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A NEW ERA OF EXCELLENCE |
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MID-WINTER CHAMBER CONCERT 2009 |
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MID-WINTER CHAMBER CONCERT Zion Lutheran Church January 11, 2009 - 3:00 p.m. Map to Venue
Suite for Flute and Oboe Kay Façade Walton My Spirit Be Joyful, from Cantata BWV146 J. S. Bach String Quartet No. 12 in F major, 'American' Dvořák PROGRAM NOTES A native of Tucson, Arizona, Ulysses Simpson Kay (1917-1995) grew up in a family that encouraged him to make a profession in music. His mother and father, while not trained musicians, made music a daily part of their lives. His sister was adept at the piano and enjoyed playing Chopin. And, as if he needed more impetus, Kay was the nephew of Joseph "King" Oliver, the New Orleans jazz legend and cornettist. It was Uncle Joe that guided young Ulysses to master the piano, and, inspired, Kay learned to play the violin and saxophone while still a junior high student.
Kay continued his music activities through high school, participating in marching band, glee club, and in local jazz bands. In college, at the University of Arizona, he first encountered the music of the modernists and became particularly interested in the music and style of Béla Bartók. With this new slant on music, Kay applied for and received a scholarship to the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York. There he studied composition and technique with several notable composers, among whom were Bernard Rogers and Howard Hanson. After receiving his Master's Degree from Eastman in 1940, Kay spent the following two summers studying with Paul Hindemith at the Berkshire Music Center in Tanglewood, Massachusetts. World War II intervened and Kay served in the Navy from 1942 to 1945, following which he enrolled at Columbia University to study with the experimental composer Otto Luening. During the war and his Columbia years, Kay continued to compose and offer his works to the public. His first major piece Of New Horizons was presented in 1944, followed by Suite for Orchestra in 1945. The Suite earned him an award from Broadcast Music, Inc. (BMI) which later led to full membership in the organization. A Short Overture in 1947 garnered him the George Gershwin Memorial Award, an award which along with others gave him the opportunity to compose and study more, a situation he took advantage of by producing a movie score for the film The Quiet One and a Concerto for Orchestra. During the years following his return from a sojourn in Italy, Kay composed works for the television series The Twentieth Century (CBS), two one-act operas, several symphonic works, including his Symphony in E, as well as song cycles and choral music. Kay continued his association with BMI, serving as consultant for the music giant from 1953 through 1968. Then followed teaching posts at prestigious schools such as Boston College and the University of California. He ended his teaching at New York's Herbert H. Lehman College, part of the CUNY system, where he remained until his retirement in 1988. At his death, a large amount of his music remained unpublished, despite the fact that most of it was commissioned. The Suite for Flute and Oboe is in the distinct Kay style, in that it reveals an awareness of those American composers of his period such as his teacher Howard Hanson, as well as Samuel Barber and William Schuman. Influences of the Russian school can be heard, with echoes of Stravinsky, Prokofiev and Shostakovich. Unlike other black American composers - William Grant Still, for example - Kay makes little or no use of jazz or spirituals in his compositions.
William Turner Walton (1902-1983) was the son of a choirmaster and a singer; consequently, his earliest musical experiences came as a choir member in his father's church choir. In these early stages of his development, he came into contact with Anglican church music, as well as the secular music, which formed the basis of his later compositional techniques. It has been suggested that Walton's constant search for perfection in his works was an outgrowth of the stern treatment he had received from his father whenever he made a musical mistake (His father rapped his knuckles). Walton's musical talent became evident early on, and he was accepted as a chorister at Christ Church Cathedral in Oxford University. By age fourteen, in 1916, he had composed a quite mature work A Litany, which he continued to revise through the years. In 1918, he took up studies at Oxford, with the encouragement and financial support of his mentor, and dean of Christ Church, Thomas Strong. There he studied with Hugh Allen, organist at Christ Church and later head of the Royal College of Music, from whom he "obtained some insights into the mysteries of the orchestra, as he could bring scores vividly to life by playing them on the organ." At Oxford, Walton spent a great deal of time in the school's library studying the works of contemporary composers - Debussy, Prokofiev, Stravinsky, Schoenberg, Ravel - and honing his orchestration skills. Walton left Christ Church, Oxford, in 1920 after his third unsuccessful attempt to pass his BA exams. While at Oxford, Walton made the acquaintance of Sacheverell, Osbert and Edith Sitwell, and began a friendship that lasted well over a decade. Thus Fortune smiled on William Walton and gave him the wherewithal to establish himself as a serious composer. The Sitwell siblings decided to adopt Walton as an "elected brother" and he stayed on with the Sitwells for several years, meeting and engaging with the company of composers, writers, and philosophers that gathered under the hospitality of the Sitwells. The young composer, financially secure with a yearly stipend from the Sitwell family and friends, spent much of his time in an upstairs room at the Sitwell home, putting the finishing touches to his first major composition begun in 1918, a Piano Quartet, which was performed in Salzburg in 1923, as part of the International Society for Contemporary Music's annual concerts.
