PROGRAMME NOTES

by Michael Bell

America, being a country of great size, with a large a population in which many racial elements are represented, took many years to develop what might be called a distinctive “American school” of music. It was only at the turn of the 19th century that America found its own musical character, reflecting American ways of life and thought. What is immediately striking is the sheer diversity of American music. During the First World War and the following years, the United States gave the whole world a new type of dance music, Jazz. Composers incorporated the unique sounds and rhythms of jazz, blues, Negro spirituals and ragtime into many forms of classical music. As a result the boundaries between popular and classical music in America became less sharply defined..

America is particularly rich in traditional music – folk songs and spirituals – which have been passed down through generations. Arthur Harris uses five unforgettable American melodies in this skilfully orchestrated medley. In case you have forgotten any of them, they are: When Johnny comes marching home, Shenandoah, Camptown Races, Deep River and Yankee Doodle

Howard Hanson, born at Wahoo, Nebraska, was of Swedish descent. In 1924 he became director of the Eastmann School of Music (Rochester, New York) where he did much to encourage American composers. In America classically trained composers sought to integrate the music they grew up with – folk tunes, hymns and marches – with the classical music they studied. Thus the fresh, sometimes brash qualities of American tunes were blended with the seriousness and high ideals of European Romanticism. This was especially the case in the splendid Second Symphony Hanson wrote for the fiftieth anniversary of the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 1930. The Romantic subtitle is wholly appropriate, for although the richly drawn, lyrical music has a strong transatlantic flavour, the Scandinavian influence of Nielsen and Sibelius is clearly there. In the programme notes the composer provided for the first performance Hanson wrote: My aim, in this symphony, has been to create a work young in spirit, Romantic in temperament, and simple and direct in expression.

I. The first movement begins with a memorable Adagio introduction, full of longing and yearning. It is like an overture to the great “romantic” opera that is to come. The theme finds its way into all three movements.

II. The second movement, Andante con tenerezza begins with a buoyant melody played by six solo woodwinds. A new melody in the solo trumpet leads to a statement of the nostalgic “longing motive” of the introduction of the first movement..

III. The third movement, Allegro con brio, is brilliant almost throughout. It begins with a new fanfare motive played by the horns and trumpets. The symphony, if not breaking any new ground harmonically, is by no means lightweight. It is imaginatively laid out and the construction is a little “like one door opening on to another until we finally step out into the blue beyond”.

INTERVAL

Copland was born in Brooklyn and spent his first twenty years there. He had some early piano lessons and at about the age of fifteen had the idea of becoming a composer. At twenty-one he went to Paris where he became the first American composition student of Nadia Boulanger. In 1924 he returned to his native country and, whilst earning his living as an hotel pianist, composed, at Nadia Boulanger’s request, an organ concerto for her to play during her American tour. The production of this work made him known to a large and influential public and definitely established his position in American musical life. A great variety of compositions quickly followed, including El Salon Mexico and Billy the Kid.

In 1943 the dance director Martha Graham commissioned Copland to compose a score for a ballet called Appalachian Spring. The premiere took place in Washington in October 1944. The title was borrowed from a poem by Hart Crane, but the ballet bears no relation to the text of the poem itself..

In fact, the ballet is set in the early 19th Century and the scene is a Pennsylvanian Shaker wedding. The penultimate scene begins with a series of variations on the Shaker hymn, ‘Tis the Gift to be Simple, usually sung here to words written by Sydney Carter, and known as Lord of the Dance.

First of all, not one note of the theme used by Brahms was written by Haydn. It appears in the first of six Divertimenti for woodwind, long thought to be by Haydn, but possibly by one of his pupils. (As the composer of the original Chorale St. Antoni is also anonymous, and in view of there being no evidence to the contrary, we will assume, for the purposes of this concert, that it is of American origin!). In 1873 while on holiday Brahms completed a set of variations for two pianos on the theme, and later that year he conducted the first performance of an orchestrated version of the same work in Vienna. In this, his first large work for orchestra alone, he showed a mastery of orchestral technique far more developed that that of other works he had written until then. Only three years were to separate these Variations from his long awaited First Symphony.

The theme (Andante 2/4) is in two repeated sections. It displays melodic charm and an unusual rhythmic structure. It closes with a knell like repeat of B flat – 4 long notes and 5 of half the value.

Variation 1 (Poco piu animato 2/4) makes use of the last three bars of the theme (one note repeated five times) against which the strings weave a quaver pattern.

Variation 2 (Piu vivace 2/4) is dominated by the rhythm of the first bar of the theme which is developed by the woodwind.

Variation 3 (Con moto 2/4) is a double variation in which the theme acquires a smooth quaver motion.

Variation 4 (Andante con moto 3/8) Though the mastery of the construction is deftly concealed I am sure you will all recognise a brilliant example of double invertible counterpoint.

Variation 5 (Vivace 6/8) is Scherzo-like in character. As in the previous variation, the connection with the theme is slender, except for the unchanging rhythmic scheme.

Variation 6 (Vivace 2/4) with its biting horns and its somewhat martial atmosphere returns closer to the original tune.

Variation 7 (Grazioso 6/8) Here we return to the real lyrical Brahms.The theme is given to violins and clarinets, while flutes and violins play a tender Siciliano tune above it.

Variation 8 (Presto non troppo 3/4) presents a mysterious, hurrying variant of the theme.

The Finale (Andante 2/4) uses a simplified version of the theme repeated seventeen times, with further variations in the upper parts. The movement gradually gathers intensity and at length surges forward to a brilliant conclusion..

Every country has tunes to inspire national pride and patriotism. John Philip Sousa was one of America’s greatest exponents of that type of music. His marches composed for military band are known the world over and played to this day.

Sousa was born in Washington DC . His father was a trombonist with the United States Marine Band. By the age of six the boy’s musical talent had become apparent and he began to study the violin. At 21 years of age, Sousa landed a job in the first violin section of an orchestra specially formed for guest conductor Jacques Offenbach. Four years later Sousa conducted the Broadway premiere of H.M.S. Pinafore. The same year he was chosen to become Director of the United States Marine Band, a post he held for twelve years, before leaving to set up his own “Sousa’s Band”, which won an international reputation, by touring regularly throughout the United States and visiting Europe. His band came to an end in 1931 and Sousa died in the following year

Sousa said a march “should make a man with a wooden leg step out”. If any march could have such a Monty Pythonesque effect, it is probably the stirring “Liberty” Bell.

The world-famous creator of the Christmas standard Sleigh Ride was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts and from an early age was immersed in classical music. His mother, a noted organist, gave him his first piano lessons. Later he studied both organ and double bass. He was appointed organist and choirmaster at Harvard University from 1929 to 1935 and he conducted the University Band. Having worked free-lance as an organist and conductor in and around Boston, he was by 1935 already an experienced dance-band arranger and orchestral bass-player. He then forsook the security of academia to arrange for, and sometimes conduct, Arthur Fiedler’s Boston Pops Orchestra. He finally emerged as a composer in his own right of short, witty orchestral trifles, beginning with Jazz Pizzicato and Jazz Legato. His international reputation was helped by the many recordings he made. In 1948 he wrote Sleigh Ride, which had words added to it by Louisiana-born lyricist Mitchell Parish, and became Anderson’s greatest hit.