Download William Grant Still Poem for Orchestra William Grant

William Grant Still
Poem for Orchestra
William Grant Still was born in Woodville, Mississippi in 1895 and died in Los Angeles,
California in 1978. He composed this work in 1944 on a commission from the Kulas American
Composers Fund for the Cleveland Orchestra, and it was first performed the same year by the
Cleveland Orchestra under the direction of Rudolph Ringwall. The score calls for 3 flutes, piccolo,
3 oboes, English horn, 3 clarinets, bass clarinet, 2 bassoons, contrabassoon, 4 horns, 3 trumpets,
3 trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, harp, celeste, and strings.
William Grant Still is often referred to as the “dean” of African-American composers. As
one of the first African-American classical composers to break through the barriers his race put
before him, he racked up an impressive number of firsts: he was the first African-American to
have a symphony performed by a leading American orchestra (1935), the first to conduct a
major American orchestra (1936), and the first to have an opera performed by a major opera
company (1949).
Still was born in Mississippi but grew up in Arkansas. His father died when he was very
young, and his mother—a schoolteacher who wished he might go into medicine—encouraged
his musical interests with violin lessons. Still taught himself to play the clarinet, oboe,
saxophone, bass, cello, and viola, and later learned much about arranging and orchestration by
playing the oboe in pit bands. He won scholarships to study music at the Oberlin Conservatory
of Music and studied composition with the very conservative George Chadwick and the very
avant garde Edgard Varèse.
Soon after college (and an interruption to serve in the Navy during WWII), still went to
work as an arranger for W.C. Handy in New York. From there he worked as an arranger for a
number of radio shows, and ultimately moved to Los Angeles to arrange film scores. Composer
Howard Hanson, a champion of American music, gave him his first big debut, conducting Still’s
Symphony No. 1 with the Rochester Philharmonic. But the event that probably did the most for
his reputation and career was when Leopold Stokowski performed the fourth movement of that
work on tour with the Philadelphia Orchestra.
Having studied with such polar opposites as Chadwick and Varèse, Still split the
difference, something you can hear readily in his Poem for Orchestra. Written to imagine the
world’s rebirth of spirituality after times of severe darkness and desolation—no doubt with
WWII on his mind—the Poem begins in a challenging way, dark and dissonant. Through the
work’s journey from darkness into light, Still’s melodic gifts are always to the fore. As the music
evolves, so does its mood, eventually arriving at a place of both musical and spiritual
affirmation. Yet Still lands the work on a final chord that is not a resolution; its instability
reminds us that Still was writing about hopes, not certainties.
John Williams
Music from Lincoln
John Williams was born in New York in 1932. He composed his film score to Steven
Spielberg’s film Lincoln in 2012 and it was first heard with the film the same year. Williams later
extracted a four-movement Suite from the score. The Suite is scored for 3 flutes, piccolo, 2
oboes, English horn, 3 clarinets, bass clarinet, 2 bassoons, contrabassoon, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3
trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, harp, piano, celeste, and strings.
For the last fifty years and more, the movies just wouldn’t have been the same without
John Williams. Whether it be an adventure film, a disaster picture, a war movie, a romantic
comedy, or a magical fantasy, John Williams’ film scores have made them all better.
Though Williams is typecast in the minds of many as a composer of big, loud, bombastic
scores, for a film about a man who was perhaps America’s most introspective president,
Williams instead delivers some of his most subtle and lyrical music. The Suite comprises four
cues from the film. The wistful tune that opens “The People’s House” leads to an echo in
reverent strings that swells quickly to a Copland-esque climax and then recedes. “Getting Out
the Vote” is Williams’ take on the folk music of the Civil War—rustic, bumptious, and oh-soAmerican. The most beautiful and poignant music is found in “Elegy;” it conveys not just the
sadness, but the shock the country underwent at Lincoln’s passing. That wistful melody that
opened the Suite returns to open “With Malice Toward None” as well. But while its first
iteration was all about possibility, it returns here with assurance, dignity and, finally, peace.
Wolfgang Amadè Mozart
“Ach ich fühl’s, es ist verschwunden” from The Magic Flute, K. 620
Wolfgang Amadè Mozart (he never used “Amadeus” except when making a joke) was
born in Salzburg, Austria in 1756 and died in Vienna in 1791. He composed his opera The Magic
Flute in 1791 and led the first performance in Vienna the same year. The score of this aria calls
for flute, oboe, bassoon, and strings.
The Magic Flute is a glorious mish-mash of delightful fairy-tale storytelling, Masonic
symbolism, Enlightenment philosophy—and some of the most sublime music Mozart ever
wrote. Conceived with (fellow Mason) Emanuel Shikaneder, the opera’s librettist and first
Papageno, it drew crowds such as Mozart hadn’t seen in years. It was his greatest operatic
success, and his letters during its production reveal a degree of happiness and contentment
that had often eluded him. At the same time, he was ardently at work on his Requiem—which
would lay incomplete in little more than two month’s time.
In the opera, Pamina is the sweet daughter of the evil Queen of the Night. Tamino, a
young prince, and Pamina have fallen in love, even though they haven’t even met. (Don’t ask.)
In order to win Pamina, Tamino must undergo several trials; one of his trials is that he must
remain silent before Pamina. Pamina takes this as rejection, and she sings the aria “Ach ich
fühl’s, es ist verschwunden” –“Ah, I feel that it has gone, forever gone—the happiness of love!”
The “magic flute” of the title is a magical instrument capable of turning sorrow into joy;
as the opera continues, Pamina’s sorrow will turn, after many trials, to joy. And by the end,
there’s enough joy to go around for everyone.
