Download Overture to “La Forza del Destino”

PROGRAM NOTES
Danza Final fr. Estancia (1943)
Alberto Ginastera (1916-1983)
Arr. David John
An estancia is a large cattle ranch on the pampas in Argentina, and Alberto Ginastera envisioned his
ballet as a depiction of the busy activities on an estancia from one dawn to the next. The story of the
ballet is built around a love triangle. A city boy meets a beautiful ranch girl and is entranced. She
however considers him a weakling in comparison to the manly gauchos (horsemen) who work on her
father's estancia. The city boy follows her to the ranch, determined to win her heart away from the
gauchos.
Ginastera wrote this ballet very early in his career, barely three years after his graduation from the
National Conservatory in Buenos Aires. Lincoln Kirstein, director of the American Ballet Caravan which
was traveling in South America, heard Ginastera's graduation piece and was so impressed that he
commissioned a ballet for his company to perform the following year. Estancia was the happy result.
A Malambo is a quick and vigorous Argentinean folk dance in which men compete to demonstrate their
agility and machismo. The dance itself is a series of justas or competitive "anything you can do, I can
do better" moments. The "winner" is the last man to remain standing. In the final movement of his suite,
Ginastera uses the Malambo format to show the city man competing with the gauchos for the heart of
his ranch girl. The movement begins with high piccolo flutterings; then the guitar-like strum of the
piccolo line struggles with the underlying accompaniment. and one meter is set against another. The
same theme repeats over and over, culminating with a breathless, frenzied, wickedly fast trumpet solo.
Each time the trumpet theme is heard, the accompanying music is slightly varied, so that the web of
sound becomes increasingly complex.
Listen for the characteristic sounds of nature that occur throughout this dance, which is ideally
performed at night by firelight in an open setting. A masterful thumb roll on the tambourine mimics an
insistent cicada; the entire horn section interjects a flurry of elephant peals; the flutes interrupt the
melody with the unmistakable twitter of birds.
Spoon River
Percy Aldridge Grainger (1882 -1961)
Arr. Glenn Cliffe Bainum
Percy Grainger, was an Australian-born composer, arranger and pianist. In the course of a long and
innovative career he played a prominent role in the revival of interest in British folk music in the early
years of the 20th century. He also made many adaptations of other composers' works. Although much
of his work was experimental and unusual, the piece with which he is most generally associated is his
piano arrangement of the folk-dance tune "Country Gardens".
Grainger left Australia at the age of 13. Between 1901 and 1914 he was based in London, where he
established himself first as a society pianist and later as a concert performer, composer and collector of
original folk melodies. In 1914 Grainger moved to the United States, where he lived for the rest of his
life, though he travelled widely in Europe and in Australasia. He served briefly as a bandsman in the US
Army during 1917–18, and took US citizenship in 1918. After 1922 he became increasingly involved in
educational work. He also experimented with music machines that he hoped would supersede human
interpretation. In the 1930s he set up the Grainger Museum in Melbourne, his birthplace, as a
monument to his life and works and as a future research archive. As he grew older he continued to give
concerts and to revise and rearrange his own compositions, while writing little new music. After the
Second World War, ill health reduced his levels of activity, and he considered his career a failure. He
gave his last concert in 1960, less than a year before his death.
Spoon River is Grainger’s setting of an old American “fiddle tune” Grainger’s own notes:
'A Captain Charles H. Robinson heard a tune called 'Spoon River' played by a rustic fiddler at a country
dance at Bradford Illinois (U.S.A.), in 1857. When Edgar L ee Masters' Spoon River Anthology
appeared in 1914, Captain Robinson (then nearly 90 years old) was struck by the likeness of the two
titles--that of the old tune and that of the poem-book--and he sent the 'Spoon River' tune to Masters,
who p assed it on to me. The tune is very archaic in character; typically American, yet akin to certain
Scottish and English dance-tune types. My setting (begun March 10, 1919; ended February 1, 1929),
aims at preserving a pioneer blend of lonesome wistfulness and sturdy persistence. It bears the
following dedication: 'For Edgar Lee Masters, poet of pioneers'."--John Bird (Rambles).
