Clifton Williams: Symphonic Dance No. 3 "Fiesta"

Ok, so I'm a little behind the times with this.  A lot of stuff happened this past week and frankly, I didn't have time to sit down and devote my usually exhaustive researching skills to writing the latest entry. So, I elected to take a week off.

However.

This week marks a very important milestone in the history of Listening Friday on the web.  It is now officially one year since I first embarked on publishing my little LF assignments to the world (and mostly the Ukraine).  I can't say I have any remarkable or earth-shattering things to say about this other than...

Which is a lie.

So, Happy Birthday, ListeningFriday.com!  The actual birthday is March 18th, which also is Rimsky-Korsakov's birthday.  So there's that.  I guess we could do an entry about him.

But we won't.

Today is all about Clifton Williams (1923-1976) and a badass little piece he wrote called "Symphonic Dance No. 3 "Fiesta"".  Aside from generally being awesome for most of his life, the last professional position he held was on the faculty at the University of Miami where he worked with Alfred Reed and also taught composers such as W. Francis McBeth and John Barnes Chance (among others).

The San Antonio Symphony commissioned Williams to write a piece for their 25th anniversary and he created a five movement work that explored the many cultural influences that intertwine the fabric of the Southwest town.  The 5 dances are:No. 1: Comanche Ritual,  No. 2: Military Ball: The Maskers, No. 3: Fiesta (duh, try and keep up), No. 4: Square Dance, No. 5: New Generation.  Later, after these premiered, he went back and arranged 2 and 3 for concert band.  His former student (and equally prolific composer of wind band lit) W. Francis McBeth set the 1st movement for band, but wikipedia reports that Williams daughter is in possession of that manuscript.  The interesting movement now is that a lot of Williams' unpublished music is starting to be revealed and placed into print, almost 40 years after his passing.  Very cool from a composer that really had an understanding for composing for wind bands.

Plus, he rocks the goatee.

It is an interesting conversation to have, discussing the differences in the compositional worlds of band and orchestra.  John Mackie, a more recent and still very alive composer of several popular works for band, has a tremendously awesome blog entry detailing what it's like to be a composer caught between both worlds.  Here's an excerpt:

Band is loud. She’s not quite as pretty as Orchestra, and she’s a bit, shall we say, bigger-boned, but she has that truly “hot” aspect to her that Orchestra never had. And most importantly, Band loves what you do. Whereas it was like pulling teeth to get Orchestra to look at your new music (and if she looked, she was generally not impressed, often comparing you unfavorably to one of her many ex’s — like Dvorak), Band thinks it’s awesome. Band tells you things like “you’re special and perfect and I’ll appreciate you and your music like Orchestra never has, and never will.”

I would encourage you to read the full entry here. His blog is also pretty awesome in general, and probably more useful than this one at any rate.   Anyway, Williams was also caught between both worlds and became more successful in the then-burgeoning realm of concert band literature.

"Fiesta" is meant to evoke the emotions and sensory stimulation of a carnival-type atmosphere one might associate with the many...well, fiestas that occur in Mexican culture.  The lively street bands, the colorful costumes and parade floats, and of course bull fighting.

A blood sport to the core, the powerful image of the toreador taking on the massive bull evokes a lot of emotion and imagery (both good and bad) and Williams captures that in an immense brass section toward the middle of the work, precipitated by a solo trumpet herald.   This work reminds me of one of my favorite pieces of art, The Hallucinogenic Toreador by Salvador Dalí.  In this work, Dalí was inspired by a box of pencils he had bought that featured an image of the Venus de Milos on the front. Reportedly, he ran through the store, remarking to anyone who'd listen that there were two toreadors he was able to see within the visage of the goddess and thus this work was born.  Dalí himself was a big fan of bullfighting, growing up with it as a boy and thus he painted himself at a tender age, looking up toward the arena where the bullfighter blends into a mixture of Venus' (Venii?), gadflies and an expiring bull, while his wife's disembodied head floats angrily over the scene.

She didn't like the fights.

So I invite you to sit back, investigate some surrealism courtesy of Mr. Dalí and transport yourself to the Latin side of our continent with Mr. Williams.

See you next Friday.

-ED

PS.  I'll work on getting an entry for last Friday up later this weekend.  Pinky swear.



Sources:
www.wikipedia.com
www.youtube.com
http://ostimusic.com/
http://programnotes.wikia.com/wiki/Symphonic_Dance_No._3_-_%22Fiesta%22

Karel Husa: Music for Prague 1968

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it"

George Santayana

"What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun."

Ecclesiastes 1:9

In January of 1968, Alexander Dubček was elected First Secretary of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia and began a sweeping reform, introducing the concept of freedom of the press, speech, and travel to the Communistic country.  He also proposed a decentralized Czechoslovakia, one where different regions would have the ability to govern themselves as they saw fit. 

