Babbitt: Composition for Twelve Instruments

Composition for Twelve Instruments

Milton Babbitt (1916- )

A native of Philadelphia, Milton Babbitt was brought up in Jackson, Mississippi. As a teen ager he learned several instruments, and was active in jazz ensembles, as well as showing skills as a composer of popular songs. At the age of fifteen he entered the University of Pennsylvania, intending to study mathematics (reflecting an influence from his father’s work as an actuary), but soon transferred to New York University, where he studied composition. A unique aspect of Babbitt’s coming of age as a musician in the 1930s was his interest in the 12-tone works of Schoenberg, Berg and Webern in an era when American musicians took little note of those composers, when performances of their works were rare, recordings non-existent, and even published scores were hard to come by. Babbitt’s lifetime association with Princeton dates from three years’ study under Roger Sessions which led to an appointment to the music faculty at the university in 1938. (He also was a member of the Mathematics faculty from 1942-45.) His career as a composer of distinction dates from the late 1940s, when his preoccupation with serial composition led Babbitt to write some of the earliest studies in English on the subject. In 1947 appeared his landmark “Three Compositions for Piano,” in which there is not only a structured tonal element (the “twelve tones”), but likewise a rigorous organization of other elements (rhythm and durations, for example). Always a multi-faceted musician, Babbitt wrote some film scores in the late 1940s, and even an unsuccessful Broadway musical. (He has never been ashamed of the “pop music” side of his musical activities….and he is happy to number among his pupils no less a figure than Stephen Sondheim!)

Babbitt has been the recipient of countless awards and honors, has been a prolific lecturer and writer on music, and is perhaps best known, even to those who have never heard his music, as a pioneer figure in the area of so-called “electronic” (or “synthesised”) music, especially in the 1950s when RCA invited him to take the lead in developing what became the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Center in New York. In 1961 he composed “Vision and Prayer” for soprano voice and synthesiser (using recorded tape), followed in 1964 by one of his best-known compositions, “Philomel,” composed for the same resources. More recent works include several important chamber works, and a Second Piano Concerto, given its premiere by Robert Taub with the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra under the direction of James Levine, which will be heard again during the coming year.

The Composition for Twelve Instruments is described by the composer himself in a characteristically brisk and tartly humourous commentary:

“Composition for Twelve Instruments was composed in 1948, and was scheduled for a succession of performances, all of which were canceled due to the presence of a guitar in the work, and an absence of any guitarist who, in those pre-Starobin days, could follow a conductor, for although the guitar part in itself was not difficult, its position in the ongoing rhythmic ensemble required a guitarist who could at least respond correctly to the cues of a conductor . Finally, in 1954, I substituted a harp for the guitar, but the difference in the capacities of the harp from those of the guitar led me to revise the work to the extent that it became a recomposition. This version was performed without incident and subsequently recorded. This is the version being heard at this performance; the original version has never been performed.

The seven minute, one movement work may be perceived as consisting of two complementary
“sections,” in that the “foreground”, immediate materials of one constitute the “background”, latent elements of the other. More informally, the work may be heard as a composition for a single instrument possessing a variety of timbral resources.

For some listeners a point of reference in approaching this composition may be the pointillistic textures found in the later works of Anton Webern---works which the musical world at large was just beginning to comprehend at the time when the Composition for 12 Instruments was written. The work sets out a fascinating array of instrumental colors, in a succession of individual tones passing from one player to another, always with its own dynamic marking. There are a great range of registers, attacks and shadings, such as the use of mutes, tremolo strings, flutter-tonguing in the winds---and a highly original treatment of silence in counterpoint with sound. The spiraling effect of single pitches begins to lead to overlapping instrumental entries, with quickening activity, and increasing intensity. Repeated notes begin to appear, followed by longer, sustained pitches, and a quieting of the musical atmosphere. By mid-point a thickening of sonority, with longer, layered, sustained tones leads to the first of several brief moments of “tutti” (with all 12 instruments heard together), gaining ever more in intensity. This ebb and flow of instrumental timbres becomes a “tapestry” in which (as the composer suggests) the contrasting elements may be heard as if becoming a “single instrument,” moving forward to achieve a full-throated conclusion.

