Program Notes for Sea to Shining Sea (PDF)
Theme from Appalachian spring |
Samuel Barber (1910–1981): Adagio for Strings, opus 11 (1936) Program notes by |
Adagio for Strings,
Samuel Barber
(born Pennsylvania, 1910; died New York, 1981)
Twice awarded the Pulitzer Prize, in 1958 for his opera Vanessa (with a libretto by Barber’s lifelong partner and fellow composer Gian Carlo Menotti) and in 1962 for his Piano Concerto, Samuel Barber composed music that has been characterized as anachronistic for its time. While most of his contemporaries were becoming increasingly involved in radical experimentation with synthesized and serial music, Barber worked comfortably in the realm of tonal harmonies to create music that was unabashedly romantic, intensely lyrical, and, for the most part, accessible.
In the canon of both American and international classical music, Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings is a model of endurance, both in its status as an essential work in the repertoire and in its expression of unremitting and stoic restraint. Initially conceived as the second movement of String Quartet No. 1, Op. 11 when Barber was only in his 20s, the Adagio was written in 1936, and later adapted for string orchestra as well as for chorus. From the moment that Arturo Toscanini and the NBC Symphony Orchestra premiered the work in 1938 it became an immediate success—while also marking Toscanini’s first espousal of a composition by an American composer. As Barber’s best known and most frequently performed work, Adagio for Strings bears the distinction of having been voted the “world’s saddest music” in a 2004 BBC listener poll.
Ever since it was played during a radio broadcast of the funeral of President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1945, the Adagio has earned an undisputed place in the collective imagination as the music most expressive of grief and mourning. It was played on the radio when the news of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination was announced in 1963, and more recently performed in a ceremony at the World Trade Center to commemorate the victims of the September 11 attacks.
It was played at the funerals of such prominent figures as Albert Einstein, Leonard Bernstein, Prince Rainier and Princess Grace. It was also used in varying ways to heighten emotional intensity in films such as David
Lynch’s The Elephant Man (1980), Oliver Stone’s Platoon (1986), and Jean-Pierre Jeunet's Amélie (2001), among others.
Barber dedicated the work to two significant creative influences of his early life, his aunt and uncle, Louise and Sidney Homer, both of whom were performing musicians. Louise Homerwas a noted contralto who performed regularly at the Metropolitan Opera; her husband Sidney was a composer of art songs and mentor to the young Barber.
About the Adagio, Aaron Copland has said: “It comes straight from the heart, to use old-fashioned terms. The sense of continuity, the steadiness of flow, the satisfaction of the arch that it creates from beginning to end. They’re all very gratifying, satisfying, and it makes you believe in the sincerity which he obviously put into it.” And yet, to another American composer, William Schuman, no matter how ubiquitous the piece might have appeared, the emotional response it
elicits manages to remain eternally fresh: “For me, it’s never a warhorse;
when I hear it played I’m always moved by it.”
In its basic structure, the piece forms a simple arch. Marked Molto adagio, espr. cantando, [very slowly, singing expressively] the work begins pianissimo. As emotional intensity builds, the sequence ascends and the dynamics also increase. Harmonies shift, dissonances are created and resolve. After building to a fortissimo, the piece dies off into silence.
In a recent New York Times article about Barber’s centenary year, Johanna Keller has perceptively written: “If any music can come close to conveying the effect of a sigh, or courage in the face of tragedy, or hope, or abiding love, it is this.”
Romanza, William Bolcom (born 1938)
A Conversation with Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg
and William Bolcom
The genesis of Romanza
Nadia Salerno-Sonnenberg: When I started the Featured Composer Program for New Century, Bill was always there in my mind. It was just a question of seeing if he would be available, and thankfully he was. I told him that he could write anything, absolutely anything for us. He said he wanted to write me a concerto. I said, "Are you sure? Because it really doesn't have to be for me. You can write a trombone concerto if that's what you've got in your head right now. You can write a symphony for the orchestra, anything but a violin concerto.” And he said, "Why are you saying this?" And I said "Because I'm gonna have to LEARN your piece!!" And he laughed and said "Poor Nadja!" From that point on, I had absolutely nothing to do with how Romanza came to be. Bill told me it was already written in his head and all he needed to do was put it down on paper. You know, Bill still writes his music with pen and paper?? Not a computer. I think that's fantastic really…until you get the music and have to learn it—with his handwriting!