In January of 1969, Jan Palach, a college-age, history student was dead from self-immolation, protesting what he perceived to be the acquiescence of his countrymen to their old, restrictive way of life.

What happened in between was nothing really out of the ordinary for the Soviet Union and its dysfunctional family of neighbor-states.  Since Dubček had decided that Czechoslovakia deserved the opportunity to decide more of its destiny than had previously been determined as adequate by the Eastern Bloc, the Warsaw Pact nations (led by the USSR) attempted to leverage (initially through heavy political posturing) the suddenly self-aware state to remain stoic, powerful, and reserved as far as Communist nations go.  

Eventually, seeing that talking was not going to deter Dubček and his liberalization agenda, the USSR took action and invaded Czechoslovakia.  

In one night in August, some 200,000 troops moved into the Eastern Bloc country and began systematically disabling and corralling the Czechoslovakian military forces.  There was little resistance and even if they would resist, both sides knew that it would only have ended in massive bloodshed.  

What did occur though was a strong passive resistance.  Many villages painted over all their directional signs, except those indicating the direction of Moscow.  They obscured the names of their villages and frequently gave wrong directions to the invading soldiers.  

This was pre-Tom Tom.

Dubček encouraged his country to accept the inevitable and to not risk their lives by picking fights, but a few did and about 72 people were killed during the invasion. As part of their propaganda campaign, the Soviet press ran an anonymous letter, purportedly from Czech and Slovak leadership that implied a request for military aid, that the Soviets and the other Eastern Bloc countries were being summoned by a contingent within the CSR that were holding out against Dubček and his filthy capitalism.  

A year later, Jan Palach did not burn himself to death in protest of the invasion. One of the first burn specialists to work on him had this to say about his actions:

"It was not so much in opposition to the Soviet occupation, but the demoralization which was setting in, that people were not only giving up, but giving in. And he wanted to stop that demoralization. I think the people in the street, the multitude of people in the street, silent, with sad eyes, serious faces, which when you looked at those people you understood that everyone understands, that all the decent people were on the verge of making compromises."

Karel Husa (1921-2016) watched the events of the Prague Spring unfold from the safety of the United States.   He was moved to see his homeland suffering a fate that seemed all too familiar and thus was moved to compose "Music for Prague 1968".  

It is set into four movements and is written as program music, meaning that it is designed to provoke mental imagery by how the music is crafted.  I could sit and paraphrase, but Husa's own program notes do a far better job:

Music for Prague 1968 was commissioned by the Ithaca College Concert Band. It was premiered by the commissioning ensemble in Washington, D.C., on 31 January 1969, Dr. Kenneth Snapp, conductor, at a concert for the Music Educators National Conference. 

Three main ideas bind the composition together. The first and most important is an old Hussite war song from the 15th century, "Ye Warriors of God and His Law," a symbol of resistance and hope for hundreds of years, whenever fate lay heavy on the Czech nation. It has been utilized by many Czech composers, including Smetana in My Country. The beginning of this religious song is announced very softly in the first movement by the timpani and concludes in a strong unison (Chorale). The song is never used in its entirety. 

The second idea is the sound of bells throughout; Prague, named also The City of "Hundreds of Towers," has used its magnificently sounding church bells as calls of distress as well as of victory. 

The last idea is a motif of three chords first appearing very softly under the piccolo solo at the beginning of the piece, in flutes, clarinets, and horns. Later it reappears at extremely song dynamic levels, for example, in the middle of the Aria. 

Different techniques of composing as well as orchestrating have been used in Music for Prague 1968 and some new sounds explored, such as the percussion section in the Interlude, the ending of the work, etc. Much symbolism also appears: in addition to the distress calls in the first movement (Fanfares), the unbroken hope of the Hussite song, sound of bells, or the tragedy (Aria), there is also the bird call at the beginning (piccolo solo), symbol of liberty which the City of Prague has seen only for a few moments during its thousand years of existence. * 

-Program Notes by Karel Husa

This is not an easy piece to listen to.  It's about 20 minutes long and if you do this correctly, you will feel a great deal of emotion while it is performed.  Husa captures the sounds of the invasion through the use of low brass imitating planes flying overhead.  There's a general sense of confusion and depression, but in the end you hear the solidarity of the Czech and Slovak people become overwhelming. You get a sense that despite their inability to repel those that wish to keep them as they are, there will one day be another opportunity, another chance to fight. 

Husa wrote the following footnote with the program notes, and again I'm having trouble saying it any better than he did:

* It is the composer's wish that the preceding note be printed in its entirety in all concert programs or read to the audience before each performance of the work. 

"It is not as beautiful a music as one always would like to hear. But we cannot always paint flowers, we cannot always speak in poetry about beautiful clouds, there are sometimes we would like to express the fight for freedom." -Karel Husa

See you next Friday.