Copland: Suite from “Appalachian Spring”

Suite from “Appalachian Spring”

Aaron Copland (1900-1990)

Usually when a composer dies his reputation suffers a decline in popularity and critical estimation, time eventually correcting of the balance. Aaron Copland has been a happy exception to that pattern, and remains secure in his position as America’s foremost composer, indeed probably more highly regarded than ever. He seemed to have been born under a lucky star. Coming from a background quite similar to his near contemporary, George Gershwin, Copland was born in Brooklyn to Jewish parents who had come to America from eastern Europe, passing through through Ellis Island, eager to make a new life in the New World. After some solid, rather uninspiring training in New York he traveled to France, where he became one of the first pupils of the celebrated Nadia Boulanger, who for half a century would train an amazing succession of outstanding American composers. With Boulanger’s encouragement he returned to America, quickly setting out on his career with immediate success and public attention. While the best-loved music of Copland would not to appear until the late 1930s, the young composer became the focus of a dynamic generation of young American musicians (Roger Sessions, Roy Harris, Virgil Thomson and many others) who in one fell swoop were establishing 20^th century American music as a force to reckon with. Ironically, during those years the work of Charles Ives was but dimly known, and most of Copland’s best-known works were written before a note of Ives was to be heard by the general public!

Copland’s compositions of the 1920s and ‘30s, for all their spare and rhythmically-charged American flavour, were rather in keeping with the dissonant harmonic idiom which marked European music of the period. It was with the appearance of “El Salon Mexico” (1937) which signaled a conscious move on the part of the composer to turn increasingly to musical subjects (and musical elements) taken from the American landscape, popular culture and folk music traditions. Although he would compose two operas (one for high school children, and another on a larger scale, “The Tender Land”), Copland seemed temperamentally out of sympathy with the world of opera. The dance was another question, and Copland’s involvement with modern dance was well timed to come about during the period of its explosive growth in the hands of such figures as Martha Graham, Agnes De Mille, and Lincoln Kirstein.

Before Appalachian Spring received its title, Copland called it “Ballet for Martha,” which remains its subtitle. (Graham came up with the title from a poem by Hart Crane, which, as she told a surprised Copland, had otherwise nothing whatever to do with the ballet!) We now know that the stages leading to the completion of “Appalachian Spring” were far from smooth, and the details of the scenario and dramatic content of the final work went through a long process of trial and error. The completed ballet was first performed in 1944 in Washington, D. C. at the Library of Congress, with a chamber orchestra of thirteen players. Shortly afterward Copland cut the score somewhat, expanding the scoring for a full orchestra. For years the original version was suppressed by Copland, only becoming heard in the 1960s. That version (which was performed by the Princeton Chamber Symphony in 1995) has begun to be heard with some regularity, although the full-orchestra suite has from the very beginning grown in popularity, and probably is the most-performed orchestral work ever composed by an American.

In the planning stages for the ballet Martha Graham toyed an idea of including a “Shaker” element in the story. For most people the Shakers were known (if at all) for two things: their beautifully spare, strangely “contemporary” appearing furniture design---and their curious history as a late 18^th century utopian religious community rooted in New England, practicing a tradition of total celibacy, and making lively singing and even dancing a part of their worship.. What was little known was an amazing body of hymns composed for use in Shaker worship, sung without accompaniment, and written down in an inscrutable musical notation which few persons could comprehend. The Shaker hymn “Simple Gifts” was composed around 1875 by Elder Joseph Brackett, and thanks to Copland has become immensely popular. (It can be heard on a recently-issued CD, sung by members of the last surviving Shaker community of Sabbathday Lake, Maine. Although there were no references to the Shakers in the ballet, (nor were they found in the Appalachian region of western Pennsylvania where the work was set), Copland took the hymn as symbolic of the simplicity and spareness of the ballet setting and dramatic framework. (This can be seen in the opening words of the hymn, “’Tis the gift to be simple, ‘tis the gift to be free; /‘Tis the gift to come down where we ought to be;/ And when we find ourselves in the place just right, /“Twill be in the valley of love and delight.”

