Download CWE-Prog Notes I

THE CRANE WIND ENSEMBLE
Knecht meets the Music Master, who accepts our main character into the
intellectual society of the elite Castalia.
Program Notes • 16 February 2017
The second movement is dedicated to Father Jacobus. While the first movement
leitmotif for Joseph Knecht was based on 5ths going up; Father Jacobus' leitmotif
is based on 5ths going down. The second movement makes much use of sounds
sustained into each other as you would hear in a Great Cathedral. The movement
is meant to reflect the peace that Joseph Knecht felt with his introduction to history
and religion.
RECOIL
Joseph Schwanter
The University of Connecticut commissioned Joseph Schwantner through the
Raymond and Beverly Sackler New Music Foundation resulting in Recoil,
premiered 3 November 2004 in Carnegie Hall by the University of Connecticut
Wind Ensemble, with Jeffrey Renshaw conducting. It is Schwanter’s first work
for winds to encompass saxophones and euphonium in its orchestration. It also is
the first wind composition penned without direct influence from poetry.
In Recoil, Schwantner utilizes an “economy of means,” drawing upon very limited
pitch material, and foregoes elements characterized in his earlier works, such as
micro-notation, “visual time signatures,” and other unconventional musical
notations.
Of his work, Schwantner writes:
Recoil is my fourth work for wind ensemble in a series of pieces that
span twenty-nine years. The other works are: ...and the mountains rising
nowhere (1977), From a Dark Millennium (1980), and In evening's
stillness (1996). While Recoil employs a larger instrumentation than the
earlier works, they all share similar characteristics in that each is framed
in a single continuous movement and each exploit the rich timbral
resources of an expanded percussion section that includes amplified
piano.
THE GLASS BEAD GAME
James A. Beckel
The Glass Bead Game is a Horn Concerto loosely based on the Herman Hesse
novel of the same title. In the first movement, two main themes dominate. The
work opens with a bi-tonal motif based in Eb Major and A Major. This musical
idea is meant to represent Herman Hesse's existential philosophy about life which
is reflected in his novel. Simply put, Hesse believed that man exists as an
individual in a purposeless universe that is basically hostile. This conflict between
man and his environment is represented by the juxtaposition of the two keys. His
main character of this novel in fact succumbs to the cold waters of a glacier fed
lake at the end of this book. The other main theme is a leitmotif representing the
main character, Joseph Knecht; and is first stated by the Solo Horn at letter A of
the first movement. The dialogue of this theme between solo horn, flute, and
piccolo was inspired by the introduction of the Music Master in this novel. Joseph
The final movement is the most programmatic. This movement begins with the
opening celebration of Joseph Knecht's coronation to the post of Magister Ludi.
The celebration is heard at first from a great distance. Since Joseph Knecht is
reticent about his promotion to this high post, the horn soloist, representing our
main character, never plays the celebration march melody. The solo horn instead
answers this march melody with protest. This opening section of the final
movement grows to a frenzy, introducing us finally to the Presto Theme featuring
the solo horn. The theme from the second movement is briefly referenced at letter
Mm as Joseph Knecht, now burdened with the responsibilities as Magister Ludi,
reflects on his more tranquil past at the monastery with Father Jacobus. At the
close of this movement, the drowning sequence is loosely reflected in the music
when the opening themes of the third movement return as our main character
drowns.
Opening thematic material to the second movement is used as transition to return
us to the original Joseph Knecht leitmotif at Letter Rr in this final movement.
Programmatically this is referencing the end of this great novel where Joseph
Knecht's student, Tito, is now sitting on the lake's shore in shock over the death
of his teacher, Joseph Knecht. But our main character lives on in Tito's mind as
a wonderful teacher and mentor.
James Beckel graduated from the Indiana University School of Music and has
been principal trombonist with the Indianapolis symphony since 1969. He is also
on the music faculty at DePauw University and the University of Indianapolis.
Mr. Beckel has received many composition grants. he has been an Individual Arts
Fellow through the Indiana Arts Commission and the National Endowment for
the Arts and recently was one of fifty composers chosen nationwide to be part of
the Continental Harmony Project. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, The Glass
Bead Game was premiered by the Indianapolis chamber Orchestra on November
10, 1997.
Note by James A. Beckel
WINTER MOUNTAIN
Persis Vehar
Composer and pianist Persis Vehar received her training at Ithaca College and the
University of Michigan. She served on the Crane Faculty during the 1994-95
academic year, where she met Timothy Toplewski, then director of the Crane
Wind Ensemble. Topolewski and the Crane Wind Ensemble commissioned Prof.
