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Academy Festival Orchestra, August 6, 2016
PROGRAM NOTES
SEAN SHEPHERD
Magiya
Composed 2013
Duration ca. 8 minutes
Scored for piccolo and 2 flutes, 2 oboes and English horn, 2 clarinets and bass clarinet, 2
bassoons and contrabassoon, four horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion,
and strings
Russian folklore is replete with tales of magical creatures and happenings, and Russian
composers have long drawn inspiration from stories of the supernatural. Glinka’s opera Ruslan
and Lyudmila and Tchaikovsky’s Vakula the Smith; Mussorgsky’s Night on Bald Mountain and
the “Baba-Yaga” episode in his Pictures at an Exhibition; Rimsky-Korsakov’s operas Sadko, The
Snow Maiden, The Invisible City of Kitezh, and The Golden Cockerel; and Stravinsky’s ballets The
Firebird and Petrushka — these are but a few of the many works by Russian musicians that
draw on the accounts of spells, fairies and witches, imaginary animals, enchanted realms, and
uncanny occurrences related in Russian legends, fables, and poetry.
The shared and defining trait of these stories can be shared characteristic of the compositions
based on them is scintillating instrumental color and texture, which serves to transport listeners
out of the mundane and into a world of magiya.
Both of these notions — the magic pervasive in Russian folklore and the brilliant orchestration
found in the most fantastical works by Rimsky-Korsakov, Stravinsky, and other Russian
composers — lie at the heart of Magiya, a single-movement orchestral piece by the American
composer Sean Shepherd. The creation of this work was commissioned by Carnegie Hall and
BBC Radio 3 for the National Youth Orchestra of the United States of America, which played it
under the direction of Valery Gergiev during the summer of 2013 in New York and Washington,
DC; at a BBC “Proms” concert, in London; and on tour in Russia.
Gergiev is, of course, a distinguished Russian conductor, and the program he led with the
National Youth Orchestra in 2013 was otherwise devoted to Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto and
Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 10. In view of this and the orchestra’s tour itinerary, Shepherd
explained, “my thoughts naturally drifted eastwards. In writing a piece to precede two pillars of
the Russian repertoire, and to be performed ... in cities in Russia, I immediately thought of so
much music that I adore in the great tradition of the Russian overture.”
In duration and other details, Magiya is very like an overture, and it serves well to open an
orchestral concert, as it does this evening. But in addition to the Russian concert overture, a
genre that includes masterpieces by Glinka, Tchaikovsky, and other composers, Shepherd also
acknowledges the influence on this piece of the magiya in Russian folk stories and literature.
“When these tales find their way to the stage,” the composer notes, “some of most colorful and
most exotic — and some of my favorite — music of the age is the result.” His composition is, he
says, “a humble nod” to the brilliant compositional tradition that has produced such music.
The initial moments of Magiya establish two contrasting but complementary musical ideas:
rapid, scintillating figures fired out by the high woodwinds and trumpets, with pizzicato accents
from the strings and percussion — figures that call to mind the start of “The Dance of the
Firebird” in Stravinsky’s eponymous ballet; and a sustained, wide-stepping line played by the
horns, low woodwinds, and vibraphone. During the ensuing minutes, Shepherd plays with these
two disparate elements, alternately expanding and compressing them, changing their
instrumental hues, and otherwise developing them. At length, a long and sinuous line
introduced by the violins takes the place of the rapid figures heard earlier, with variants of the
wide-stepping melody providing counterpoint. Their dialogue dominates the central portion of
the piece. Eventually, though, the quick sizzling figures and other elements from the works
opening minutes reassert themselves and propel the music to an emphatic conclusion.
Sean Shepherd studied at Indiana University, The Juilliard School, and Cornell University, where
he earned a doctorate degree in composition. His music has been performed by the National,
Chicago, BBC, and New World Symphony Orchestras; the Cleveland Orchestra and the New York
Philharmonic; the Ensemble Intercontemporain, the Scharoun Ensemble Berlin, the
Asko|Schönberg Ensemble, St. Luke’s Chamber Ensemble, and the Birmingham Contemporary
Music Group; and at major music festivals in this country and Europe. He served as the New
York Philharmonic’s Kravis Emerging Composer and as the Daniel R. Lewis Composer Fellow
with the Cleveland Orchestra. Other recognition includes a Guggenheim Fellowship, the
Benjamin H. Danks Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and a Deutsche
Bank Fellowship at the American Academy in Berlin. Mr. Shepherd has been a member of the
composition faculty at the Tanglewood Music Center and teaches composition at the Peabody
Institute, in Baltimore.
NICOLAI RIMSKY-KORSAKOV
Scheherazade, Op. 35
Composed 1888
Duration ca. 48 minutes
Scored for piccolo and 2 flutes, 2 oboes and English horn, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2
trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, harp, and strings
“The Sultan Shakriar, convinced of the falsehood and infidelity of all women, had sworn an oath
to put to death each of his wives after the first night. But the Sultana Scheherazade saved her
life by arousing his interest in the wonderful tales she told for a thousand and one nights. She
spun miraculous stories, borrowing verses from the poets and words from folk songs, fairy-tales,
and accounts of strange adventures. Driven by curiosity, the Sultan postponed her execution
from day to day and finally abandoned his wicked plan.”