The score carries this description of the ballet’s scenario: “A pioneer celebration in spring around a newly built farmhouse in the Pennsylvania hills in the early part of the last century. The bride-to-be and the young farmer-husband enact the emotions, joyful and apprehensive, their new domestic partnership invites. An older neighbor suggests now and then the rocky confidence of experience. A revivalist and his followers remind the new householders of the strange and terrible aspects of human fate. At the end the couple are left quiet and strong in their new house.”

The work opens in a hushed mood suggesting the dawn of a new day, the peaceful atmosphere of the rural countryside. There is a sudden burst of energy, full of buoyancy and hope, as well as a tender duo for the bride and her husband-to-be. With the appearance of the revivalist there is a change to a mood of sternness, followed by an episode with the music taking on a distinct character of country fiddling and square dancing. There follows a solo for the bride, filled with the mingled feelings of joy, wonder and fear. A pantomime scene, depicting the prospect of daily married life, takes place, culminating in a set of variations on the Shaker him, first heard in the clarinet. The variations rise to a climax of impressive grandeur, suddenly giving way to the hushed mood of the opening, now a benediction of lyrical tenderness.

Ives: The unanswered question

“The Unanswered Question”

Charles Ives
(1874-1954)

Fifty years ago hardly anybody had heard of Charles Ives, apart from a small band of dedicated champions of new American music. Now, at the end of the twentieth century, Ives is regarded as the great father figure among American composers, the very earliest and most original of them all, many of whose major works have begun to be heard with regularity. He remains controversial, even scoffed at in some quarters, but is indisputably a formidable presence in American music, and one recognized world-wide.

During the years when Ives’ work was just beginning to be heard, discussions of his music often seemed to be obsessed with what seemed to be an amazing string of “anticipations”: focusing upon innovations in rhythm, musical structure, sonority and all the musical elements which had usually been claimed to be the creation of figures such as Schoenberg, Stravinsky, Bartok. Thankfully, now we usually focus upon the innate qualities of the music itself, rather than whether or not it was Ives who did something

FIRST, which really adds up to little more than citations in a musical record book. The small, zealous band of devoted Ivesians who by the 1930s were pressing for an acceptance of the music (among their number Elliott Carter, Nicholas Slonimsky, and John Kirkpatrick) had discovered in Ives a powerful artistic vision, remarkably fresh and original, as well as distinctly American in tone.

Ives’ “Americanness” has created mischief for the serious consideration of his work, sometimes leading to a veritable “Ives industry,” with much fuss made about the quirky, “ornery,” cussed aspects of the composer’s personality, with the risk that Ives may be seen as some sort of picturesque New England “character.” Ives’ use of a wide range of musical Americana (patriotic songs, Revival hymns, marching band tunes, echoes of ragtime and Victorian ballads) has led to this tendency to make the composer into a lovable old geezer. The fact is that the finest Ives compositions often exhibit a tough-mindedness, even a kind of bracing “abstract” quality which is very off a piece with the most innovative music written in the early 20^th century. Yet hardly any of this music was known at the time it was being composed----the Ives Third Symphony, written in 1904, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1947!

The career can be summed up fairly briefly: solid musical training under an eccentric father (Ives’ greatest influence, as he never tired of insisting), advanced study at Yale under Horatio Parker, which was both highly professional and, in its rigid conservatism, deeply frustrating to the young composer. After Yale a successful public career in the insurance business, with composition reserved for evenings and weekend. Ives composed most of his important music in the space of little more than twenty years, many of the most important works written in the first dozen years of the century. Attempts to win publication and performance of his works were mostly abortive, and only in the years of Ives’ retirement did a trickle of public hearings begin to stir up interest in his music. Perhaps the signal event was the Town Hall premiere of the great “Concord” Sonata by John Kirkpatrick in 1939 which marked an important step in the direction of delayed recognition for Ives’ music.