For his next serious composition, Walton turned to the fanciful poetry of his friend Edith Sitwell. Musical forces for Façade, an "Entertainment" as Walton dubbed the work, were kept to a minimum, in the spirit of Stravinsky's L'Histoire du soldat (1918), while the piece was organized in the fashion of Schoenberg's Pierre Lunaire (1912). It was, to be sure, the opposite of the strict formality of the Piano Quartet. The Façade poems reflect Sitwell's Edwardian upbringing and alienation from her parents, plus delicate, terrifying and satirical recollections of her still youthful life. Walton wraps these reminiscences in a collage of musical genres that are expressly his own voice. Popular styles of his day - tango, fox-trot, ragtime, jazz - are mixed with youthful abandon with the more formal styles of Stravinsky, Schoenberg, and Ravel - yet, it all emerges as the inspired creation of William Walton. Sitwell's original collection of Façade poems numbered thirty three in 1930. For Walton's musical score the number in 1921 was twenty-two. Walton began work on the score in late November 1921 and completed a performing version in January 1922. The first performance was a private one at the Sitwell home in London on January 24, 1922, with Edith as the reciter, and a performing group of flute, clarinet, trumpet, percussion, and cello. The first public performance took place more than a year later, again with Edith, flute, clarinet, trumpet, percussion, and cello, with the addition of a saxophone. In both instances, Walton served as the conductor. Well-received in some quarters, the work did garner Walton a degree of notoriety and stamped him as a modernist. Over the years, the Sitwell-Walton Façade has undergone several revisions and permutations and expansions. The original score was finally settled in 1929, yet Walton deemed it necessary to make a definitive version, with additional material, first performed in May 1942 with Constant Lambert as the reciter. Decades later, in the 1970s, Walton inserted a few additional numbers, under the title Façade Revived, later revising, dropping and adding numbers, as Façade II. The work has proved open to versatile treatments, gaining successes as a ballet, in a full-orchestra arrangement, and in innumerable variations on the original instrumentation.
When Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) came to St. Thomas Church in Leipzig in 1723, he had contracted with the local town council to provide new music each Sunday for the main worship service. For the first two years of his tenure, he was able to fulfill his obligations with new sets of cantatas, but in the third year he suddenly stopped composing new music. He instead relied on repackaging his earlier works or offering music supplied by his cousin Johann Ludwig Bach. When he resumed composing in the spring of 1726, Bach's cantata offerings featured a new element - the obbligato organ. During that summer, he composed six cantatas - 35, 47, 49, 146, 169 and 170 - all incorporating an organ solo. The cantata movements that have an organ solo seem to be drawn from violin and oboe concertos Bach composed during his years at Cöthen where he served as Kapellmeister for Prince Leopold, i.e., immediately prior to his coming to Leipzig. Why Bach began to feature the organ in his cantatas is subject to some debate. It could be another example of Bach's continuing search for new techniques in combining various instruments, or it could be for a reason much more mundane and self-serving. Leipzig was the center for trade fairs during which time local churches attracted visiting tradesmen and their families to their services. Often, during these services grand pieces such as cantatas were performed for these visitors, and it is possible Bach wanted to put his own considerable talents at the keyboard on display in hopes of winning commissions to increase his income. Although Bach finished his career at Leipzig, he always looked for a new or more lucrative position elsewhere. The solace of heaven as respite from a cruel, short life on earth is the subject of many Lutheran chorales and Bach's cantatas. Wir müssen durch viel Trübsal in das Reich Gottes eingehen (Cantata BWV146) was probably composed in 1726 for the Third Sunday after Easter. The title comes from Acts 14:22, roughly translated as We must after much tribulation enter into the Kingdom of God. My Spirit Be Joyful is a duet, originally for tenor and bass. While the cantata as a whole explores both joy and grief, Bach's setting clearly evokes the joy of heaven in this movement: Ah, how I will glory in song and rejoicing, The piece on today's program has been arranged for organ and brass.
Approximately 150 miles north-northwest of Clinton, lies the village of Spillville, Iowa, a German-Czech community of 370 citizens. Founded in 1860 by German immigrant Joseph Spielmann, the rural town proved attractive to Czech new-comers who were looking for a reminder of the Old Country. When composer Antonin Leopold Dvořák (1841-1904) vacationed to the community in the summer of 1893, the village was largely Czech and provided a touch of home for the home-sick Dvořák - language, dress and manner were reminiscent of his native land. How did the Czech composer Antonin Dvořák get to the Czech town of Spillville?
