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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? [email protected]