“The Unanswered Question” encapsulates in the span of seven minutes some of the most vivid visionary elements in Ives’ music---music quite removed from the “picturesque” side of his personality, instead closely related to his private philosophical and spiritual preoccupations. There was a powerful influence throughout Ives’ life of the Transcendentalist movement of mid-19^th century New England, which found its fullest expression in the “Concord” Sonata, with its movement inspired by Emerson, Hawthorne, the Alcotts and Thoreau. Here, however, we have a particularly private meditation upon spiritual matters set out in music of stunning simplicity. There are three instrumental elements, each with its own distinct coloration, rhythmic character---each utterly set apart from the others. A vast curtain of string sonority (nothing more than familiar diatonic chords) is unfolded in eerie stillness, forming a background to an unvarying intoning of a dissonant, unyielding phrase in a solo trumpet, heard in contrast to a succession of contrapuntal, chromatic passages in the winds. Ives states that the strings represent the “Silence of the Druids---who Know, See and Hear Nothing.” Seven times the trumpet intones “The Perennial Question of Existence,” heard each time in exactly the same tone of voice. The winds (representing human beings) seek to uncover “The Invisible Answer,” each response to the “Question” progressively more active, even frantic. In their frustration the winds become the “Fighting Answerers” as time goes on, and after a “secret conference” seem to realize futility, and begin to mock “The Question”---the strife is over for the moment. After they disappear, ‘the Question’ is asked for the last time, and the ‘Silences’ are heard beyond in “Undisturbed Solitude.”

Ravel: Concerto in G for Piano and Orchestra

Concerto in G for Piano and Orchestra

Maurice Ravel (1875-1937)

The Concerto in G was composed 1930-31 simultaneously with the Piano Concerto in D for the left-hand. These were the last major works completed by Ravel, who began his slow, terrible decline into mental incapacity which ended with his death at the end of 1937. It might have seemed difficult to imagine that the young man whose career was launched in the 1890s with the Minuet antique and the celebrated “Pavane” would conclude his creative life with a brilliant, fizzy virtuoso showpiece, one in which jazz inflections and moments of Spanish coloration would be joined with music of Mozartian simplicity and tenderness. But then, Ravel was always a complex figure, who remains something of an enigma to this day.

Like all gifted French musicians, Ravel attended the Paris Conservatoire, where he studied with Faure, a musician of a quite different temperament and outlook, but warmly devoted to his dazzling young pupil. Unlike many a lesser talent, Ravel’s repeated attempts to win the famous Prix de Rome were unsuccessful, even after he had won considerable fame as a composer---eventually this scandalous situation led to the resignation of the director of the Conservatoire, although the prize never was to be his.

The youthful Ravel was very much a product of the post-Baudelairian, ripely decadent fin-de-siecle spirit of the time, sporting an elegantly shaped beard, exquisitely dressed with “dandified” stylishness, projecting an air of mystery. These outward traits would soon fade, although the stylishness remained, and Ravel would always possess a detachment and passion for privacy which added to his reputation as a mysterious figure. Yet he showed a gift for friendship, and for all his Parisian worldliness, was wonderfully responsive to children and able to express their world better than almost any other composer. Utterly French in personality, he was totally free of chauvinism, even defending “enemy composers” (such as Bartok, Schoenberg, Richard Strauss) from shrill nationalists during the Great War. Like many French composers of the day he was fascinated by American jazz. Visiting New York in 1928 he politely refused invitations by local worthies to attend events at the Met and Carnegie Hall---no, he could hear that sort of thing in Paris. He wanted to spend time in the jazz clubs on 125^th Street in Harlem! (He also echoed Dvorak’s pleas that the music of African-Americans be regarded as a great artistic resource in lectures on delivered to often unsympathetic audiences in places such as Dallas, Texas!!)

It is a common reflex to link Ravel’s name to that of Debussy, usually with blithe use of that handy term, “impressionism.” Actually there are pronounced, clearly-defined differences between the two composers which can be seen even in the earliest of Ravel’s works. While the two men admittedly shared a vivid approach to musical colour and texture, the emotional tone is utterly different, with Ravel’s music usually more sharply etched, even dry in character, “objective” in character, often with a parodistic tinge.

Where Debussy might have earned the use of the term “impressionist” through his responsiveness to the world of late-19^th century French painting, Ravel tended to be more influenced by literary sources, and was strongly drawn to the exotic, the fairy-tale, the world of childhood dreams. Interestingly, in the area of piano music it might be claimed that in one important respect Ravel (the younger man) may have influenced Debussy, for it was only after the appearance of Ravel’s remarkable “Jeux d’eaux” that Debussy began to compose his succession of brilliant and original keyboard pieces.

