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Seventy-fifth Season
Grant Park Orchestra and Chorus
Carlos Kalmar, Principal Conductor
Christopher Bell, Chorus Director
Tenth Program: Independence Day in Millennium Park
Saturday, July 4, 2009 at 1:30 p.m.
Jay Pritzker Pavilion
Grant Park orchestra
Christopher Bell, Conductor
Lane Alexander, Tap Dancer
SMITH
arr. TOSCANINI
COPLAND
NELSON
WELLS
GOULD
The Star-Spangled Banner
Fanfare for the Common Man
Savannah River Holiday
Minor Reflection
Excerpts from Concerto for Tap Dancer and Orchestra
Toccata: Bright and Vigorous
Minuet: Lyrically Moving
Rondo: Very Fast and Driving
Lane Alexander
WARD
arr. DRAGON
America the Beautiful
attr. STEFFE
arr. WILHOUSKY
TCHAIKOVSKY
SOUSA
Battle Hymn of the Republic
1812, Overture Solennelle, Op. 49
The Stars and Stripes Forever
This concert is generously sponsored by ComEd.
Program Notes B37
on
Saturday, July 4, 2009
GRANT PARK MUSIC FESTIVAL
Christopher Bell’s biography can be found on page B3.
Lane Alexander, Chicago Human Rhythm Project’s cofounder and director for 20 years, has a performing career spanning
over 30 years that includes work on the concert stage, musical theater,
television and film. He is one of the foremost experts on Morton
Gould’s Tap Dance Concerto which he has performed at Carnegie Hall
with the New York Pops as well as the London Philharmonic, the
St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, the Illinois Philharmonic and Chicago
Sinfonietta. He was the first artist to publish a recording of the Tap
Dance Concerto since the original recording with Danny Daniels in
1952. Additional performances have included the Chautauqua Festival Orchestra and the
Colorado, Greenville, Queens, Long Beach, Dallas and Czech National Symphony Orchestras.
Lane regularly performs and teaches in Athens, Beijing, Brasilia, Caracas, Helsinki, Munich,
Paris, Prague, Stuttgart, Tokyo, Zurich and at numerous festivals around the North America,
including the Third Coast Rhythm Project and New York’s Tap City. He has appeared with such
greats as Donald O’Connor, Gregory Hines, Maurice Hines, the Nicholas Brothers, Buster
Brown, Prince Spencer, Peg Leg Bates, Jimmy Slyde, Savion Glover and Luke Cresswell. Lane
currently teaches at his own Tap Studio in Chicago, serves as a Senior Advisor to the Beijing
Contemporary Music Academy as well as on the board of directors for the International Tap
Association. He is the recipient of an NEA American Masterpieces grant through the Illinois
Arts Council, two IAC Choreography Fellowships and the Ruth Page Award for Outstanding
Contribution to the Field.
In the first volume of his autobiography (Copland, 1900 through 1942, St. Martin’s/Marek, 1984),
Aaron Copland (1900-1990) recounted the genesis of his Fanfare for the Common Man: “Eugene
Goossens, conductor of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, had written to me at the end of
August [1942] about an idea he wanted to put into action for the 1942-43 concert season. During World War I, he had asked British composers for a fanfare to begin each orchestral concert.
It had been so successful that he thought to repeat the procedure in World War II with American
composers. [Goossens’ additional requests inspired a total of ten fanfares from such other notable
musicians as Creston, Cowell, Piston, Thomson, Milhaud and Gould.] Goossens wrote: ‘It is my
idea to make these fanfares stirring and significant contributions to the war effort, so that I suggest
you give your fanfare a title, as for instance, “A Fanfare for Soldiers, or for Airmen or Sailors.” I
am asking this favor in a spirit of friendly comradeship, and I ask you to do it for the cause we all
have at heart....’ As with Lincoln Portrait, I was gratified to participate in a patriotic activity. Goossens, a composer himself, suggested the instrumentation of brass and percussion and a length of
about two minutes. Since it was premiered on March 14, 1943, Fanfare for the Common Man has
been played by many and varied ensembles, ranging from the U.S. Air Force Band to the popular
Emerson, Lake, and Palmer group.... I confess that I prefer Fanfare in the original version, and I later
used it in the final movement of my Third Symphony.”