André Previn
“Take My Mother Home” from Honey and Rue
André Previn was born Andreas Ludwig Priwin in Berlin, Germany in 1929. He composed
this song as part of his song-cycle Honey and Rue in 1991 on a commission from the Carnegie
Hall Corporation, to a text by Toni Morrison; it was first performed in New York the following
year with Kathleen Battle, soprano and the Orchestra of St. Luke’s under the direction of the
composer. The song-cycle is scored for solo soprano, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, English horn, 2 clarinets,
2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, tuba, jazz drums, jazz bass, harp, piano, and strings.
Classical musicians such as André Previn are exceedingly rare: they are the few that
master every discipline of music and are equally adept at performing, composing, and
conducting. To have also mastered these in jazz, theater music, and film scoring puts Previn into
that rarefied air that few musicians will ever breathe.
Having been moved by reading Toni Morrison’s novel “The Bluest Eye,” American
soprano Kathleen Battle asked Morrison and Previn to create a song-cycle for her; they readily
agreed. Morrison sent Previn six poems—it was her first time writing for an original score—and
Previn responded with a classical cycle having jazz, blues, and Negro spiritual inflections. He
called it Honey and Rue.
“Take My Mother Home” is the final song of Honey and Rue, and brings us Previn in all
his multi-tasking, genre-bending glory. Beginning with a clarinet and cello recitative in a spiky,
modernist style, this morphs easily through a bluesy trombone riff to its real destination: a
spiritual where the words and music are one, slipping among styles and moods like lightning,
but always mindful of the phrase “I ain’t free and I never will be.”
Hale Smith
Four Spirituals
Hale Smith was born in Cleveland, Ohio in 1925 and died in Freeport, New York in 2009.
His Four Spirituals comprise his arrangements of “Jesus Lay Your Head In the Window,” “Let Us
Break Bread Together,” “This Little Light Of Mine,” and “Witness.” The score calls for solo
soprano, 2 flutes, piccolo, alto flute, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 2
trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, and strings.
Hale Smith began studying piano at age seven with a keen interest in both classical
music and jazz. He began composing and arranging while he was in high school, later earning
his Bachelor and Master of Music degrees at the Cleveland Institute of Music. In 1952 he was a
winner of the first BMI Student Composer Award. Moving to New York, Smith became a music
editor at a number of publishing houses; meanwhile, he performed with and created
arrangements for such jazz luminaries as Chico Hamilton, Dizzy Gillespie, Eric Dolphy, Ahmad
Jamal, and many others.
Smith taught composition at C.W. Post College and at the University of Connecticut,
where he retired as Professor Emeritus in 1984. His classical compositions have been
performed and recorded by major orchestras throughout the United States. His arrangements
of spirituals were favorites of Jessye Norman and Kathleen Battle.
His arrangements of the four spirituals here (“Jesus Lay Your Head In The Window,” “Let
Us Break Bread Together,” “This Little Light of Mine,” and “Witness”) are not the usual fare.
They are sometimes quirky and sometimes dramatic, and they are harmonically fresh and
orchestrated with great imagination. From the dark passion of “Jesus Lay Your Head In the
Window” to the sheer verve of the jazz-inflected “Witness,” they are an experience not to be
missed.
Aaron Copland
Lincoln Portrait
Aaron Copland was born in Brooklyn in 1900 and died in Peekskill, New York in 1990. He
composed this work in 1942 on a commission from Andre Kostelanetz, and it was first
performed the same year by the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra led by Kostelanetz. The score
calls for narrator, 2 flutes, 2 piccolos, 3 oboes, optional English horn, 3 clarinets, optional bass
clarinet, 3 bassoons, optional contrabassoon, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, optional third trumpet, 3
trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, harp, optional celeste, and strings.
When the United States entered World War II conductor Andre Kostelanetz
commissioned three composers (Copland, Virgil Thompson and Jerome Kern) to compose
musical portraits of three great Americans, exhibiting the “qualities of courage, dignity,
strength, simplicity, and humor, which are so characteristic of the American people.” Copland
first thought to portray Walt Whitman, but Kern had already chosen a literary figure, Mark
Twain. When Copland decided to portray a statesman, he wrote that “the choice of Lincoln as
my subject seemed inevitable.”
Inevitable or impossible? To paint a musical picture of America’s most beloved president
seemed daunting, at the very least. But Copland would have a narrator to recite Lincoln’s own
words, and “with the voice of Lincoln to help me I was ready to risk the impossible.”
Copland explained that the work is in three parts; in the first, “I wanted to suggest
something of the mysterious sense of fatality that surrounds Lincoln’s personality. Also, near
the end of that section, something of his gentleness and simplicity of spirit.” To that end
Copland used one of the two Civil War-era songs quoted in the piece, the beautiful and lonelysounding “Springfield Mountain,” heard in the clarinet.
Copland continued: “The quick middle section briefly sketches-in the background of the
times he lived.” Here we hear variants of the other tune he quotes, Foster’s “Camptown Races.”
In the final section, “my sole purpose was to draw a simple but impressive frame about the
words of Lincoln himself.” Here the music takes the simple tune of “Springfield Mountain” and
transforms it into a powerful, iconic statement.
Copland deliberately avoided the most famous of Lincoln’s speeches with the exception
of an excerpt from the Gettysburg Address at the very end. Yet the quotes Copland chose are
timeless and had particular application to the time the piece was written: there is a call to
action, a meditation on democracy, and a remembrance of those who died to protect it. That so
much could be conveyed in so few words is a testament to Lincoln’s mind, his spirit, and his
insight into the meaning of America.
—Mark Rohr
Questions or comments?
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