Scenes from the Ballet “Billy the Kid”
Aaron Copland (1901-1990)
Arr. Quincy Hilliard
Aaron Copland was instrumental in forging a distinctly American style of composition, and is often
referred to as "the Dean of American Composers". He is best known to the public for the works he
wrote in the 1930s and 40s in a deliberately more accessible style than his earlier pieces, including the
ballets Appalachian Spring, Billy the Kid, Rodeo and his Fanfare for the Common Man. The open,
slowly changing harmonies of many of his works are archetypical of what many people consider to be
the sound of American music, evoking the vast American landscape and pioneer spirit. However, he
wrote music in different styles at different periods of his life: his early works incorporated jazz or avantgarde elements whereas his later music incorporated serial techniques. In addition to his ballets and
orchestral works he produced music in many other genres including chamber music, vocal works,
opera and film scores.
The Ballet “Billy the Kid” was written in 1938. Soon after Copland met Lincoln Kirstein, director of the
American Ballet Caravan, the adventurous predecessor of the New York City Ballet, in the late 1930s,
Kirstein commissioned him to write a ballet about Billy the Kid, the notorious outlaw of the Old West
famed in ballad and legend. Alfred Frankenstein, a noted critic and the long-time program annotator for
the San Francisco Symphony, wrote of the factual Billy the Kid, “His real name was William Bonney. He
was born in New York City in 1859, but grew up in Silver City, New Mexico, where his mother kept a
boarding house. He murdered his first man in a saloon in Silver City when he was twelve years old, and
for the next nineteen years was one of the most industrious and generally admired bandits of the
Southwest. Eventually he was captured, tried for murder, and condemned to death. He made a
sensational escape from the sheriff’s deputies, but one day he was shot down by Pat Garrett, a sheriff,
who was once his friend.”
The score is prefaced by Copland’s synopsis of the ballet’s plot: “The action begins and closes on the
open prairie. The central portion of the ballet concerns itself with the significant moments in the life of
Billy the Kid. The first scene is a street in a frontier town. Familiar figures amble by. Cowboys saunter
into town, some on horseback, others with their lassoes. Some Mexican women do a Jarabe which is
interrupted by a fight between two drunks. Attracted by the gathering crowd, Billy is seen for the first
time as a boy of twelve with his mother. The brawl turns ugly, guns are drawn, and in some
unaccountable way, Billy’s mother is killed. Without an instant’s hesitation, in cold fury, Billy draws a
knife from his cowhand’s sheath and stabs his mother’s slayers. His famous career has begun. In swift
succession we see episodes from Billy’s later life. At night, under the stars, in a quiet card game with
his outlaw friends. Hunted by a posse led by his former friend Pat Garrett. Billy is pursued. A running
gun battle ensues. Billy is captured. A drunken celebration takes place. Billy in prison is, of course,
followed by one of Billy’s legendary escapes. Tired and worn in the desert, Billy rests with his girl.
Starting from a deep sleep, he senses movement in the shadows. The posse has finally caught up with
him. It is the end.”
Brazil: Ceremony, Song, and Samba
Robert W. Smith
Many members of the audience will remember the Band’s performance of Robert W. Smith’s tone
poem “Rising Dragons” in 2006, a tribute to a legemdary Chinese Naval Commander.
Brazil: Ceremony, Song, and Samba is based upon authentic Afro-Brazilian percussion grooves,
"Brazil: Ceremony, Song and Samba" is comprised of three musical sections illustrating the impact of
the African experience on music of this part of the world. Each section of the piece is based upon
authentic percussion rhythms that are a part of South America’s largest country.
Beginning in northern Brazil with the Ceremony, the piece transitions to Rio di Janiero and the smooth
sounds of the bossa nova that has become so popular throughout the world. The piece concludes with
the exciting sounds of Carnaval and the Samba Schools (percussion ensembles) that fill the streets
during the annual celebration.