* * *
Composer and conductor Ron Nelson, born in Joliet, Illinois in 1929, studied with Howard
Hanson, Bernard Rogers, Peter Mennin and Wayne Barlow at the Eastman School of Music, where
he received his bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees. Nelson additionally studied with Tony
Auban at the École Normale de Musique in Paris on a Fulbright grant in 1954-1955. Following his
graduation from Eastman in 1956, Nelson joined the faculty of Brown University, where he taught
until his retirement in 1993. His numerous honors include a Ford Foundation fellowship (1963),
a Howard Foundation grant (1965), grants from the National Endowment for the Arts (1973,
1976, 1979), an ASCAP Award (1989) and commissions from many universities and ensembles. In
Program Notes B39
GRANT PARK MUSIC FESTIVAL
Saturday, July 4, 2009
1991, he became the first musician to receive the (Roy) Acuff Chair of Excellence in the Creative
Arts. Savannah River Holiday, composed in Rochester in 1952, the year that Nelson received his
undergraduate degree from Eastman, follows traditional three-part form (A–B–A), in which the
brilliantly scored outer sections are, according to the composer, “gay and reckless,” while the lyrical
central episode is “quiet and reflective.”
* * *
Katherine Gladney Wells was among the leaders of the St. Louis musical community. The
daughter of 7-Up founder Franklin Gladney, she was born in St. Louis in 1918, studied composition with John Duke at Smith College, and returned home to marry Ben H. Wells, who went to
work for 7-Up in 1938 and rose from advertising copywriter to CEO, a post he held from 1974 until
his retirement in 1979. The Wells became important benefactors of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, Ben serving as board president, Katherine writing a history of the ensemble (Symphony &
Song: the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra: the First Hundred Years 1880-1980), and together endowing the
Principal Viola chair. They were both recognized with the degree Doctor of Humane Letters from
the University of Missouri at St. Louis in 1983 and the Lifetime Achievement in the Arts Award
from the St. Louis Arts Awards in 1994. Katherine pursued her own creative musical interests as
time allowed (“the years when Schumann wrote 100 songs or when Schubert wrote as fast as black
magic,” she said, “they were not worrying about shopping for food, cooking, caring for children,
and answering the phone”), composing and conducting the St. Louis Symphony annually from the
1970s to the 1990s in concerts arranged for her by her husband, often featuring premieres of her
own works. She died in St. Louis in 2003. Her poignant Minor Reflection originated in 1987 as the
slow movement of a four-movement work for the St. Louis-based Laclede Quartet. She arranged
the piece for string orchestra the following year, and Leonard Slatkin led the St. Louis Symphony
in its first performance and recorded it for RCA Victor in March 1991.
* * *
Danny Daniels first gained fame as a tap dancer with Broadway appearances in Billion Dollar
Baby (1945, with a score by Morton Gould [1913-1996] and lyrics by Comden and Green), Street
Scene (1947, Kurt Weill and Langston Hughes) and Kiss Me, Kate (1948, Cole Porter). He continued
to dance during the 1950s, including a tour with the Agnes de Mille Dance Theatre, but he turned
more to teaching and choreographing after his initial Broadway successes, working both in Hollywood (The Night They Raided Minsky’s, Pennies from Heaven, Zelig) and New York (four Tony nominations, winning for the 1984 Tap Dance Kid). In 1952, during the transitional time in his career, Daniels approached Morton Gould about the possibility of collaborating on a new ballet. “I was talking
to him and he was looking at me, but eventually I realized he wasn’t even listening,” Daniels recalled
years later. “He said, ‘How would you like to do a tap dance concerto with me?’ I was bowled over.
So I said sure.” Gould composed his Concerto for Tap Dancer and Orchestra during the following months and conducted its premiere with Daniels and the Rochester Pops on November 16,
1952; they recorded the work for Columbia two months later and Gould and Daniels subsequently
performed it together more than forty times. (Quite improbably, Gould had composed a different
tap dance concerto for Paul Draper’s appearance at Carnegie Hall in 1941. The work was never
performed, however, and the score was lost.) The Tap Dance Concerto comprises character pieces in
complementary music and dance styles, including Toccata, Minuet and Rondo.
* * *
Katherine Lee Bates, a professor of English at Wellesley College, was inspired to write the
words for America, the Beautiful by a visit to Pike’s Peak in Colorado. Her poem was first published in the Boston magazine The Congregationalist on July 4, 1895. Lyricist and editor Thomas Bailey Aldrich encouraged Miss Bates to have music composed for the poem, but an existing melody
titled Materna written by Samuel Augustus Ward in 1882 had become associated with the poem in
some unknown way; the words and music for America, the Beautiful were first published together
in Boston in 1913. The present arrangement is by Carmen Dragon, who scored over thirty motion pictures, winning an Academy Award for Cover Girl in 1944. He also composed for television,
variety shows and musicals, and gained a wide reputation through his more than 65 recordings of
his arrangements and light classics with the Hollywood Bowl Symphony Orchestra. Dragon died
in Santa Monica, California in 1984.