In a very general sense that awkward term “impressionist” might occasionally seem appropriate in speaking of lthe music Ravel composed during the years before the Great War, culminating in his grandest orchestra work, the ballet “Daphnis et Chloe.” But after 1918 there is a marked shift in the musical language and expressive content, vividly heard in the unique blend of the lush and acrid textures in the Choreographi Poem, “La Valse” of 1920. And with the suite, “Le Tombeau de Couperin” the composer hearkens back to his earlier “neo-classic” works (Minuet Antique, Sonatine), which anticipate the new directions being taken by Stravinsky in his neo-classicism of the 1920s.

Ravel was remarked that “the music of a concerto should…be light-hearted and brilliant, and not aim at profundity or dramatic effects, transparent,” and went so far as to examine piano concertos of Mozart and Saint-Saens in preparing to compose his Concerto in G. This seems particularly appropriate for a composer whose entire career was marked by a constant return to the spirit of classicism. Indeed, should Mozart have known the work of Gershwin and Stravinsky he might well have composed a work comparable to this.

The concerto springs into action with a crack of a whip, the piccolo leading the way with a mocking tune heard against swirling bitonal arpeggios in the piano. This teasing, swaggering melody is repeated in the trumpet over dissonant chords which to some ears suggest the barking of dogs---a curious touch for the cat-loving Ravel! Settling into a transitional theme in F# Major there appears the first of many touches of American jazz scattered throughout the concerto, with a bluesy five-note figure in winds and trumpet. (Ravel had returned from a highly invigorating tour of the USA a few years earlier, and at first thought of composing this concerto as a work for himself to perform on a return tour---sadly, one which never took place.) Easing into E Major, the piano unfolds a second subject of wistful lyricism and simplicity, with the orchestra relegated to the background. Plunging into the development, the soloist focuses almost entirely upon a toccata-like version of the opening piccolo tune (spiced with periodic references to the five-note “blues” figure), becoming a breathless steeplechase with brilliant broken chord and triplet passage-work. A quick sprint the full length of the keyboard leads in the recapitulation, the piccolo tune now played by the piano in more broken chords, accompanied by the “dog bark” figure in the brass. The “bluesy” transitional section returns in regular fashion, preparing the listener for a reprise of the second subject. But in an ingenious cadenza-like passage a fragment from the transition is heard played by the harp in harmonics against a mysterious blur of glissando in the background. Interrupted by a decidedly “jazzy” outburst by the orchestra at full volume, the melody appears high in the solo horn, with the glissandi becoming a murmuring in the winds. There follows an extended cadenza for the piano, with the second subject elaborated in the left hand (in an evocation of that OTHER Ravel concerto), the right hand playing an strings of trills of an almost theremin-like character. This flows forward into a richly romantic statement of the second subject with full orchestra, only to plummet into the lowest register of the piano register to launch a coda based on the opening tune. Again taking on a toccata-like form, the music dashes headlong to conclude the movement with appropriate panache.

Ravel claimed to have composed the ADAGIO ASSAI slow movement “two bars at a time,” modeling it on the slow movement of the Mozart Clarinet Quintet. That this intensely personal music would be Ravel’s farewell to composition makes the stillness and simplicity of the movement all the more touching. Heard at length in the piano alone, as if lost in a thought, this plaintive melody then is shared with solo winds. The artless clock-ticking piano accompaniment (moving smoothly without a pause throughout the movement) leads to a subsidiary theme,soon rising to a momentary climax. The main melody returns in the English horn, embellished by delicate figuration in the upper reaches of the piano, for one haunted moment even gliding into a rapt C# Major. The piano figuration becomes a trill, and the movement dissolves into silence.

With a snap to attention, the finale is off and running, with a shrill, “train-whistle” figure in the winds against a chattering rhythmic ostinato pattern in the piano. This quickly gives way to a punchy rhythmic section, decorated with repeated notes in the piano, finding quiet contrast in a buzzing “chinoiserie” passage reminiscent of Ravel’s earlier “faux-orientaliste” music. The “snap to it” chords usher in a jaunty march-like secondary section, leading to brilliant sixteenth-note display which suggests the sort of well-oiled whirl characteristic of Saint-Saens’ piano writing. Without hesitation the rhythmic energy of the movement’s opening leads in the development, first heard in muttering of bassoons, soon taken over by the soloist, joined by winds (referring to the march-like secondary theme), pressing ever onward in mounting excitement. The recapitulation slips in scarcely noticed, the “factory-whistle” theme played by the piano (in F# Major), while at the same time the rattling momentum of the sixteenth notes continues unabated in the orchestra (in G Major!) The march tune returns in all its strutting bluster, the piano revels in its the sixteenth-note bravado, and the movement ends as it began, with a final “snap to attention.”