-ED




As a post-note, this particular example is the FSU Symphonic Band performing this work at which time, I was fortunate enough to be a member of this ensemble.  It is one of the finest and most cherished musical experiences of my life.  

Sources:
www.youtube.com
www.wikipedia.com
http://www.windrep.org/Music_for_Prague_1968
http://www.laphil.com/philpedia/music/music-for-prague-1968-karel-husa

Bruce Yurko: In Memoriam: Kristina

Sometimes, life just does not make sense.

There are moments we encounter that cause us to give pause and reflect, occasionally with severe emotion, and examine the aftermath for any shred of cohesion. The idea that what is or has happened is part of the fabric of a larger tapestry that makes up the universe in which we live and operate.  It is in these moments where we often fall prey to coincidence, I would suspect, begging and pleading to be at peace with our unrest.  Even at the cost of coming to believe a complete lie.

And yet somehow he copes.

We often encounter this dilemma at a point of great and tragic loss. At a moment, when the catharsis of just having a thread to cling to might be the difference between composure and collapse.

So, with that lens, we examine Bruce Yurko's (b. 1951) "In Memoriam: Kristina".  It was written following the death of a young French horn player in 1995 named Kristina Damm who perished following a walk on a beach in Virginia with her father.  A storm had just passed, the sky had cleared and a bolt of lightning came out of the blue and hit them both.

Her father was unharmed, but Kristina succumbed to her injuries the following day, two days before she was to return to her high school for marching band camp.  The story goes that Mr. Yurko was Kristina's horn tutor, a title he bore proudly as she would often demonstrate a great faculty and eagerness in approaching her studies on the instrument.

Yurko's piece begins with a very ethereal, haunting mallet motif that is repeated intermittently throughout the piece as it develops.  At an early point an off-stage horn player is heard playing a solo, and (if memory serves me, I don't have the program notes in front of me as of writing) a vacant chair is placed in the horn section. This evolves into a choir-like woodwind echo of the horn solo, punctuated by the mallet theme as it spreads out to a full band texture into a climactic statement of the primary theme.

As it resolves from this first statement, the clarinets and mallets escort us into a final statement from the off-stage horn, that introduces a secondary theme that sounds reflective and hopeful, performed as a brass chorale.  This segues into a mechanical, clockwork of what I can only presume is the composers interpretation of someone mentally wrangling with finding purpose in the purposeless.  It's chilling and uncomfortable as a very melodic, consonant melody interacts with an underlying tone of dissonance enhanced by a sustained piano.  This theme of confusion eventually builds into a full-out roar only to sink back into a clarinet and oboe texture that slowly returns us to the brass chorale, as played by the flute section.  Eventually this returns to the brass and eventually the horns as a prominent statement of that melody turns back to the terrifying percussion of the introduction, echoing into the distance as the solo horn plays once more.  Finally, a brass chorale answers the horn player to bring us to a close.

I was happy to realize that Mr. Yurko studied composition with Karel Husa (who we will be examining next week), because there is much of his use of percussion and underlying dissonance that makes me think of Husa's own work, "Music for Prague".  There's just this general feeling that we are walking along a thin line between sanity and crazy, and trying to make sense of the middle while the world around us slowly goes to hell.

Nothing about this story makes sense.  Kristina should still be alive today, playing horn or being successful at whatever she does. It's a freak accident that had no reason for happening, and begs the question: what kind of loving God would take away a child from her parents without any provocation or sense of reason? It's a contradictory line of thinking and therefore without reason.

I never had the pleasure to make her acquaintance, but through Yurko's writing I somehow mourn her loss. I can feel what kind of person she was, at least what kind of person she was to Yurko.

In the end, we can try and search for a reason for this, or for any number of terrible, awful things that occur in and about our daily lives on this rock, and we will come up empty.  And we can grapple with the uncertainty of our decisions and actions and the resulting consequences, both good and bad, and find no rhyme nor reason to the resulting outcomes.  

Sometimes, life just does not make sense.

And without any sort of accompanying glance to a tapestry of great conspiracy.

Kristina's band went on to have a very successful season, no doubt driven to work by the memory of their friend.  Their band director, Paul Tomlin, was quoted as saying, "It's nice that we won this, but quite honestly the trophies are dust collectors. But it's what comes out of [the students'] hearts that was important for Kristina's memory."

In that sense, we don't really die when we cease to breathe, or when our brain function flat-lines.  Our existence becomes solely fused with those that remember us.  Our thoughts and mannerisms live on continually in their minds and affect their being until they die.  And as we each interact with each other, these traits are transitioned and blended into a matrix of behavior and thoughts that becomes a sort of algorithm that runs on the intelligence of the entire race.

I can't speak on what Yurko was trying to say in this piece, nor can I begin to understand what Kristina's parents experience must be like, but I can say I've shared in the sorrow of knowing a version of Kristina, part of her algorithm, and knowing that it can only live on in those that hear it and remember it.  