William Bolcom: I didn’t want a usual concerto. This is why I’ve liked serenades, divertimenti, and all the forms that allow soloists in other roles than the usual soloist vs. orchestra one. There is some virtuosity for the soloist in Romanza, but that is not the point of the piece. The point is, rather, the emotional climate that the piece generates. It’s not as anti-virtuosic as, say Berlioz’s Harold In Italy, but the soloist is more an actor in a play than the usual concerto’s technically brilliant hero, vs. enormous orchestral forces. In Romanza, maybe the soloist doesn’t prevail. It’s a sweet-sad ending, but still wins in a non-heroic way. At least I feel that way about the piece.
The challenges of Romanza
NSS: For me the most challenging part of learning a contemporary work is "getting it." No one has played it before; you have nothing to refer to. You have not heard what it sounds like with the orchestra or even a piano reduction. You are out in the cold. And when I learn a piece, so, so many of my decisions technically are based on what I want to do musically. So in essence I learn the notes and figure it out as best as I can, and then later I really have to just relearn the piece.
WB: The piece is powered by a sort of tension between direct lyricism and something darker. You get directly appealing, I hope, musical ideas with something hidden and mysterious behind them.
The style of Romanza
NSS: Well I think that since Bill knew he was writing this piece for me to perform, he probably infused it somewhat with how he hears me as a player. It's always incredibly interesting to see how people think of you as a performer.
WB: As I look at it again I realize I’m touching on the early Romantics stylistically without ever really sounding like them. But Nadja is a bold performer who for me invokes the grand style, so I thought this musical world of grand gestures would be terrific for her; the idiom is heated rather than dispassionate, joyful and desolate at once, full of emotional extremes, which ought to be fun for her.
Working with each other
NSS: I have always, always loved Bill's music. I think mostly because it is so incredibly varied. He has a spectacular spectrum of styles, colors, intricacies, and emotions. His music is emotional, for me at least, and that is why I react to it so strongly. When I met him, I was shocked at how genuine a guy he was. He could not have been more warm, and enthusiastic and fun. He is truly a great, great guy that happens to be intensely talented.
WB: I loved working with Nadja on the Third Violin sonata in the 1990s. At first in rehearsal she was diffident but soon berated me (rightly) for not practicing enough. The solo part for Romanza was actually foisted on her; I don’t think she’d wanted a solo piece for this commission.
I just wanted to do it, and I’m glad she has gone along with the gag!
Appalachian Spring and Hoe Down from Rodeo
Aaron Copland
(born Brooklyn, 1900; died New York, 1990)
Hailed as the “Dean of American Music” Aaron Copland ranks not only as one of this country’s musical icons, but also as one of our preeminent cultural figures. The Brooklyn-born son of Russian-Jewish immigrants, Copland has been celebrated at home and abroad for having created a musical style that is accessible and immediately recognizable as distinctively American. In the words of Argentine composer Alberto Ginastera, “Copland created American music in the same way Stravinsky did Russian music, or Falla Spanish, or Bartok Hungarian.'' Copland left a deep and lasting legacy as a composer and as a pioneering force in the creation of a vibrant, populist, and sustainable American musical culture.