Prokofiev: Summer’s Day Suite, Op. 65bis

Summer’s Day Suite, Op. 65bis

Sergei Prokofiev

(1891-1953)

For much of the 20^th century contemporary music in the Soviet Union was dominated by two giant figures, Sergei Prokofiev and Dmitri Shostakovich. In the west the two composers were often thought of as linked in style and general outlook in a way rather akin to Debussy and Ravel in the early years of this century. Of course such a notion overlooks important contrasts between those earlier composers, and likewise the two Soviet composers were fundamentally quite unlike each other in a number of important ways. To begin with, Prokofoiev was fifteen years older than Shostakovich, had grown up in the rich artistic climate of early 20^th century tsarist Russian, and quite indifferent to the ideals of the Bolshevik Revolution, left the tumult of his homeland behind to spend nearly twenty years in voluntary exile in America and Europe. (By contrast, Shostakovich, a native of Saint Petersburg, witnessed the revolution from the windows of his home, grew up with the Soviet state, was intensely involved in the cross-currents of political activities and ideology to the end of his life – and he knew the world outsider the USSR only in short, carefully “managed” tours abroad as an artistic spokesman for the regime.)

In some respects Prokofiev could be regarded as the lucky one. He had made periodic tours back to his home country from time to time, but only after many attempts by the Soviet authorities to end his residence abroad did he finally yield to their blandishments, returning to live the rest of his life in the USSR. He was 45 years old, had lived a full life in the “outer world,” and must have thought that he could work undisturbed by the pressures which were already tormenting his younger colleague, Dmitri Shostakovich.

His timing could not be worse. The very year that Prokofiev took up residence in Moscow marked the beginning of the “purge trials” which displayed to the world at large the terror and brutality of Stalin’s rule. True, Prokofiev was honoured by the state, there were many commissions and a clearly defined role as an

“artist of the people,” but even he would not be exempt from state oppression. At first enthusiastically in sympathy with the vague ideals of “socialist realism” propounded by party hacks seeking to keep artists in line, he too suffered criticism, indignities of all sorts, and some fearful periods—especially during the last year’s of Stalin’s tyrannical paranoia. (Ironically, Prokofiev, in poor health in the years following World War II, would die on the same day as Josef Stalin!)

It is possible to see a distinct stylistic development in the three principal phases of Prokofiev’s career: dazzling virtuosity and vivid imaginative coloration in the works written before 1920 (mostly in Russia), a drier, more muscular quality (undoubtedly influenced by the work of Stravinsky) in the music composed in Paris, followed by a simpler, often warmly “romantic” element coming to the fore in the music written in the USSR. This less complex, often unabashedly tuneful music is sometimes explained by a need to adhere to the “socialist realism” ideology of the time. In fact, it is actually a renewal of a powerful lyrical element in the composer’s makeup which was quite pronounced even in his earliest works. Unlike Shostakovich, whose music (after his first brush with Stalinist criticism)often exhibited a tortured subjectivity, Prokofiev’s works usually exhibited a direct, almost breezy objectivity, largely removed from tragic introspection, and thus well gauged for the “official optimism” of the Soviet state. Ironically, perhaps his most universally popular work in among Americans is indeed a splendid example of “Socialist realism”: “Peter and the Wolf”!

The Summer Day Suite is based upon a set of piano pieces, Music for children, written in 1935. In 1941 Prokofiev selected seven of these to form an orchestral suite which is characteristically

1. Morning. Opening with a background of woodwind figuration and shimmering string tremolo, a broad, sustained melody sweeps upward from the bass into the upper strings and winds, swelling to richness of sonority, then drifts downward to a quiet conclusion.

