Download New England Triptych - Lansing Symphony Orchestra

Master Works 3: American Journey – Saturday, November 1, 2008 – Program Notes
New England Triptych
William Schuman (1910–1992)
Written: 1956
Movements: Three
Style: Contemporary American
Duration: 16 minutes
American symphony orchestras spend a good deal of their efforts introducing younger
audiences to orchestral music. After every educational performance a question remains. Will those
kids come back – voluntarily – when they are adults? We can only hope for the sort of impact that
one orchestra had on William Schuman
Schuman played the violin as a child, participated in his school ensembles, and even tried
writing some popular songs. But his one consuming passion was baseball. He entered college with a
view toward a business degree and worked at an advertising agency. He continued to write popular
songs and even collaborated with his friend and neighbor Frank Loesser (who wrote Guys and Dolls).
When he was twenty, his sister dragged him – he didn’t really want to go – to his first professional
symphony concert. Suddenly, baseball and business didn’t matter. Becoming a composer of serious
music was his passion. He changed schools and majors, and graduated with a B.S. in Music
Education five years later. He taught at Sarah Lawrence College and became director of publications
at G. Schirmer (a large music publisher). From there, he went on to become the president of the
Juilliard School of Music and eventually president of Lincoln Center in New York. In spite of all his
administrative successes, Schuman considered himself first and foremost a composer.
Schuman based his New England Triptych on the work of William Billings (1746–1800),
considered by many to be the first truly American composer. Billing’s hymns and songs were
popular during the American Revolution. His anthem “Be Glad Then America” is the basis for the
first movement of the New England Triptych:
Yea, the Lord will answer
And say unto his people – behold!
I will send you corn and wine and oil.
And ye shall be satisfied therewith.
Be glad then, America.
Shout and rejoice.
Be glad and rejoice.
Fear not O land,
Hallelujah.
This is no mere orchestration of Billing’s original melody. It begins with the timpani intoning
the “Hallelujah.” Then the brass bring in the “Be glad then, America” phrase. The middle part of the
movement is a fugue based upon “And ye shall be satisfied” which leads to the final climax based
upon the words “Shout and rejoice . . . Hallelujah.” The second movement is a gentle setting of
“When Jesus Wept.” Schuman uses the complete melody and even plays it as a round as it is often
sung:
When Jesus wept the falling tear
In mercy flowed beyond all bound.
When Jesus groaned, a trembling fear
Seized all the guilty world around.
“Chester” was originally a church hymn. The words were adapted into a marching song for
the Continental Army. The woodwinds reverently play the hymn. A march rhythm starts and the
woodwinds play the hymn again, this time more frenetically. All sorts of orchestral activity leads to a
final brass statement of the hymn and a rousing finale:
Let tyrants shake their iron rods,
And slavery clank her galling chains,
We fear them not, we trust in God,
New England’s God forever reigns.
The foe comes on with haughty stride,
Our troops advance with martial noise
Their vet’rans flee before our youth,
And gen’rals yield to beardless boys.
© 2008 John P. Varineau
Selections from Old American Songs
Aaron Copland (1900–1990)
Written: 1950–52
Movements: 10
Style: American Contemporary
Duration: 25 minutes
Much of Aaron Copland’s fame as a composer rests on his three brilliant scores for ballet:
Rodeo, Billy the Kid and Appalachian Spring. With those works, and many others, he helped define a
distinct “American” style of music. There are many different characteristics to that style, but one of
them is the inclusion of actual American folk-songs – or something that sounds like them – in the
music. This isn’t particularly unusual. Composers have been doing that for hundreds of years. What
was unusual was that finally an American was doing it, and the world was taking him seriously.
In 1950, the British composer and pianist Benjamin Britten, along with the British tenor
Peter Pears, asked Copland to arrange a set of American folk-songs for them to sing at the Music
and Arts Festival in Aldeburgh, England. Copland collected five songs for his Old American Songs.
Several years later, he arranged a second set of songs, and then arranged both sets for orchestra and
male soloist. The popularity of his Old American Songs was such that he allowed arrangements to be
made for chorus and orchestra.
