NOTES ON THE PROGRAM

MENDELSSOHN Sinfonia X in B minor

Felix Mendelssohn's natural musical abilities were recognized early.  He began piano lessons with his mother at age six, and learned so quickly that he had his first public appearance at age nine. Felix began composition and counterpoint lessons with the esteemed teacher Carl Friedrich Zelter in Berlin about 1819. His teacher was an advocate of the J.S. Bach tradition and gave his student a thorough grounding in the works of the older master and other composers of the Baroque and Classical eras.

Mendelssohn's earliest surviving compositions date from 1820, and in 1821 he composed the first six of what was to become a total of twelve symphonies for strings. These were written as composition exercises for his teacher, and the completed the set in 1823 when he was 14 years old. The string symphonies were thought lost for many years but they turned up in a library in Berlin after World War Two. These dozen string symphonies quickly led to Mendelssohn's early masterpieces the String Octet written at age sixteen and the Overture To A Midsummer Night's Dream written a year later.

The first six string symphonies are written in 3 movements with the later ones in 4 movements with the exception of No. 10 In B Minor which has one movement, and No. 11 In F Major which has 5 movements. No. 10 In B Minor may have had at least two more movements but they are lost.  The work was written when Mendelssohn was 14 years old. There are three tempo designations in the work:

Adagio -  A slow introduction begins this work with a nod to the music of J.S. Bach in feeling if not in construction. Towards the end the music lightens in mood and pays homage to Haydn and Mozart.

Allegro -  The beginning of the movement proper is a sudden shift in tempo and mood that reflects C.P.E. Bach's empfindsamer Stil with the first theme in early Haydn's Sturm und Drang style. The second theme has a rapid and busy quality that became a trademark of Mendelssohn's style. A third section adds additional material that leads up to the traditional repeat of the exposition. The development section repeats the two themes in various guises with few real surprises but a deftness in handling the material that is amazing for a composer of but 14 years.  The recapitulation begins with the first theme, and after a short section of transition the second theme returns in the home key of B minor.

Piu presto - The music increases in tempo and rushes breathlessly in a short coda that ends the work.

-Program Notes by Musical Musings

COLERIDGE-TAYLOR PERKINSON Grass—Poem for Piano and Orchestra

Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo. 

Shovel them under and let me work— 

I am the grass; I cover all. 

And pile them high at Gettysburg 

And pile them high at Ypres and Verdun. 

Shovel them under and let me work. 

Two years, ten years, and passengers ask the conductor: 

What place is this? 

Where are we now? 

I am the grass. 

  Let me work.

-Carl Sandburg

Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Carl Sandburg penned these words in 1918, revealing his thoughts on the futility of war and its associated senseless deaths. American composer Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson (1932–2004) embraced the same words almost 40 years later, as inspiration for a new work: Grass, a one-movement composition for piano, strings, and percussion. Perkinson grew up in New York City. His musician mother named him after the early 20th-century British, mixed-race composer and conductor Samuel Coleridge-Taylor. Perkinson not only lived up to his namesake’s achievements, producing a solid core of art music compositions and conducting various ensembles, but he also made a name for himself writing and arranging jazz, popular music, and film scores. Throughout his career, Perkinson advocated for the Black community and its performing artists in particular. He is credited as a founder of the first fully integrated orchestra in the U.S., the Symphony of the New World (1971), as well as Chicago’s New Black Music Repertory Ensemble (1999), a group dedicated to performing diverse musical styles.

Just 24-years-old at the time Grass was composed, Perkinson had watched as young soldiers, many of them Black Americans, were shipped off to fight in the Korean War. In 1948, Harry S Truman had issued an executive order calling for full racial integration of the U.S. Armed Forces. Military leaders, however, were slow to implement the policy. When the U.S. began formal military actions supporting South Korea in 1950, many U.S. divisions were still segregated. Over 100 units were Black. These soldiers often experienced discrimination in training, were undersupplied in the field, and at times were assigned white commanders who saw the appointments as “punishments.” Yet these servicemen fought bravely. By the end of the war in 1953, disparities had decreased significantly as units were finally desegregated and more Black officers rose in rank. Over 600,000 African-Americans served in Korea. More than 3,000 of them died in active combat. Perkinson was of draftable age throughout the entire conflict and stories of young men like himself, dying in the field and languishing in POW camps, must have affected him deeply.