2. Tip and run. This sprightly picture of children’s games is a jig-like rondo, filled with lively

pizzicato and spiccato figures, darting into the upper reaches of winds and strings, concluding XXXX

3. Waltz. One of the paradoxes of the Soviet era was that while the trappings of the tsarist past were swept aside, some evocations of that vanished world were were revived and received with official approval. In music this was especially the case with that vivid reminder of 19^th century privilege,

the WALTZ, which enjoyed great popularity in the age of the Five Year Plan! Prokofiev himself composed a surprising number of waltzes, as in the opera WAR AND PEACE, the CINDERELLA ballet, and even the Seventh Symphony. This warmly sentimental movement, filled with swooping melodic figures, leavened with elegant, yet ironic harmonic twists, is an example of this surprising element in the Prokofiev’s later style.

4. Repentance. This title was not explained by Prokofiev – is it perhaps descriptive of the sadness of a child punished for bad behaviour? This darkly-colored, wistful movement consists of several repetitions of a melody of a Slavic folksong character, mostly confined to the lower strings, with contrasting figures in the upper winds.

5. March. Prokofiev excelled in grotesque, mocking march movements---famously so in the case of the March from “Love for Three Oranges.’ This brief bit of brightly-textured, edgy orchestra swagger is a prime example the composer’s prickly musical imagination.

6. Evening. An opening theme for strings and flute becomes more rhythmically pointed, leading to a secondary strain in which a cricket-like figure is heard in castenets, adding an atmospheric touch.

7. The Moon is over the meadows. A reflective andantino, the final movement opens with a sweetly lyrical melody in the flute, exhibiting the tender simplicity which would so memorably characterise Prokofiev’s ROMEO & JULIET ballet several years later. The melody is repeated several times in shifting orchestral colors, heard in the celli and oboes. In a passage suggestive of the composer’s portrait of the young Juliet, the solo horn is heard against a restless pizzicato background, the music soon fading away in a quiet ending.

Bizet: Fandole from L’Arlesienne Suite No. 2

Fandole from L’Arlesienne Suite No. 2

Georges Bizet (1837-1875)

In 1872 Bizet composed 27 short orchestral numbers as incidental music for Alphonse Daudet’s play, L’Arlesienne, music which is often regarded as close in spirit to the vivid musical characterization of Carmen. The play is set in Provence, that intensely Latin part of southern France, which shares with Spain a brilliant and reckless Mediterranean temperament. The Farandole, which concludes the suite, is a dance movement, at first quiet and unassuming (with a pair of flutes playing the first of the two main melodies), passed on to the other winds, the secondary tune heard in the violins, later the trumpet. The effect of the movement is a constant crescendo, pressing ever onward, gaining in velocity, racing onward ever faster until ending in a breathless whirl.

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Halvorsen: Entrance March of the Boyars

Entrance March of the Boyars

Johan Halvorsen (1864-1935)

Johan Halvorsen was a Norwegian musician of modest reputation, who made his name as a conductor and as composer of theatre pieces and colorful orchestral works written in the Romantic tradition of Edvard Grieg and other late 19^th century Scandinavian composers. He is another of those little-known composers who lay a small claim to fame with a single attractive work, this being the “Entrance March of the Boyars” (1895). It is his best-known composition, written as incidental music to a stage play (presumably one set in imperial Russia, judging by the title). It is a brilliantly-orchestrated march with the sort of exotic textures which meant to evoke a somewhat “oriental” atmosphere, with Trio section featuring brilliant brass fanfares.

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Debussy : “Clair de Lune”

“Clair de Lune”

Claude Debussy (1862-1918)

Best known in its original guise as a piece for solo piano (a movement from the early Suite Bergamasque of 1889), “Clair de Lune” (“Moonlight”) is probably the best-known and most
often-performed work of Claude Debussy. Full of rapt silence and nocturnal radiance, it is the sort of atmospheric tone painting which links the name of Debussy with the French Impressionist painters of those years at the end of the 19^th century, sharing with them an emphasis upon texture, shading and emotional subtlety.

