Download Mar 7, 2010 Where the Black Hawk Soars

Terre Haute Sinfonietta Pops Orchestra
07 March, 2010
Where the Black Hawk Soars
La FORZA Del DESTINO
The term “Manifest Destiny” has fallen out of favor in the 21st Century, but was taken
very seriously during the 19th and early 20th Centuries. It proposed that the United States
was destined, even divinely ordained, to expand across the North American Continent
from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean. Advocates of Manifest Destiny believed that
expansion was not only ethical but that it was readily apparent (“manifest”) and
inexorable (“destiny”). The concept first appeared in 1839 in an article by New York
newspaperman John L. O’Sullivan and was repeated in 1845 by him in an article titled
“Annexation in the Democratic Review”. O’Sullivan urged the U.S. to annex the
Republic of Texas and the Oregon Territory.
Today the Sinfonietta Pops Orchestra will open the program with the “Overture to La
Forza Del Destino” (The Force of Destiny) by Giuseppe Verdi from his opera of the same
name. We believe this music faithfully expresses the vitality and tension that
characterized the westward expansion of North America by waves of European émigrés
in the 19th and early 20th Centuries. Irish, Germans, Italians, Scandinavians, Eastern
Europeans all came to this country seeking a better life than was possible in the Old
World. It was not easy and many of them perished, but many more did find the U.S. was
the land of opportunity and they were able to build a new life and help define the U.S. as
the melting pot of the world.
MUSIC FROM THE STING
Scott Joplin was born into the first post slavery generation in Texarkana, Tx. in 1867.
Young Scott was given a rudimentary musical education by his family and at the age of
seven (7) was allowed to play piano in both a neighbor’s house and at the home of an
attorney where his mother worked as a laundress and cleaning woman.
At the age of eleven (11) after studying with several local music teachers, a German
immigrant music teacher named Julius Weiss gave the boy music lessons for free. He
learned music theory, keyboard technique and an appreciation of various European music
styles such as folk and opera. As a young man he also attended classes in composition
and counterpoint at one of the nation’s first all-black academic institutions, the George R.
Smith College for Negroes in Sedalia, Missouri. As a young man in the late eighteen
eighties, Joplin gave up steady employment as a railroad laborer to work as a traveling
musician. He soon discovered opportunities for black pianists were mostly limited to
church gatherings and brothels. He performed in various red-light districts throughout the
mid-south. During the 1893 Chicago Worlds Fair Joplin found work as a pianist in the
cafes in the tenderloin district that was near the fairgrounds.
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Terre Haute Sinfonietta Pops Orchestra
07 March, 2010
Where the Black Hawk Soars
In 1899 “The Maple Leaf Rag” was published and became an immediate success. It was
the first great instrumental music hit in America selling over one million copies of sheet
music. In 1900 Joplin moved to St Louis where he composed some of his greatest works,
including “The Entertainer”. Today we would like to set the time and place around the
turn of the twentieth century by performing the music from the 1974 film “The Sting”
with music of Scott Joplin adapted for the film by Marvin Hamlisch. Hamlisch is himself
a musical genius being the youngest person ever admitted to the Julliard School at the age
of seven. His adaptation of Joplin’s music for this film won an Academy Award and
brought new interest to the music of Scott Joplin. Included in the medley are excerpts
from “The Easy Winners (1901), The Entertainer (1902), Ragtime Dance (1902) and
Solace – A Mexican Serenade from (1909)”.
LARGO from SYMPHONY No. 9 by A. DVORAK
Antonin Dvorak was born in 1841 in a Bohemian village near Prague then part of the
Austro-Hungarian Empire and now capitol of the Czech Republic. His earliest musical
education was at the village school which he entered at age six (6). During his late teens
he studied music in Prague’s only organ school and also developed into an accomplished
player of the violin and viola in addition to the organ.
Beginning in 1873 Dvorak entered a prolific period of composition which led to a long
friendship with Johannes Brahms. From 1892 to 1895 Dvorak was the director of the
National Conservatory of Music in New York City. In the winter and spring of 1893 he
wrote Symphony No. 9, in E minor, Opus 95, and subtitled “From the New World”.
Dvorak and his family spent the summer of 1893 in the Czech-speaking community of
Spillville, Iowa, to which some of his cousins had immigrated.
Symphony No. 9 has several distinguishing characteristics in that it was listed as
Symphony No 5 for many years as it was the 5th Symphony published. Dvorak called it
No. 8 and it was also listed that way for a while. It was in fact the 9th Symphony written
and it goes by that designation today. Dvorak was interested in Negro and American folk
music and wrote original music for the work which emulates those indigenous styles. The
2nd movement, Largo is so reminiscent of a Negro Spiritual that it has been mistaken for
one numerous times. William Arms Fisher, a student of Dvorak’s, adapted and arranged
the opening theme around 1920 with words added to become the song “Goin’ Home”. It
especially became known as a spiritual after the death of President Franklin D. Roosevelt
in 1945 when it was performed numerous times. As an added note, Neil Armstrong took
a recording of the “New World Symphony” with him on Apollo 11 during the moon
landing in 1969.