Copland’s ballet scores number among the most well-known and beloved of his compositions. His 1938 Billy the Kid helped to establish Copland’s success as a composer of American music. In this work Copland shifted his view to the wild west and American folk music. He went on to compose Rodeo in 1942 in collaboration with famed choreographer Agnes de Mille, who had been tapped to create the piece by the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, a corps of Russian dancers who spent the war years in New York. De Mille’s ballet sketch depicts
a tomboyish cowgirl who tries to capture the fancy of the head wrangler of a ranch; in De Mille’s words, it is “the story of The Taming of the Shrew–cowboy style.” De Mille danced the lead role at the premiere to great acclaim. The performance received more than twenty curtain calls and the show went on to be a huge success, although the production faced at least one major setback: as rehearsals progressed, more and more of the dancers bailed out of the production, either because they were unable or unwilling to dance the roles of American cowboys with the kind of brawn and brash athleticism demanded by De Mille.
The music of Rodeo was later arranged into a four-part instrumental suite. “Hoe-Down” has become the ballet’s most familiar section: it is the frenzied final scene of the ballet during which the cowgirl, who has now traded in her tomboy duds for womanly attire, dances her way into the heart of the most honorable cowboy. This raucous, rambunctious square dance begins with an open-fifth tuning-up of fiddles, evoking the sound and feel of the American southwest with its muscular, folksy swagger. Copland incorporated a number of traditional themes, the most familiar is the fiddle tune "Bonyparte" (based on “Bonaparte’s Retreat” and made famous by Kentucky fiddler William Stepp in 1937), along with "McLeod's Reel," “Gilderoy,” and “Tip Toe, Pretty Betty Martin.”
In the final years of the Second World War, friend and New School colleague Martha Graham approached Copland to write a score for a dance piece. The resulting collaboration further catapulted the careers and reputations of both Graham and Copland; the score of Appalachian Spring won Copland the Pulitzer Prize in 1945.
Copland accepted a $500 commission from the Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge foundation to write the score for the work, which was to be performed in the intimate Coolidge Auditorium of the Library of Congress—meaning that the venue’s tiny pit constrained Copland to a maximum of 13 musicians. The Copland-Graham partnership was most unusual: not only were they on opposite coasts (Copland in Hollywood, composing film scores, while Graham was working in New York), but both were collaborating on a production that existed only in outline form, with no specific story line and no title.
Copland knew that Graham wanted to stage a work that would include biblical, early American, and Native American elements, yet he had little more than a rough outline to work with while composing the score. According to Copland, the music was based on his familiarity with Graham herself: “I was thinking primarily about Martha and her unique choreographic style, which I knew well. Nobody else seems quite like Martha: she’s so proud, so very much herself. And she’s unquestionably very American: there’s something prim and restrained, simple yet strong about her which one tends to think of as American.”
Graham finally settled on a plot that focused on a newly married pioneer couple who just built their home. As for the title, the story goes that Graham gave the piece a name only days before its premiere; up until that point, Copland’s working title for the piece was simply “Ballet for Martha,” which remains the ballet’s subtitle. Graham borrowed the title “Appalachian Spring” from a phrase in a Hart Crane poem that referred not to the season of springtime in the Appalachians, but rather to a source of water. Copland frequently expressed bewildered amusement at the number of compliments he received for capturing the essence of springtime in Appalachia.
O Appalachian Spring! I gained the ledge;
Steep, inaccessible smile that eastward bends
And northward reaches in that violet wedge
Of Adirondacks!
—from “The Dance” by Hart Crane
One of the work’s most familiar tunes is the Shaker hymn “Simple Gifts,” which on its own proved to be so popular that Copland later created a separate arrangement of it for orchestra entitled “Variations on a Shaker Tune.”Originally written by Joseph Brackett in 1848, “Simple Gifts” and the five variations found in the seventh section of the work have become a kind of national expression of American simplicity, optimism, community, and humility—ideals that Graham’s dance images were intended to convey.
The simplicity and directness of Copland’s musical style was an apt metaphor for the composer himself. Unpretentious, unassuming, and modest are terms that apply to both the music of Appalachian Spring as well as to Aaron Copland, the man. Leonard Bernstein has said: “Can you imagine Aaron wearing a ring, a jeweled cufflink? It’s unheard of! Or wearing some kind of natty leisure suit? Plain, plain, plain! It goes with Appalachian Spring and Our Town, which I think of as a self-portrait of Aaron.”