Music is a beautiful artform, that it can only be observed through experiencing it, performing or listening.  

It becomes part of our own algorithms.

See you next Friday.

-ED



Sources:
www.wikipedia.com
www.youtube.com
http://articles.philly.com/1995-11-19/news/25683935_1_band-members-band-director-mellophone-player
http://www.rowan.edu/colleges/cpa/music/assets/facultyinfo.cfm?id=611

Gustav Holst: Second Suite in F for Military Band (Movement 4: Fantasia on the Dargason)

In our last week of the Desert Island Band Literature competition we are talking about folk songs again, but this time it's with Gustav Holst (1874-1934).  

Now, I realize LF has been on an unannounced hiatus for a few weeks now.  Long story short- I needed a break.  I do understand that the 2.3 of you who faithfully read this site must be devastated, but I have to explain a few things.  

Over summer I interviewed for, landed, and have begun a full time position outside of teaching.  I had been a music educator from January 22nd, 2007 until May 23rd, 2013. As a related side note, half of America's teachers leave the field after just 5 years.  

I made it 1 year, 4 months, and 1 day past that. 

And there was much rejoicing.

It was not an easy decision to come by, and that (more than anything else) has impacted my desire to sit down and write out the latest and greatest Listening Friday entry.  

The idea of pursuing a career in music entered into my brain sometime around middle school and into high school.  I played trombone starting when I was 10, and I had become highly involved in my church through running their sound board.  I participated in many performances through this time, both secular and religious, both with my school and with the church.  

I can remember being a young sound tech and running the board for a Christmas or Easter cantata and being overwhelmed by the musical performance.  Looking back, I'm sure it was a fine exhibition, but who knows what the quality actually was.  For some reason something clicked.  Something in my brain said, "This is what you are meant to do."  

I misunderstood.  

In the summer between my Junior and Senior years of high school, I was awarded a scholarship to attend the Florida State University Summer Music Camps in Tallahassee, FL.  At this point I was already well-acquainted with FSU and had been up for the Tri-State Band Festival they host (which is nothing short of a big recruit-a-thon, but a valuable experience none-the-less).  Dr. James Croft was conducting us for one week, and at this point he was still the Director of Bands and had not retired.  He chose several pieces for us to perform, but the one that remains lodged in my memory was Gustav Holst's "Second Suite in F for Military Band".  

Hello.

Dr. Croft, for those who don't know him, was a tall, wiry, old man.  He had aspired to become a basketball player in his youth, but found a career in being a band director more fitting.  He had been at FSU a long time before I encountered him, and had been in front of many, possibly tens of thousands of high school kids at one time or another.  He spoke very softly most of the time, so softly the entire band would strain to hear every word, leaning in, not daring to move even a finger, lest the sound of a distracting movement obscure a gem of wisdom floating through the hall.  

Now, to someone who had not the distinct pleasure of being rehearsed by Dr. Croft this might sound a bit enthusiastic, and you would be right.  But I can't accurately describe the feeling of being in the room with this man and under his baton.  If there is magic in this world, Jim Croft was a proprietor.  

He began to rehearse the Holst.  We struggled in all the familiar places, the 3rd movement of course, the saxophone intonation at the beginning of the 4th.  He guided us down his well-trodden path and looking back I have to wonder what the first time he rehearsed this piece must have been like.  He explained the history behind Holst and how he and Vaughn Williams and Grainger had all become enchanted with folk music of the European continent and had basically spun these simple melodies into gold using only pen and manuscript.  

It was magic.  Pure and simple.

The fourth movement of the work encompasses two pieces from what was essentially a handbook on how to perform the country dances of the time.  These dances were intricate patterns involving on average 8-12 couples and the movements were all highly regimented and organized.  The two melodies are the Dargason and Greensleeves (also known as 'What Child is This?').  Holst begins simply enough with two saxes playing the main theme and then works his way around the band, feeling the lay of the land so-to-speak as he experiments with the texture a bit.  

At some point it all changes.  Greensleeves is introduced, but not as a separate entity.  It is woven into the texture created by the Dargason and essentially becomes one in the same. Now the Dargason is a melody in a meter that is known as 6/8.  This means that there are 6 beats in each measure and that each beat is marked by an 8th note.  Greensleeves is in 3/4 which implies 3 beats per bar and a quarter note as the beat. Mathematically, they're the same thing.  If you take half of a quarter note, you get an 8th note, which would mean that there are in fact 6 8th notes in a measure of 3/4, same as 6/8.  The difference comes when we examine how each meter is interpreted.  

6/8 is divided into two larger groups, 1-2-3 and 4-5-6.  A conductor will indicate where beat 1 and 4 are to the ensemble, the pulse is felt internally.  With 3/4 however, each quarter note is given its own pulse, thus making the feel of the melody a bit more triangular.  What Holst successfully demonstrated was that using a compositional technique known as the 'hemiola' you can juxtapose three over two evenly.  