Vehar for a work, resulting in Winter Mountain, premiered on 20 November 1996.
folksingers from all around, and in 1906, he began to record the songs with a wax
cylinder phonograph.
The eponymous work is inspired by Arthur Axlerod’s poem, Winter Mountain:
In December 1936 Grainger arrived at his home in White Plains after a ninemonth tour; he found a letter from the American Bandmasters Association,
inviting him to write two works for the eighth annual convention in Milwaukee,
Wisconsin, in March 1937. He decided to make a new arrangement of The Lads
Of Wamphray March, as well as a suite for wind band, based upon folk songs he
collected in Lincolnshire, thirty years before. Three of the six movements were
finished within four days. He feverishly composed directly to the individual parts,
without first writing a score. He rehearsed the piece with success at the Ernest
Williams School of Music in Brooklyn, and rushed off to Milwaukee.
In the slanting northern light, in the wandering organ tones
Of the wind, the mountain stands, layer over layer firm--A winter monolith.
The roof of evergreen rises beneath the white sky, revealing
The sun against the winter forest and its quality, as if through a seal of gold
Its light enduring.
The choice of the poem reflects Potsdam’s nearby mountainous terrain.
Winter Mountain is written in what the composer refers to as “circular form,” one
based on circular thinking which concerns itself with many ideas at once. The
piece has three ideas that develop simultaneously, often overlapping each other.
The beginning tone cluster based on g-sharp introduces the first idea. The cluster
is played by muted brass and develops into a chorale like statement. The disjunct
tones of the solo flute entrance are the first notes of the second idea that the
woodwinds extend continuously. The percussion section signals the introduction
to the third dance like idea in five-four meter. This rhythmic ostinato mixes the
tone colors of the woodwind, brass and percussion sections. As this idea
develops, it contains a melody, sounded initially by the flugelhorn and clarinets.
The melody floats over the top of the rhythmic ostinato. All ideas have primarily
upward melodic lines and have no particular order in their development.
Towards the end of the first section, the percussion players start improvising
against the notated music. By the middle of the work, the entire wind ensemble
improvises for ten seconds within the limits that the composer has prescribed.
This is the climax of the piece and represents the forces of nature that humans
often cannot control.
In the last half of the piece, the three ideas return primarily in retrograde, which
gives them a downward melodic motion. The brasses begin the last section, and
gradually the improvisation subsides. Each idea diminishes and returns to its
initial shortened form. However, at the conclusion of the three concluding lines
of the Axlerod poem, the muted brass tone clusters give way to the woodwinds.
Like the “enduring sun,” the woodwinds ascend in pitch and finally end on a tonic
A Major tone cluster reinforced by percussion. The basic shape of the entire work
reflects the sun ascending and descending on the WINTER MOUNTAIN.
Note by Persis Vehar
LINCOLNSHIRE POSY
Percy Aldridge Grainger
During his time in England, Grainger became acquainted with many of the
members of the English Folk Song Society: Lucy Broadwood, Ralph Vaughan
Williams and Cecil Sharpe. Grainger himself began collecting folk songs in the
summer of 1905. He walked from town to town writing down the songs of the
Grainger himself conducted the premiere on 7 March 1937, on which occasion
only three of the six movements were played. The premiere resulted in a great
fiasco. The band was composed of local professional musicians who had a great
deal of difficulty playing the irregular rhythms and “free time” bars. In the preface
of the subsequent published score, Grainger explained to bandleaders that the only
players likely to balk at those rhythms were seasoned bandsmen, who “think more
of their beer than of their music.” Three months later, the Goldman Band
performed the full work, with great success. Percy Grainger, who had lost faith
in the piece until that time, was delighted.
In this work, Grainger was able to exploit his ideas on rhythm, harmony and
orchestration in six folk songs, collected during his hunt for folk melodies in
Lincolnshire in 1905 and 1906. The movements are Lisbon (Dublin Bay),
Horkstow Grange, Rufford Park Poachers, The Brisk Young Sailor, Lord
Melbourne and The Lost Lady Found. Lucy E. Broadwood, secretary of the
Folk Song Society collected the last tune, however. Although the music is based
on existing melodies, Grainger adapted the songs in such a personal way that
Lincolnshire Posy can't be called a mere selection of arrangements. In the
program notes Grainger explains his intentions:
Each number is intended to be a kind of musical portrait of the singer who sang its
underlying melody… a musical portrait of the singer's personality no less than of his habits
of song… his regular or irregular wonts of rhythm, his preference for gaunt or ornately
arabesqued delivery, his contrasts of legato and staccato, his tendency towards breadth or
delicacy of tone.
Grainger dedicated this "bunch of musical Wildflowers" to “the old folksingers
that sang so sweetly to me.”