In 1889 Dvořák became a professor of composition at the Prague conservatory, where he was known as a tough instructor who demanded that his students not imitate his style, but find their own way, their own voice. It was this mode of instruction that brought him to the attention of an American philanthropist, Jeannette Thurber, who wanted to encourage American composers to create a nationalistic form of musical expression that, while based on European forms, nevertheless mirrored the uniqueness of the American experience. To this end, she helped establish the National Conservatory of Music of America and invited Dvořák to head the institution, at the princely sum of $15,000 per annum. It was an offer the composer could not refuse. When Dvořák accepted the appointment, he knew what was expected of him. As he explained to one of his Prague colleagues,
And here, fate, destiny or chance, if you will, intervened to guide Dvořák to the village of Spillville, Iowa. One day in 1892, prior to his journey to the United States, Dvořák entered a Prague cafe and spotted a young man reading an American newspaper. On inquiry, Dvořák learned that the young man, Joseph J. Kovarik, was indeed an American of Czech descent and in Prague studying at the conservatory. The two men became friends, and it seemed natural that once he completed his studies, Kovarik would accompany Dvořák to New York as the composer's secretary. In September 1892, Dvořák, members of his family, and Kovarik departed for New York City where they would reside for the next three years. A man of rustic sensibilities, Dvořák tired quickly of the hectic life of big city New York; he often confided to Kovarik that he longed for the quiet and tranquility of his native land, his home at Vysoká. Thus, Kovarik encouraged the composer to accompany him home to Spillville, Iowa, during the summer break from school. He assured Dvořák that in the broad plains of the American Midwest, he could find find the solace he sought. Dvořák, his wife Anna, their three sons and three daughters, a sister-in-law, a maid, and Joseph Kovarik left New York City on June 3, 1893, for Spillville, Iowa, in the heartland of the country.
The Dvořák entourage arrived in Spillville on June 5, 1893, and the composer immediately felt at home. He was pleased with the "pleasant welcome to Spillville" he and his family had received. So quickly did Dvořák become at ease, that he sought out a piano and a reed organ and within three days was at work on a string quartet in F major. Joseph Kovarik witnessed the enthusiasm with which Dvořák threw himself into this new piece:
The quartet was first played in the Kovarik home with Dvořák, first violin, John Kovarik, Sr., second violin, Cecelia Kovarik, viola and Joseph Kovarik, cello. According to Joseph, they played the 'Spillville Quartet' - as Dvořák called it - every afternoon, with the composer commenting on how it seemed to improve with each playing. Officially, the String Quartet No. 12 in F major, Opus 96, premièred in Boston on January 1, 1894, where one music critic called the work Dvořák's 'American' quartet, an appellation that has stayed with the piece. While Dvořák denied any direct quoting of American Negro spirituals or American Indian chants, he did point out that the role of the nationalistic composer is to imbue his works with the spirit and image of his country. Both of these elements can be heard by the most casual listener in the 'American' quartet.
During his sojourn, Dvořák completed another string composition, the String Quintet in E-flat major, Opus 97, which incorporates some of the Indian influences he gathered during his stay in Spillville. Again, as with the 'Spillville Quartet,' the Quintet was first performed by Dvořák and the Kovarik family, with Joseph's sibling John, Jr., coming from Chicago to participate in the event. Dvořák was drawn to the Iowa area for, in the summer of 1894, he returned to Spillville for a two-week visit to renew his acquaintances and to indulge himself in the unique Czech qualities he had discovered in midwestern America. The soul-refreshing four-month stay at Spillville and the success of his Symphony No. 9 in E-flat major, 'From the New World' at Carnegie Hall on December 16, 1893, no doubt induced Dvořák to accept a two-year extension of his contract with Thurber and the National Conservatory. But the severe economic crisis that hit the nation in 1893 had disastrous consequences for Thurber's husband, whose money had supplied the base for the Conservatory. By mid-1894, Dvořák was again in the depths of despair:
In April 1895 Dvořák and his family returned to Bohemia, and in August, he advised Mrs.Thurber, who still owed him money, that he would not return to fulfill his end of his contract.
*The SPILLVILLE Of Antonin Dvorak’s Sojourn And Inspirations For The “American,” by Cyril M. Klimesh and Michael F. Klimesh, Spillville, Iowa, presented to the Czechoslovak Society of Arts and Sciences. **New Grove Dictionary of Music.
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