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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.”