Program Notes by Dr. K. Dawn Grapes, ©2021

OLA GJEILO Sunrise Mass

Sunrise Mass (Symphonic Mass for Choir and String Orchestra) by Ola Gjeilo, was commissioned in 2007 and received its first performance in Oslo, Norway, in the fall of 2008. The text is based on the five movements that make up the Ordinary of the Mass (i.e., those texts which are repeated from mass to mass, differing from the Propers, which are the changing texts based on the Roman Catholic Church calendar). In each of the movements, the composer attaches a subtitle to the Greek/Latin name, helping to define his own personal vision of each section. 

1. Kyrie-The Spheres. Within this movement, Gjeilo creates an ethereal concept of suspension in space by overlapping the chordal structure of the choir in a “double chorus” effect, eliminating any type of cadence. His fragmentation of the text – with each syllable sustained and overlapping the next entrance of the following syllable – creates a spiritual sense throughout the movement and subtly characterizes the circular nature of the traditional Greek text itself: “Lord have mercy, Christ have mercy, Lord have mercy.” 

2. Gloria-Sunrise. The movement begins slowly and peacefully until the full effect of the “sunrise” is demonstrated by repeated arpeggios found in the string writing. The use of solo violin creates a sense of resolution in the closing of the movement. 

3. Credo-The City. The image of an active, busy city is created through a repeated pattern of 16th notes in the string writing. The choral melody reflects a less ethereal concept in this movement and more the sense of a relentless forward energy which is maintained throughout. One might posit that the concept of The City also stands for structure, paralleling the credo text which provides structure for one’s beliefs. 

4. Sanctus-Agnus Dei-Identity-The Ground. Here, the composer links the last two traditional texts of the Ordinary into one combined movement, which reflects elements of the earlier musical material while bringing the work to a satisfying conclusion. Identity is based on The Spheres, and the return of the solo violin from Gloria-Sunrise reminds the listener of the self, not the collective energy of the third movement. The second section, The Ground, is a resolution of the tension of the prior movements. It confirms a sense of release from the previous journey. The composer labels the final movement a “Chorale” to resemble older hymn melodies of the past in the choral writing. The strings double the choral parts, creating a sense of unity as well as a musical link to the historical Lutheran hymn tradition. The final section concludes with the text “Dona nobis pacem,” translated as “give us peace.” Thus, the work closes gently, reflecting a spiritual journey resulting in an understanding of humanity’s place within the universe.
— Program notes by Paul Torkelson

SKALKOTTAS Five Greek Dances (Ellenike chori)

Nikolaos Skalkottas spent his earliest years on Euboea in a passionate musical environment. His family moved to Athens, where the five-year old began to play violin. At the tender age of ten he studied at the Athens Conservatorium, where he triumphantly completed his musical studies with Beethoven‘s Violin Concerto in 1920. A scholarship brought him to the masterclass of Willy Hess in Berlin, and he gained fame as an outstanding virtuoso and highly sensitive chamber musician. In 1923 he suddenly discovered his love for composition and took lessons with Paul Juon and Robert Kahn; his promising career as a violinist soon became subordinate to his new interests. Skalkottas‘ early works, including an ambitious Sonata for Solo Violin, emerged in the context of the “Neue Klassizität” (“New Classicism”) of Ferrucio Busoni, whose closest pupil, Philipp Jarnach, became his first teacher of influence. When Jarnach left Berlin in 1927 Skalkottas entered the class of Arnold Schoenberg, who soon came to appreciate him highly. For a period he also took instruction from Kurt Weill. He quickly developed his own form of serial technique, one in which he constructed his works on various contrapuntal twelve-tone series that demonstrate charming harmonic reciprocity and allow quasi-tonal fields to emerge. In this way he deliberately distanced himself from Schoenberg. By 1931 his lessons with Schoenberg had ended, and in May of 1933 Skalkottas hastily returned to Greece. His hands were empty: his partner and two children as well as all his manuscripts remained in Berlin. As a consequence, around 60 of his approximately 170 works are no longer extant. In Greece he was faced with resentment and ignorance. He earned a living as an orchestral violinist, led a lonely existence and spoke to almost no-one about the works that in his isolation became ever more bold and characteristic.