He demonstrates this two times, the second is prelude to the finale of the movement where we are treated to polar opposites of texture.  A tuba and piccolo play the remaining lines of melody to a triumphant stinger at the end.  

It was through rehearsing this piece that I heard that voice again, I wanted to live this life of the magician and be constantly surrounded by this wondrous music that I was party to.  I would not be deterred and thus launched head-long into a music education degree the following year at FSU.  

Now I certainly live with no regrets of any of this, because my time at FSU was great. Performing with the many wonderful ensembles and learning from some of the finest men and women to grace the profession was nothing short of amazing.  However, upon entering the 'real world' and realizing that so little of the magic is actually available for use and on tap was quite defeating.  Limiting factors were incessant and quite frankly it ground me down.  I don't really care to go into the details, but know that with the exception of one year I truly feel my job was cleaning up one mess after another.  

Fix all the bands.

But even more basic than that, I started to notice that my personality did not fit in.  As many of my friends adapted and grew more and more acquainted with their musical endeavors, I felt more locked in and unable to escape.  I began to not care about progression or advancement.  It felt like being trapped.  I constantly felt like I was enclosed and was constantly being drained of any and all of the musical magic I could muster.  

So, I quit.

And I walked away from it.  


But it's not as easy as it sounds.  

My whole career I've toyed with the idea that my becoming a band director was a horrible, misguided mistake.  But walking away meant abandoning something I felt I could be proud of.  It meant letting down all the people who had held up a guiding hand along the way.  I felt burdened by guilt for wanting to get out.  Not to mention being unemployed wasn't necessarily the best option at the time what with a family to feed and all.  

But I left.  I took a big chance and tried to find other employment, initially looking towards something close to my degree and experience, but finally figuring out what I had misunderstood all along.  

I am not one to be the center of attention, but like standing to the left of it.  In all my years of running that sound board in church I had realized that I love the performing arts, but my place in it was not on the stage. 

My place is just off stage.  

Now, that's not to say I would ever sell my trombone or give up my J-Bass, but the terrific weight of building a band program and guiding them through the various stages of development is not something I am greatly built to accomplish.  

I've been thinking a lot lately about whether or not this was the right choice.  I have been having trouble finding the right way to word this entry, perhaps it's poetic justice to find myself having to visit this piece again at time like this.  

But ultimately, I do have a love for music and a passion to continually learn more about it and I don't think that will change any time soon.  So without further explanation, here is the final piece in our Desert Island repertoire: Gustav Holst's Fantasia on the Dargason.

Homework: Make a decision today to be happy.

See you next Friday. 

I promise.

-ED




Sources:
www.youtube.com
www.wikipedia.com

Percy Grainger: Irish Tune from County Derry

So we're continuing our little journey into the band literature world and building our hypothetical list of desert island band literature with piece #4.  I can't help but feel that this list is so inadequate and ultimately useless.  I mean, if you were actually stranded on a desert island, what the heck would you do with band music anyways?  There's no power, so any recorded versions of these charts would only last so long.  There's solar power, but that's assuming you'd bring a portable rig to make that all work.  So that leaves sheet music, but why?  You're in a survival situation!  What is band music going to help with?  Plus if you're sharing a desert island with a bunch of musicians, you're gonna have a bad time.  But I digress...

NO!  FOR THE LAST TIME I DON'T LIKE PINA COLADAS
OR GETTING CAUGHT IN THE RAIN!

Ultimately, I want you to know that this list is in no way comprehensive.  This blog, coincidentally, is in no way comprehensive.  In moments like these, I have to look back towards my goal, my calling.  This blog was built on the sole purpose to expand musical knowledge beyond what we already know.  I hope that one day it gets popular enough that people might actually email me a suggestion or two to listen to, so that I might hear something I've never heard before.  But, until that day- I'll just keep going off what pops into my head.  This week, it's Percy Grainger (1882-1961).

Who, according to Reddit, looks like a "sadomasochist,
atheist, anti-Semitic, vegetarian" version of Ryan Gosling.

Grainger was an interesting character.  His father was a bit of a sleaze ball who married his mother without informing her that he had previously fathered a son with a different woman in London and that he had contracted syphilis which he so graciously shared with Grainger's mother.  She became the sole caregiver and raised the young Percy herself.  This began a close, but potentially worrisome relationship between mother and son, that some claim was incestuous in nature.  There are many examples of Grainger's personality that showcased a private life of sexual deviance (not to mention a whole not-so-private museum), but that's quite another story.

Grainger was born in Australia and eventually moved to London after becoming quite skilled on the piano.  He frequently performed concerts, often expressing his intent to promote his performing faculties ahead of his compositional talents.  He had a knack for taking European folk music and arranging it various styles that incorporated different genres that were commonplace in his day and age.  He was an avid follower of technology and even pioneered the use of recording technology to capture his folk song material in a manner that he would be able to use while composing, so as to reproduce it in his arrangements in such a manner that it would emulate the texture and emotional context of the original.

