosophy of Music Education music educator Bennet Reimer describes formalism as a position that concentrates on the internal qualities of music and that factors such as political opinions, references to particular people or events, suggestions of ideas or ordinary emotions and so forth, are insignificant to the music and the experience of it.7 When music is prioritized in this way, we then are able to bring out the true beauty and the original intentions of a composer. However, knowing more about the music will not hurt or damage the end result. Being able to understand the music by including traditions, values, people, and places will only nurture our overall understanding of the music as teachers and students. A traditional music education curriculum at a fundamental level is constructed to teach students how to read and write and perform notation. These are building blocks of music education. As education changes, music educators are starting to re-think their rehearsal strategies by incorporating the four major categories of the 2014 National Standards of Music: Creating, Performing, Responding and Connecting.8 Standard No.4, Connecting, enhances a student’s musical learning by incorporating cultural ideas, beliefs and values through music performance. The music educator-conductor should therefore be able to incorporate quality music, which as a bonus is filled with historical contexts will serve to enrich a student’s well-rounded education. 6. Howard Gardner, Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences, 123. 7. Bennett Reimer, A Philosophy of Music Education: Advancing the Vision, 41-42. 8. National Standards of Music, NAFME, 2014. 3 Reimer states that neglecting the role of music in culture throws our understanding out of balance both about culture and about music and we should take into count both the unique qualities of music as music, which characterize it transculturally, and the situated aspects of music, which characterize it as culturally grounded construction.9 Music is deeply tied within culture and creating this connection for students opens up a greater understanding and appreciation for the music that students perform.