Selections from the Ballet “Rodeo”: Buckaroo Holiday and Hoe
Down
Aaron Copland (1901-1990)
Arr. Kenneth Megan and Mark Rogers (respectively)
The ballet Rodeo was commissioned by the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo in 1942. For
local “flavor”, Copland stirred in plenty of folk songs. The theme of the ballet is simple,
though nowadays hardly “politically correct”: how a woman can capture a suitable man.
The Saturday afternoon rodeo in the American Southwest is a tradition (vaguely
paralleling the English village fete) where cowhands show off the skills of their trade,
unwittingly providing a showcase of prospective mates for unattached females.
Copland laces his virile Buckaroo Holiday (buckaroo derives from the Spanish vaquero,
meaning “cowboy”) with lots of vicious syncopations and whiplash percussion, reflecting
a rodeo's violent thrills and spills, though one may wonder what the trombone tune's
comical pauses are all about.
The famous, foot-stompin' Hoe-Down, is all about having fun. This tune has been used
extensively in recent years in “popular culture” and advertising. You may recognize the
tune as part of the commericials: “Beef – it’s what’s for dinner……”
Danzon #2
Arturo Marquez
Arr. Oliver Nickel
Born in 1950 in Alamos in the state of Sonora, Mexico, Arturo Márquez began his musical schooling in
La Puente, California. He studied piano and music theory at the Conservatory of Music of Mexico, and
composition at the Taller de Composición of the Institute of Fine Arts of Mexico. He has studied with
Mexican composers Joaquín Gutiérrez Heras, Hector Quintanar, and Federico Ibarra, as well as
French composer Jacques Castérède, and Americans Morton Subotnick and James Newton.
Márquez has received commissions from the Universidad Metropolitana de Mexico, Festival de la
Ciudad de Mexico, and the Rockefeller Foundation, and was awarded a Fulbright Foundation grant. In
1994 he received the composition scholarship of Mexico's Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes.
His works include Octeto Malandro (Misbehaving Octet--1996), Zarabandeo for clarinet and piano
(1995), and a flute concerto, commissioned by the Rockefeller Foundation and the Consejo Nacional
para las Artes, that was premiered by James Newton.
Márquez received his first inspiration for Danzón No. 2 while traveling to Malinalco in 1993 with painter
Andrés Fonseca and dancer Irene Martinez, who both loved to dance. The pair later brought Márquez
to dance halls in Veracruz and the popular Salón Colonia in Mexico City. Like Aaron Copland, who
traveled to the dance halls of Mexico City and produced El Salón Mexico (1932), Márquez found
himself entranced and inspired by the music. But unlike Copland, who was a visitor from the outside
finding his way into the music, Márquez was a native who discovered the music from the inside out,
connecting with the musical traditions of his parents and grandparents. Of this experience, Márquez
writes:
"I was fascinated and I started to understand that the apparent lightness of the danzón is only like a
visiting card for a type of music full of sensuality and qualitative seriousness, a genre which old
Mexican people continue to dance with a touch of nostalgia and a jubilant escape towards their own
emotional world; we can fortunately still see this in the embrace between music and dance that occurs
in the State of Veracruz and in the dance parlors of Mexico City. The Danzón No. 2 is a tribute to the
environment that nourishes the genre. It endeavors to get as close as possible to the dance, to its
nostalgic melodies, to its wild rhythms, and although it violates its intimacy, its form and its harmonic
language, it is a very personal way of paying my respects and expressing my emotions towards truly
popular music."
Danzón No. 2 was commissioned by the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Mexico in 1994, and
Márquez dedicated the piece to his daughter, Lily. The piece opens with a clarinet solo over rhythmic
claves, piano, and pizzicato strings. The clarinet is soon answered by oboe, while brass pulse
underneath, and the entire ensemble is pulled into the dance. The work becomes increasingly frenetic,
and sections featuring solo or groups of instruments with the ever-present claves are contrasted with
all-out dance mania. A lyric central section, introduced by piano, features beautifully lush strings and a
duet for clarinet and flute. Then brass assert the main dance theme again and the work builds to a
dramatic, foot-stomping close.
~ Compiled and Composed by Howard M. Green