So speaking on folk tunes, let's examine what is probably the most convoluted tale of historicity for any folk song ever written.  The Air from County Derry.  There are two components at work here, the first being the actual melody.  There are numerous claims to who actually wrote the thing in the first place, but most people attribute it to a region in Northern Ireland known as Londonderry county, although there is some disagreement over that name itself.  Nationalist Irish do not favor the "London" added to the prefix of Derry and it became a naming dispute ubiquitous to "the Troubles" through the 1960's onward to 1998.

Not those troubles...

Anyways, the tune was written by someone in Ireland and that's as far as most anyone can determine.  You can look up the various claimants of the authorship if you'd like.  The other aspect of the piece relates to the text itself.  Grainger did not concern himself with the text as his renditions are instrumental in nature (for piano, band, etc.), but the most prevalent textural treatment is "Oh Danny Boy" written by the English lawyer, Frederick Edward Weatherly in 1910.  Here's the text:

Oh, Danny boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling
From glen to glen, and down the mountain side
The summer's gone, and all the flow'rs are dying
'Tis you, 'tis you must go and I must bide.

But come ye back when summer's in the meadow
Or when the valley's hushed and white with snow
'Tis I'll be here in sunshine or in shadow
Oh, Danny boy, oh, Danny boy, I love you so.

And if you come, and all the flowers are dying
If I am dead, as dead I well may be
I pray you'll find the place where I am lying
And kneel and say an "Ave" there for me.

And I shall hear, though soft you tread above me
And all my grave will warm and sweeter be
And then you'll kneel and whisper that you love me
And I shall sleep in peace until you come to me.

Weatherly originally did not set his song to Londonderry Air, however three years after penning these words, he reworked it to fit.  "Danny Boy" has become somewhat of an unofficial anthem for Irish-Americans and Canadians and it is often reserved to be sung at funerals of those such people.  I've heard it described by many musicians as the greatest example of melody known to man, and throughout my tenure as a music educator I have observed it to hold a special place in the heart of many a salty, old band director.  Grainger's treatment of the tune is unequaled.

For me personally, I came to know this piece through high school band and like many of you who might read this blog, I had the pleasure of having Joe Kreines conduct our band while we worked through it.  I think more than anything, it reminds me of my grandmother, my "Ninie", who would often sing songs like this one to her grandchildren and who also took great pride in the Irish blood that flowed through her veins.  It is a heritage that I carry proudly, and Grainger's setting is a beautiful piece of the old country that I can share with you today.

Homework: Free write this week.  Whatever comes to mind.  Be brave.  

See you next Friday.
-ED


Sources:
www.youtube.com
www.wikipedia.com 

Paul Hindemith: Symphonic Metamorphosis of Themes by Carl Maria von Weber

So I was in Tallahassee two weeks ago.  My wife works for the Summer Music Camps at Florida State with another friend with whom they run the Elementary Music Day Camp.  She bogarted the computer for a majority of the week and the other portion of the week I was helping her friend's husband (who is incidentally my good friend as well) build a sort of Antarctic mountain out of particle board and screws.  Needless to say, I haven't had much time to do my homework, hence the week lost.

Like Douglas Adams once said, I feel the deadline whooshing right by me.  But I will persevere, I will not let my faithful readership down.  All 2.5 of you.

Paul Hindemith (1895-1963) was a German born composer, conductor, violinist and teacher.  He was famous for a lot of things but I really just want to focus on two of his bits of famousosity before diving into our homework for the evening.  First thing, he was a composer growing up in Nazi Germany.  We'll talk about that in a second, but the second thing was that he reinvented how we think about tonality.  Now some of you might just be asking, what is tonality?  And that's ok, because it means you're paying attention.  Tonality relates to the center of the key that you're dealing with.  So think of all the white keys on a piano: together they make up all the notes of a C major scale.  If you start on C and move up D E F G A B and back to C you'll play the scale in ascending order.  C is the first and last note and it is also known in this case as the tonic.

Not...that tonic.

So in our system there's 12 of these keys in total before they repeat over and over.  Each key has its own scale and each scale starts on a different note and that first note is always called tonic.  So thinking back to tonality- we are really talking tonic and how all these other notes relate to it.  So stay with me cause it gets a little bit squirrelly here.  In most Western music we operate in what is known as diatonic harmony (essentially meaning "of the tonic") which is a really fancy and useful way for saying we're gonna write a piece of music, pick a key, and then only use notes from that key.  

It all falls down when you realize that if you stay diatonic you've only got 7 notes to work with and that tends to get boring.  So we introduce things like key changes and notes not in the key (non-chord tones, non-diatonic harmony, other fancy words, etc.) and many other crazy ways to justify using notes that aren't in the key, but we are just trying to relate this all back to the poor tonic.  