The rich compendium of folk tales known as Tales of Arabian Nights is one of the great
collective art works of Islamic culture, and one of the world’s literary treasures. For centuries,
the anonymous stories that comprise this anthology circulated individually throughout Middle
East before being brought together in a single volume. The work was introduced to Europe in
the early 1700s but was not widely known until the 19th century, when a number of
translations, most notably the unexpurgated one by the English explorer and linguist Richard
Francis Burton, appeared in print.
Tales of Arabian Nights has inspired a number of composers. Ravel and Szymanowski are two
prominent musicians who based scores on this subject, but the most famous musical treatment
of the Sultana and her marvelous stories is the symphonic suite Scheherazade by the Russian
composer Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov.
As noted earlier, Rimsky-Korsakov based a number of his operas on fantastical Russian stories,
so it is hardly surprising that he should have been drawn to Tales of Arabian Nights, with its
genies, mermaids, magic lantern, talking animals, and other supernatural marvels. The idea of
basing an orchestral work on various episodes from the Arabian collection came to the
composer early in 1888. Significantly, he had recently been engaged as conductor of the
Russian Symphony Concerts, an important series of orchestral programs in Saint Petersburg,
and his close contact with the orchestra that performed at these events must have prompted at
least some of the colorful instrumentation for which Scheherazade is justly famous. The
composer made sketches for the work in June of that year and finished the full score by
autumn.
The work’s four movements approximate the traditional outline of a symphony, with an
opening allegro prefaced by an introduction in moderate tempo, a slow second movement, a
third in the spirit of a scherzo, and an energetic finale. Although Rimsky-Korsakov had certain
scenes from the tales in mind as he wrote the work, the music does not present a linear
narrative of any of the stories. As the composer explained in his autobiography,
“The program I had been guided by in composing Scheherazade consisted of separate,
unconnected episodes from the Tales of Arabian Nights scattered through all four movements
of my suite: the sea and Sinbad’s ship, the fantastic narrative of Prince Kalender, the Prince and
Princess, the Baghdad festival, the ship dashing itself against the rock ... yet presenting, as it
were, a kaleidoscope of fairy-tale images.”
Indeed, Rimsky-Korsakov was so dismayed by the insistence of early listeners to try to identify
each passage with a specific character or event in the tales that he deleted all written
references to these from the final version of his score (though he retained the evocative
preface, quoted at the top of this note). In explaining his eliminations of programmatic clues
from the score, the composer stated:
“My aversion to seeking too definite a program in my composition led me subsequently to do
away with even those hints of it that had lain in the headings of each movement. ... In
composing Scheherazade I meant these hints to direct but slightly the hearer’s fancy on the
path that my own fancy had traveled, and to leave more minute and particular conceptions to
the will and mood of each. All I had desired was that the hearer ... should carry away the
impression that it is beyond doubt an Oriental narrative of some numerous and varied fairy-tale
wonders.”
In other words, it is a general impression of the mood and tone of the Arabian tales that the
composer hoped to convey in this music, along with occasional suggestions of certain narrative
details experienced as “a kaleidoscope of fairy-tale images.” Rimsky-Korsakov did admit one
point: the sinuous melody of a solo violin heard in each of the four movements “delineates
Scheherazade herself as telling her wondrous tales to her stern Sultan.”
With its colorful scoring and solos featuring nearly all the principal players, Scheherazade is a
superb orchestral showpiece. It begins with music of forbidding character, harsh and
threatening, a stark musical emblem for Sultan Shakriar. (This theme will, however, undergo
many transformations, and therefore take on varied character, over the course of the piece.)
No less convincing is the melodic arabesque for solo violin, representing Scheherazade. These
ideas, which constitute most of the introduction to the first movement proper, recur as
principal themes in the larger body of music that follows. A variant of the initial subject,
transformed into flowing phrases, sounds over wide-stepping accompaniment figures that rise
and fall like waves on the open ocean. (Rimsky-Korsakov initially titled this movement “The Sea
and Sinbad’s Ship.”) Later a violin solo recalls that of the introduction, confirming its melodic
shape as a major part of the movement. Both ideas repeat in varying contexts, and several
subsidiary themes help fill out this first part of the composition.
Rimsky-Korsakov begins the second movement by returning to the violin’s “Scheherazade” solo
from the opening moments of the piece. Solo bassoon then plays a melody whose Russian
expressiveness becomes increasingly apparent as it is repeated by solo oboe, by the violins, and
finally by the woodwind choir. Suddenly the tempo slows, and trombone and then trumpet
sound an alarm. This figure, which repeats several times, derives from the Shakriar theme of
the opening movement. Remarkably, the same source yields the jaunty scherzo that follows.
Rimsky-Korsakov eventually returns to the bassoon’s melody before concluding the movement.
Most of the third movement is built on a gentle melody stated by the string choir at the outset.
Absent at the start, the “Scheherazade” violin solo appears toward the movement’s end. The
finale returns to the themes of the opening movement, which the composer weaves into a
luminous musical tapestry that also includes the gentle theme of the third movement and a
reprise of the “Scheherazade” violin solo.