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Bizet: Carmen Suite No. 1

Carmen Suite No. 1

George Bizet (1838-1875)

While George Bizet composed a number of operas (including one which is occasionally heard, The Pearl Fishers), as well as vocal, choral and instrumental music, he is known most of all for a single, supremely vivid masterwork, the opera Carmen, as well as the incidental music to L’Arlesienne, some of which will be heard in today’s concert as well. Carmen, introduced only a few months before the composer’s early death, was not quite the overwhelming success it would soon become---indeed, Bizet died filled with doubts about his beloved opera. Soon, however, it became perhaps the single most popular opera ever composed, one dearly loved by Johannes Brahms, of all people---and one which antagonists of Richard Wagner would claim to be the model of what a true musical drama ought to be!

The four movements comprising the suite are taken from the introductory music to each of the opera’s four acts: a lively Prelude (in effect the “overture” to Carmen), the prelude to Act II, subtitled “Dragons d’Alcala,” an Intermezzo (prelude to Act III), and to conclude the tempestuous prelude to the final act, known as the Aragonaise. In Carmen Bizet, who never set foot in Spain, miraculously created a sweeping panorama of Spanish musical styles which the Spaniards themselves hail as true to the spirit of their culture.

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Gershwin : Rhapsody in Blue

Rhapsody in Blue

George Gershwin (1898-1937)

With the first performance of the Rhapsody in Blue in February, 1924, George Gershwin won instant and sensational fame as a composer of great originality and creative power. He had previously made a name for himself in “Tin Pan Alley,” the world of commercial popular music, but a commission from the bandleader Paul Whiteman for a concert work featuring solo piano in a jazz idiom was the beginning of a rich and varied career as a composer of “serious music.” Soon there followed such works as the Concerto in F (1925), American in Paris (1928), and the opera, Porgy and Bess (1935). We can only imagine what might have been had Gershwin’s life not been so tragically cut short.

The opening clarinet solo, so defiantly confident and startlingly original, seems to proclaim the arrival of a bold new genius in American music. The solo piano, which is first heard in a quite casual manner, soon moves into brilliant virtuoso display, the raw energy of the music a reflection of the reckless spirit of “Roaring Twenties” America. Perhaps the most famous moment is that which forms a link to the traditions of concert music: the broadly lyrical, Romantic melody unfolded in the strings, then taken up by the piano. Gershwin actually composed a “Second Rhapsody” in 1931, a fine work which has always been overshadowed by the more celebrated work of 1924.

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Copland :Variations on a Shaker Melody

Variations on a Shaker Melody

Aaron Copland (1900-1990)

In this centenary year of the birth of Aaron Copland it is indeed appropriate to hear his Variations on a Shaker Melody – the very melody which was brought to wide notice when heard as the climax of his well-loved ballet, “Appalachian Spring’ (1944). This 1967 composition (closely based upon the final section of the ballet) was the last of several settings which Copland made of “Simple Gifts,” one of the hundreds of wonderfully fresh and original hymns created by the Shakers for their religious ceremonies. (The words speak of the plain and uncomplicated lives which were the goal of the Shakers, a Utopian religious sect which flourished in the early 19^th century, and survives until today in a single community in Maine.) The Shakes are widely renowned for their fine furniture and design, but as well for their fresh and lively music (and dancing!) which occupied a unique position in their worship. The words of the hymn say it all: “’T is a gift to be simple, ‘t is a gift to be free, t’ is a gift to come down where you ought to be…”-

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Gould: American Salute

American Salute

Morton Gould

(1913-1998)

Morton Gould is perhaps the finest example of a composer of the sort of music which all too often is given little attention or critical respect: “light music,” music written in a direct and unabashed popular idiom, aiming to reach a wide audience. At the same time Gould was an artist of integrity, creating works of elegance and fastidious craftsmanship. A New Yorker, he began at an early age to work as a conductor and arranger in the world of radio----today it is hard to remember that before the television age network radio (and even some independent radio stations) maintained performing ensembles and staffs of professional musicians, producing a rich variety of excellent music (heard in live broadcasts), today rarely to be encountered. This provided Gould with his training as a composer, leading to work in the theatre, films and later television. Increasingly he was in demand for concert and stage works, including the acclaimed ballet, “Fall River Legend” (1947), his American Symphonettes, Symphony of Spirituals---even a “Tap Dance Concerto.” The “American Salute” (1947) is probably his best-known composition, being a rousing orchestral arrangement of the American folksong, “When Johnny Comes Marching Home.”

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