So going back to the other part of Hindemith's life, here he is caught right in the midst of pre-war, Nazi Germany trying to etch out what purpose his music would hold.  There was considerable support from within the Nazi party purporting that Hindemith's music represented the new order of Germanity, but there was equal criticism that claimed it was essentially experimental noise and nothing more, that it lacked German folk roots.  Hindemith's stance on all of this was seemingly apolitical.  He was motivated to earn a living and support his family, and he had a vision of how music could be written and analyzed and he wanted to share it.  He married a Jewish woman, and frequently worked with Jewish composers and artists which put him in a paradoxical relationship with those in the higher offices in the Nazi party.

Although Mel Brooks seemed to do alright.

Hindemith eventually began teaching composition in Berlin and that's when things came to a bit of a head. A performance of his opera, Mathis der Maler, was forbidden by the Nazi authorities.  The higher up's had enough of Hindemith's ambiguity towards the whole Jew-hating/murdering thing that they were going for so Hindemith quietly submitted his resignation and left for Turkey to start a music school in Istanbul.  About a year later he did attempt to move back to Germany and actually went as far as signing an oath of loyalty to Adolf Hitler in 1936.  This was only a few years prior to the beginnings of the Jewish genocide. 

Hindemith's reputation (his relationship with the Jewish community and his seeming apolitical views) ultimately doomed his German career to failure and in 1940 he finally emigrated to the United States where his music had been performed frequently since the 1920's.  In the US, Hindemith's music filled a void that was created as the concert band began to take a strong foothold.  Though he was extremely popular as a composer of wind band music, he frequently composed for multiple formats and a wide variety of instruments.  He actually wrote the first ever sonata for the trombone in 1941, almost 250 years after the birth of the trombone as we know it today!

OK, so getting back to why he's awesome- Hindemith had this idea.  What if instead of thinking of music in these little diatonic boxes where you've got 7 notes and that's it, what if we picked our tonic and then just used everything based around that note?  So instead of playing in C and using only C, D, E, F, G, A, & B, what if we could use all the notes on the keyboard?

Well, what if we rated the distance (also known as the interval) between each of these notes on a scale from most consonant to most dissonant?

Not those consonants...

OK, consonant basically means two notes that sound pleasing to the ear.  Dissonant is the opposite, it sounds harsh, crunchy, tense.  If you listen to the Hans Zimmer "Batman" soundtracks, you'll hear lots of examples of dissonant harmonies.  Por ejemplo, listen to the music in this scene.  You'll hear several ascending pitches all moving independently of each other.  This is a common trick in modern film scores since it creates a natural feeling of tension (you only have to watch until Batman shows up).  



So Hindemith said, why don't we just use all of these notes however we want, just paying attention to how they individually relate to the tonic we've chosen?  It's what I imagine it would be like to invent a new color, all of a sudden you have all these crazy new wild harmonies you can create, and what's more you have new grounds for melodies too!  Hindemith made it a point to write melodies that didn't just float around tonic chords. So think of Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star.  Timeless classic.  Sing it in your head:

Twinkle, twinkle little star...

The notes (if we were in C) go:

Twin - kle, twin-kle lit-tle star...
C         C    G     G   A  A  G----

The C major chord is C-E-G and this essentially outlines it (barring the A in the middle there).  But if you have anyone younger than about 6 in your home, you've heard all of these nursery rhymes that all incorporate this style of melody.  It's all based on these basic, diatonic chords.  Hindemith broke out of that box when he said all 12 notes are fair game, so long as you understood the relationship to tonic and where on the dissonance/consonance curve they sat.  

Now, if you're still scratching your head a bit, that's OK too.  This ain't simple stuff.  But, what I really like about Hindemith doesn't have to do with his music theory.  I feel like he was caught in an ocean that was much bigger than himself, and he really wanted to change the tide.  Sure, he was seemingly apolitical, but at the core I think he felt somewhat helpless to prevent the Nazi war machine from bringing death and destruction to Europe and beyond.  I think in his deepest heart, he wanted to embrace his German heritage, he wanted to be the poster child for young German composers, he was just born at a really, crappy time.  I can only imagine the personal turmoil he must have experienced.  

It shines through in what he wrote.  

In the end, Hindemith was a lot like the Batman.  He was the composer Germany deserved, but not the one it needed.  

Our listening for this week is the Symphonic Metamorphosis of Themes by Carl Maria von Weber.  Weber was an early Romantic era composer, but that's for another LF.  This is a four movement work for band, written originally for a ballet, but it fell through.  Hindemith salvaged the two themes he originally wrote for that project and continued with this work, adding two additional movements.  We'll listen to the final movement today, Marsch.

It always makes me think of penguins waging some sort of Antarctic war.  

I don't know why...

Homework: Listen.  Write a story based on what you hear.  Try very hard to not write about penguins.  

See you next Friday.