B40 Program Notes
Saturday, July 4, 2009
GRANT PARK MUSIC FESTIVAL
* * *
On November 19, 1861, Julia Ward Howe, abolitionist, poet, suffragist and wife of the noted
physician and reformer Samuel Gridley Howe, witnessed Gen. George McClellan’s grand military
review in Washington, D.C. Inspired by that patriotic event and by the stirring melody of the
marching song John Brown’s Body that formed part of its music, Mrs. Howe returned to her room at
the Willard Hotel and set down some new verses for the melody: “Mine eyes have seen the glory
of the coming of the Lord.” She worked by candlelight through the night, and finished her lyrics at
dawn. The poem — Battle Hymn of the Republic — first appeared in the New York Daily Tribune
on January 14, 1862. By the end of the year, it had become one of the most beloved songs of the
Union — President Lincoln is said to have wept the first time he heard it. The music now associated with the Battle Hymn can be traced to the middle 1850s, when it was widely used as a Methodist
camp meeting song under the title Say, Brothers, Will You Meet Us?. Soon after the song was published anonymously in the 1855 hymnal Plymouth Collection, compiled by the well-known abolitionist
preacher Henry Ward Beecher, the Philadelphia organist and choirmaster William Steffe claimed
that he had written the melody, but his authorship has never been proven conclusively. Sometime
around 1860, the members of the second battalion of the Boston Light Infantry, Massachusetts
Volunteer Militia, fitted Say, Brothers (one of the items in their regular hymn repertory) with new
words chiding the battalion’s sergeant, John Brown. John Brown’s Body proved to be a popular marching song with the 21st Regiment, which used it when receiving the colors on the Boston Common
on July 18, 1861 and again a week later in a parade down Broadway in New York while on their
way to the battlefields of Virginia. As the song gained greater currency, it became associated with a
more famous John Brown — the head of the band of abolitionist zealots who raided Harper’s Ferry on October 16, 1859 and who was hanged six weeks later in Charleston, Virginia. It became the
outstanding song of the anti-slavery movement, and inspired many new verses. Julia Ward Howe’s
alone endure. The most familiar symphonic arrangement of Battle Hymn of the Republic is by Peter
J. Wilhousky (1902-1978), long-time Director of Music for the New York City Public Schools, an
assistant to Toscanini and the NBC Symphony, and a noted lecturer and guest conductor.
* * *
The Russian penchant for myth-making extends, of course, to her warfare. It is therefore not
surprising that Napoleon’s strategic withdrawal from Moscow in 1812 came to be regarded in Russia as a great military victory achieved through cunning and resourcefulness, conveniently ignoring
the French General Ney’s report that “general famine and general winter, rather than Russian bullets, conquered the Grand Army.” Nearly seventy years later, the Cathedral of Christ the Redeemer
was erected in Moscow to commemorate the events of 1812. For the Cathedral’s consecration,
Nikolai Rubinstein, head of the Moscow Conservatory and director of the Russian Musical Society,
planned a celebratory festival of music, and in 1880 he asked Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893)
to write a work for the occasion. The 1812 Overture represents the conflict — militarily and musically — of Russia and France, and the eventual Russian “victory” over the invaders.
* * *
John Philip Sousa (1854-1932) and his wife, Jane, were vacationing in Europe in 1896 when
word reached them in Italy that the Sousa Band’s manager, David Blakely, had died suddenly in
his Carnegie Hall office on November 7th. The Sousas left immediately for America, and the
composer recalled in his memoirs, Marching Along, that what followed was “one of the most vivid
incidents of my career. As the vessel steamed out of the harbor, I was pacing the deck, absorbed in
thoughts of my manager’s death and the many duties and decisions that awaited me in New York.
Suddenly, I began to sense the rhythmic beat of a band playing in my brain. It kept on ceaselessly,
playing, playing, playing. I did not transfer a note of that music to paper while I was on the steamer,
but when we reached shore, I set down the measures that my brain-band had been playing for me,
and not a note of it has ever been changed.” The work that Sousa brought home to America was
The Stars and Stripes Forever, his own favorite among his 136 marches and arguably the most famous
such piece ever written. Sousa never gave a concert without performing it, and in 1987, the United
States Congress proclaimed it the country’s official march.
©2009 Dr. Richard E. Rodda
Program Notes B41