Between 1935 and 1945 he composed an immense œuvre of increasing structural complexity and architectonic mastery. His style found its highest expression in works such as the haunting symphony “The Return of Odysseus” (1942, originally planned as a prelude to an opera) and the unfinished Second Suite for Orchestra. To the latter belongs the sweeping Largo Sinfonico and the sharply punctuated Ouverture concertante (1944-45). Skalkottas proved his worth as an imaginative orchestrator with his masterful arrangement of vertical balance and expansive climaxes. In 1940 he wrote a “Manual of Orchestration”, which remains in manuscript form to this day. The potential fusion of the folkloric idioms of his Greek Dances with free tonality, neo-classic and dodecaphonic modes of expression was never to be realized, as Skalkottas died prematurely as the result of an untreated malady.

Skalkottas composed 36 Greek Dances in three sets of twelve dances between 1931 and 1936. With their fiery style, spontaneous vigour and originality, they are still his most popular works even today. In 1956 Universal Edition posthumously brought out 5 Dances for String Orchestra, as well as two Cycles for Symphony Orchestra. The 5 Dances for String Orchestra were first performed at the Albert Hall in London on 1 December 1953, conducted by Walter Goehr. The precise date when Skalkottas arranged the dances for strings is unknown.

-Program Notes by Christoph Schlüren

-Translation by Hereward Tilton

WARLOCK Capriol Suite

Peter Warlock was the pen name of Philip Arnold Heseltine who was born into a wealthy London family on the 30th October 1894. He was educated at Eton College, and Oxford University where he read for a degree in classics. From an early age he was fascinated by the work of Fredrick Delius whom he met in 1911. The two became close friends, and Delius supported and mentored him throughout his short life. On graduating he resisted family pressure to work in the stock exchange choosing rather to frequent an artistic circle of friends that included the novelist D H Lawrence. His friendship with Lawrence was however fraught and short lived. An unattractive character, Julius Halliday, in Laurence’s “Women in Love” was modelled on Warlock and provoked the composer into threatening legal action. Lawrence recanted and re-wrote the most offensive passages.

Warlock never settled into a conventional career. He had some short lived appointments, one as a music critic for the Daily Mail. He did however engage in serious musical scholarship, editing, transcribing and arranging early music manuscripts, and writing a major study of the music of Delius. His first major compositions, mainly songs, began to appear in 1917, at which time he had moved to Dublin to avoid possible conscription. It was at this time that he adopted the pseudonym Warlock, possibly in parody of his interest in the occult. In 1922 he completed his first widely acknowledged masterpiece the song cycle named the Curlew. His period of creativity continued only for a few years culminating in the composition of his most famous work - the Capriol Suite - in 1925. The original piano duet version of the work was a great success and was quickly followed by the version for string orchestra (1926) and a version for full orchestra (1928).

However, by 1928 things were going badly for Philip Heseltine. He was getting into financial difficulties and his creativity seemed to be evaporating. He did receive help from Thomas Beecham, who engaged him to write articles for the Delius festival held in October 1929. However this only offered a short respite in his decline into depression and inactivity. On the morning of the 17th December 1930 he was found dead from gas poisoning in his Chelsea flat. The coroner returned an open verdict on the case, but suicide seems the most likely explanation.