-ED




Sources:
http://holocaustmusic.ort.org/
www.youtube.com
www.wikipedia.com

James Barnes: Fantasy Variations on a Theme by Nicolo Paganini

In no particular order, I'm going through a list of 5 of what I would consider my "Desert Island Band Literature", essentially pieces that if I were to be stranded on such an island I would be remiss without.  Of course, it's by no means a concrete list, but I thought it would make for a fun series since I haven't posted about too much wind band music yet.  For this week we have a long one (and thus we are breaking the rules once again on overall length- womp womp).  The Fantasy Variations on a Theme by Nicolo Paganini by James Barnes (b. 1949) totals over 16 minutes in length, and boasts 20 separate variations on Paganini's own 24th Caprice. We've got a lot to talk about today, but first- I know last week was a bit morose, but I assure you: we're bringing the funny back this week.

So the first gentleman we've already mentioned- Nicolo Paganini (1782-1840) was an early Romantic era composer and violinist.  It was from his work, the 24 Caprices for violin (the 24th movement specifically) from which James Barnes created his piece.  So your first question might be, what the heck is a caprice?

Ghost-riding the whip is no way to go through life, son...

Music terminology can be confusing at best, irritatingly befuddling at worst.  Through musical history, words sometimes change meaning age to age.  Generally speaking, caprices or capriccios are short musical works, usually without any distinct form and they are often designed to showcase the abilities of the virtuosic performer.  Paganini's caprices fit this bill directly.  Each one of the 24 exhibited a facet of his playing, demonstrating his capability on the violin.  They were written as etudes, but it would be years later before any mortal violinist would scratch the surface of these works.  

Paganini may or may not have resorted to supernatural forces to acquire his prowess at playing violin.  It was not a topic he would dispute.  He was a strange looking man to begin with, but he typically arrived at concerts dressed in all-black, riding in a black carriage pulled by black horses.  Contrasting sharply with his macabre accouterments, his countenance was pale and deathly.  Historians today believe that he may have been afflicted with Marfan's syndrome, the symptoms of which include a tendency to grow very tall and possess long slender limbs and thin fingers.  Coincidentally, the long, thing fingers crafted of his genetic disorder might have been part of his extraordinary capability on the violin.  Another symptom of Marfan's is poor circulation, which would cause a person's hands to consistently be cold.  He also lost his teeth in 1828, leading to a gaunt, skeletal face.  So, put it all together: wicked-good violin chops, thin, slender frame, ghost face, hands as cold as ice, dresses like a 19th century Ozzy Osbourne.  

Paganini: the Anti-Charlie.

The other part of Paganini's story that's interesting is the fact that he was both praised and feared.  On two occasions he borrowed violins to perform with and after using them was told to keep them since the original owners feared that the evil power Paganini possessed had tainted the instruments.  At the same time, women (and men) went nuts for him.  Think Elvis/Beatles nuts.  Paganini had no problem showing off his ridiculous technique for crowds, but his extravagant life of concerts, women, and fiddling came at a cost to his health.  Paganini suffered from various illnesses much of his life, and died at the age of 58 in 1840.  What's weird is that he wasn't actually buried until 1876.  The Catholic church refused him a burial because of his reputed association with the Devil and also probably due to the fact he refused his last rites, from his thinking he wasn't as close to death as he unfortunately was.  The other weird part is he was exhumed some time later by his grandson for a final viewing (at the behest of another violinist) and finally reburied for a final time.

Mr. Barnes honors Paganini in a lengthy rendition of his 24th Caprice.  It follows a similar format as the caprice in that the whole concept of any theme and variations is that you start with a relatively short piece of music and then expand upon it, introducing it in a new and unique way.  Sometimes it's faster, slower, played in a different style, etc.  In this case, Mr. Barnes was writing this piece as commissioned by the United States Air Force for their band to perform.  They required a piece that would feature every section of the band in kind.  You will hear the piece begin with a boisterous introduction that leads into a jaunty double-reed exposition which pronounces the main theme.  This is played twice, the second time around it's full band.  From there we go into variation land (like I said, 20 in total), so how many you wish to listen to is of course entirely up to you.  The conclusion features the full band just as it was in the beginning.  

My own personal experience with this piece was in college.  The technical gymnastics thrust upon each individual section as they are sequentially exposed is enough to make this piece a bit too difficult to perform by most high school bands, the other crippling factor is the length.  Often times it is performed in part, usually bearing weight on which parts can actually be played.  When you've got 17 minutes worth of music to rehearse, it's a lot of work to get underway.  But dammit if it ain't fun to play!  

The featured performers this time are the Swedish National Wind Band performing in Stockholm.

Homework: Find a variation you enjoy, write about how you feel Mr. Barnes altered the melody to cater to the featured section.  

See you next Friday.

-ED




Sources:
http://www.guitarramagazine.com/
www.wikipedia.com
www.youtube.com