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Terre Haute Sinfonietta Pops Orchestra
07 March, 2010
Where the Black Hawk Soars
MISSISSIPPI SUITE
Ferde Grofe’ was an American pianist, arranger and composer. Grofe was the arranger
and pianist for the Paul Whiteman big band from 1920 to 1932, and was the orchestrator
for the premiere of George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue”. His 1942 orchestration for
full orchestra of “Rhapsody in Blue” is the one most frequently heard today.
Grofe taught orchestration at the Julliard School of Music and also composed numerous
works for the concert hall and Hollywood. His 1950 score for the science fiction film
“Rocketship X-M included the use of the newly invented and other worldly sounding
theremin.
Grofe composed the tone poem “Mississippi Suite” in 1925. Its four movements describe
impressions of a journey down the Mississippi beginning with: 1. Father of Waters,
2. Huckleberry Finn, 3. Old Creole Days, and ending with 4. Mardi Gras.
INTERMISSION
WHERE THE BLACK HAWK SOARS
The American composer Robert W. Smith was born in the small town of Daleville,
Alabama and attended Troy State University where he studied composition with another
well known American composer, Paul Yoder. Smith earned a Master’s Degree from the
University of Miami in Media Writing and Production and continued studying
composition with Dr. Alfred Reed, who coincidentally was a teacher to Dr. John
McIntyre, Chair of the Music and Theatre Department at SMWC where this orchestra is
based.
Robert Smith has over 600 published compositions and also writes for the Drum and
Bugle Corps Suncoast Sound, Magic of Orlando, and the Glassmen from Toledo, OH.
Robert W. Smith is currently Director of Product Development for the C.L. Barnhouse
Publishing Company.
Because much of the Big Read Book, “My Antonia” is set in the small Nebraska town of
Black Hawk, we thought the Robert W. Smith composition “Where the Black Hawk
Soars” would be appropriate for today. Assistant Conductor Rodney Foster leads the
orchestra in “Where the Black Hawk Soars”.
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Terre Haute Sinfonietta Pops Orchestra
07 March, 2010
Where the Black Hawk Soars
ST. LOUIS BLUES
William Christopher Handy who was born in Florence, AL. in 1873 is known as the
father of the blues. While he was not the first to write and publish in the blues style, he
succeeded in taking the blues from an unknown regional style to one of the dominant
forces in American music. Handy was a classically trained musician who used folk
material in his compositions. His father, who was a minister, disapproved of the popular
music of the day, and W.C. studied, wrote and performed in secret. The 1912 publication
of his “Memphis Blues” sheet music introduced his style of 12-bar blues and is credited
as the inspiration for the invention of the foxtrot dance step. Some consider it to be the
first blues song. He sold the rights to the song for $100. When St. Louis Blues was
written in 1914, the tango was in vogue. The song has a tango introduction and then
abruptly breaks into a low-down blues. Bessie Smith’s 1925 recording of “St Louis
Blues” with Louis Armstrong is considered by many to be one of the finest recordings of
the 1920’s.
The Orchestra continues under the leadership of Asst Conductor Rod Foster in
performing this historic song. Ladies and Gentlemen, “The St. Louis Blues”.
THE PLOW THAT BROKE THE PLAINS
The American composer and critic Virgil Thomson was born in Kansas City, Missouri in
1896. He was instrumental in the development of the “American Sound” in classical
music. He attended Harvard University and eventually studied composition in Paris with
Nadia Boulanger in the 1920’s. Following the publication of his book “The State of
Music” he established himself in New York City as a contemporary of Aaron Copland
and also a music critic for the New York Herald-Tribune from 1937 through 1951.
In the 1930’s he worked as a theatre and film composer. His most famous works for the
theatre are two operas “Four Saints in Three Acts”, and “The Mother of Us All” with
libretti by his friend and mentor Gertrude Stein. His first film commission was “The Plow
that Broke the Plains” a short documentary in 1936 about the “Dust Bowl”.
The film, like the book “My Antonia” covers a period of roughly thirty (30) years.
Whereas the book is set from the 1880’s to the 19 teens, “The Plow That Broke the
Plains” begins in the late 1800’s and ends during the Great Depression and the Dust
Bowl. The music is very impressionistic and complements the images shown in the
movie. There is a voice over the film and music, but for simplicity and clarity today,
since we don’t have the movie, we will read the script and then play the corresponding
movement to the music. The music is broken down into the following scenes: 1. Prelude,
2. Pastorale (Grass), 3. Cattle, 4.Blues (Speculation), 5. Drought and 6. Devastation
ENCORE: El Capitan march by John Philip Sousa.
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