Copland found three of his songs in a collection of folk music at Brown University: “The
Boatmen’s Dance,” composed by Daniel Decatur Emmett (the composer of “Dixie”) and the
minstrel tunes “Long Time Ago” and “Ching-a-Ring Chaw.” “The Dodger” originated in 1884
during the presidential campaign between Grover Cleveland and James Blaine. “Simple Gifts” is a
Shaker hymn dating back to 1848. Even though there were never very many Shakers, the hymn has
become popular throughout the United States largely because Copland included it as the centerpiece
of Appalachian Spring. Lynn Riggs, the playwright of Green Grow the Lilacs (on which Oklahoma! is
based), introduced Copland to the children’s song “I Bought Me a Cat.” Here the soloist gets to
make all the barnyard sounds that parents have made for generations.
“The Little Horses” is a Southern lullaby that the famous folklorists John and Alan Lomax
included in their comprehensive Folk Song U.S.A. George P. Jackson included “Zion’s Walls” in his
1943 collection of spirituals. Copland changed the explicit references to Jesus to “praises of a more
universal Zion.” Copland found the children’s ballad “The Golden Vanity” on a recording in the
Library of Congress. The Baptist preacher Robert Lowry wrote “At the River” in 1865. Nonsense
words make up the refrain of “Ching-a ring Chaw;” the original verses made reference to
repatriating African-Americans back to Haiti. Copland changed to the words to “describe a more
universal vision of ‘the promised land.’”
© 2008 John P. Varineau
Chichester Psalms
Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990)
Written: 1965
Movements: Three
Style: Contemporary American
Duration: 19 minutes
Leonard Bernstein is a towering figure in American music. As musicologist Jeremy Rudkin
puts it, “Bernstein was enormously versatile, and he had the energy of three men. He used to sleep
only two or three hours a night. He could have been a great pianist, a great conductor, or a great
composer. Instead, he was all three.”
Indeed, Bernstein was a Renaissance man, but even he needed a break once in a while. So, in
1964-1965, he took a fifteen-month sabbatical from his strenuous duties as Music Director of the
New York Philharmonic. He needed to rest and regroup, and to write music. Though Bernstein
worked on several projects during the sabbatical, the most prominent one was his Chichester Psalms
for choir and orchestra.
The Dean of Chichester Cathedral commissioned the work for the Three Choirs Festival, an
event that brings together musicians of the cathedrals of Chichester, Salisbury and Winchester in
England. To compliment this spirit of uniting, Bernstein chose texts from the Psalms that convey
the ideas of optimism and closeness to a loving God.
The three movements of the Psalms take their text from six psalms and are in Hebrew. The
first movement begins with a chorale, “Awake, psaltery and harp!” (Psalm 108) which serves as a
unifying musical theme for the entire work. The focus of the text is the psalmist’s grateful
recognition of God, urging us to worship and serve Him. The broad chorale is quickly transformed
into a lilting dance-like treatment of “Make a joyful noise” (Psalm 100) with a seven beat rhythm!
The second movement begins with the familiar text of Psalm 23, “The Lord is my shepherd
... ” Here, Bernstein invokes the pastoral simplicity of David, the boy shepherd, by starting the
movement with a boy treble. Into this gentle rest, the men’s voices intrude with “Why do the
nations rage?” Perhaps Bernstein is lamenting the cruel realities of the twentieth century – of a world
torn apart by war, poverty, and racial hatred. But after this questioning, the peaceful, hopeful strains
return to close the movement.
The finale begins with an instrumental introduction based on the opening chorale. The
chorus enters with a gentle theme, “Lord, Lord, my heart is not haughty.” The text suggests a
resigned, but humble acceptance of God’s sovereignty over the events and peoples of the world.
The piece concludes with another appearance of the chorale theme, setting the words of Psalm 133,
“Behold how good, and how pleasant it is, for brethren to dwell together in unity.” In an article for
the New York Times, Bernstein reflected on the fruits of his sabbatical:
“These psalms are a simple and modest affair,
Tonal and tuneful and somewhat square,
Certain to sicken a stout John Cager
With its tonics and triads in E-flat major.
But there it stands – the result of my pondering,
Two long months of avant-garde wandering –
My youngest child, old-fashioned and sweet.
And he stands on his own two tonal feet.
© 2008 John P. Varineau