The Capriol Suite is a set of dances in the renaissance style. It was based on tunes in a manual of Renaissance dances by the French priest Jehan Tabourot (1515-1595). The treatment of the source material is very free and the work can be regarded as an original composition rather than an arrangement. It is made up of six contrasting movements - Basse Danse, Pavane, Tordion, Bransles, Pieds en l'air, and Mattachins - each in a different dance form.

-Program Notes by Portobello Orchestra

BARTÓK Romanian Folk Dances, BB 76

In the late nineteenth century, Hungarian style music had been used with great success by major composers such as Brahms and Liszt as coloration or substance in many of their most famous works. For Liszt, who was born in Hungary but spent most of his life outside of his homeland, the inclusion of Hungarian inflections…sometimes called gypsy style…could be considered “natural.” Among his most stunning works in this genre are the nineteen Hungarian Rhapsodies, so popular they covered the world in various iterations (especially the Second Rhapsody) appearing even in cartoons such as Convict Concerto played by Woody Woodpecker and “Rhapsody Rabbit”, by Bugs Bunny. The Rhapsodies’ popularity has been unquenchable on almost any level. Brahms’ Hungarian Dances paid tribute to the Hungarian style in 21 dances. He first became interested in the sound after hearing Hungarian gypsy music in Hamburg, and on his tours with the Hungarian violinist Eduard Remenyi. But, something was wrong: and Bartók and Kodály discovered it.

This so-called “Hungarian style” stemmed quite narrowly from gypsies (Roma) and was thoroughly romanticized. In fact, the style was not representative of authentic Hungarian folk music. This subject, sometimes known as “the problem of Hungarian music” was addressed by many writers and eventually clarified by the extensive work of Bela Bartók and Zoltan Kodály. A fine study titled Redefining Hungarian Music from Liszt to Bartók by Lynn M. Hooker traces their investigations.

Traveling throughout the most remote regions of Hungary, Bartók and Kodály transcribed, saved, recorded on an “Edison” phonograph, and classified thousands of folk tunes which provided tunes, rhythms, harmonies, and ideas for their compositions (Bartók’s opera Duke Bluebeard’s Castle, for example) as well as scholarly monographs and a gigantic set of twelve volumes containing their research. The intent was to provide examples of, foundation for, and a renaissance of authentic Hungarian music.

This quest led both men into Transylvania, now a part of Romania, but which had been part of Hungary for many years until added permanently to Romania in 1920. Thus, we find the legitimacy of Romanian Folk Dances as a source for Hungarian folk style. “Bartók was particularly drawn to Romanian folk traditions because he felt that these had been more isolated from outside influences and were therefore more authentic.” (Stephen Strugnell) Bartók noted “I have collected Hungarian, as well as Slovak and Romanian folk music and used them as models.”

The Romanian Dances were written between 1915-1917, first for piano and later orchestrated. In order, the Dances are:

1. Dance with Sticks: a solo dance for a young man, which includes kicking the ceiling

2. Waistband Dance: derived from a spinning song with dancers holding each other’s waists, flowing directly into dance 3

3. On the Spot: a dance in which the participants basically stamp on one spot.

4. Hornpipe Dance: featuring the ancient Mixolydian mode (a type of scale) and Arabian colors

5. Romanian Polka: a children’s dance with changing meters, flowing directly into the final dance

6. Fast Dance: fast, tiny steps are performed by couples, used as a courting dance.

© Marianne Williams Tobias, Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, 2015

Sed a ligula quis sapien lacinia egestas. Nullam sit amet nisi condimentum erat iaculis auctor. Vestibulum ante ipsum primis in faucibus orci luctus et ultrices posuere cubilia Curae. Vestibulum ante ipsum primis in faucibus orci luctus et ultrices posuere cubilia Curae. Nulla eu pretium massa. Donec eu est non lacus lacinia semper.