Quincy Symphony Orchestra - November 17, 2007

 PROGRAM NOTES

Compiled by Dr. Lavern Wagner

Jubilee, from Symphonic Sketches ….………  George Whitefield Chadwick (1854-1931)

            Trained in Germany at the Leipzig Conservatory of Music and the Munich Conservatory, Chadwick became a leader of the Second New England School of American composers.  He was largely responsible for reorganizing the New England Conservatory from a school for training piano teachers to a full-fledged conservatory based on the European model.  He began an opera workshop, a student repertory orchestra, and courses in orchestration and harmony.  These organizational reforms, and his personal ability as an influential teacher, profoundly affected the next generation of American composers.  Although he was steeped in the European romantic tradition, Chadwick’s music has an American flavor with spirited melodies and folk-style idioms.

              Jubilee, composed in 1895 as the first movement of Chadwick’s Symphonic Sketches, is filled with energy, and presents a brilliant orchestration.  The training he received in German conservatories is quite evident in the musical form of Jubilee.  The composition is in a rondo form, with the opening thematic material recurring five distinct times in the course of the work.  With subordinate themes in different keys, tonal interest is maintained throughout.  As the composition draws to a close, a quiet section prepares the way for the brilliant ending based on the principal thematic material.

            Chadwick felt it appropriate to include a poem prefacing his score:  No cool gray tones for me!  Give me the warmest red and green, a cornet and a tambourine, to paint MY jubilee!  For when pale flutes and oboes play, to sadness I become a prey. Give me the violets and the May, but no gray skies for me!    

The Tender Land, Suite from the Opera  …………………… Aaron Copland (1900-1990)

            The Tender Land is Aaron Copland’s only opera.  The story concerns a farm family during the depression era of the 1930’s, located somewhere in the midwest.  The photographs of Walker Evans from the depression era reputedly inspired Copland to write this opera between 1952-54.  Originally intended for television, it was eventually premiered at the New York City Opera, April 1, 1954.

            The farm family consists of Ma Moss, Grandpa Moss, teen-ager Laurie, and Beth, her sister.  Laurie is having her springtime high school graduation. Ma and Grandpa have heard stories of young girls attacked in their rural area of late, and they want to shelter Laurie from the outside world.  Two drifters, Martin and Top, come to the farm looking for odd jobs.  Although Grandfather is reluctant to give them any work, he does allow them to sleep in the barn for the night. 

            Act two begins with the graduation party.  Quickly, Laurie falls in love with drifter Martin, and they sing a love duet.  However, while Laurie regards Martin as her ticket to freedom, he associates her with settling down.  Martin asks Laurie to run away with him, but in the middle of the night he decides that his roving life would not fit Laurie, and he sneaks off with Top.  Laurie discovers she has been jilted, but decides to leave home anyway and experience the world.  As the opera closes, Ma accepts Laurie’s decision, but looks to her younger daughter, Beth, for the continuation of the family, the whole reason for their existing.

            The Tender Land Suite opens with music from the Introduction to Act Three.  This leads to the love duet; a tender melody in the cello is associated with the drifter Martin, answered by the oboe and flute, delineating Laurie.  Opening the second movement of the suite, the party scene is replete with stomping-on-the-floor dancing which New-Yorker Copland apparently regarded as typical of the midwest.  The finale of the suite is based on the quintet which closes Act One of the opera, having the text:  “The promise of living, the hope and thanksgiving, is born of our loving our friends and our labor.”

Ellis Island:  The Dream of America  ……………………………  . Peter Boyer (b. 1970)

            Peter Boyer, originally from Greenville, RI, composed music from age 15.  A 1991 graduate of Rhode Island College, his first recognition emerged from a 40-minute Requiem Mass in memory of his grandmother.  He received his Master of Music and Doctor of Musical Arts degrees from the Hartt School of Music, University of Hartford.  Relocating to Los Angeles, he is active as a composer and conductor in the US and abroad, directing the London Symphony Orchestra in his own works, the Radio France Musicques, and   numerous performances by over 25 orchestras.  In the United States his works have been on National Public Radio.

            Ellis Island:  The Dream of America resulted from Boyer’s interest in immigrant history at Ellis Island, the “gateway to America” for 70% of all immigrants between 1892-1954.  Recording experiences of these immigrants, Boyer created an orchestral composition combining music and the spoken word.  The stories told by the actors and actresses come from the Ellis Island Oral History Project, a collection of recent interviews with surviving immigrants.  Boyer chose stories giviing information about their immigrant experience--poignant, gripping, sometimes humorous stories. 

            The orchestral music is continuous, framing, commenting, and amplifying the spoken words, as the work alternates between immigrant’s stories and orchestral interludes.  While the actors speak, the orchestra supports their stories, then presents fuller instrumentation in the interludes.  The composer himself has commented on his musical setting:  “The six-minute Prologue introduces much of the work’s principal thematic material.  It is in two sections, slow and fast.  In the first section, the work’s main theme, simple and somewhat folk-like in character, is introduced by a solo trumpet, then taken up by the strings and developed.  The second section is quick and vigorous, and introduces a fast-moving theme in the trumpets, with pulsating accompaniment in the whole orchestra, which I think of as ‘traveling music’.  These themes recur in many guises throughout the entire piece.”  There is also a visual component accompanying the Prologue and Epilogue at the end. 

            Seven immigrant stories are told:  1) Helen Lansman Cohen, born 1900, came from Poland at age 20.  With missed communication, two uncles did not meet her ship in America, and she, with two other family members, waited six days before getting off.  2) James Apanomith, born 1895, came from Greece at age 16.  With no chalk mark placed on his back at Ellis Island, he was admitted to America.  3) Lillian Galletta, born 1923, came from Italy at age 4 1/2.  Her father was already in America with two children.  With five of her siblings, after a terrible storm in the Strait of Gibraltar, the entire family was reunited at Ellis Island.  The music reflects this story with a lyrical “reunion” theme.   4) Lazarus Salamon, born 1904, came from Hungary at age 16.  His story of military suppression in his youth calls for a menacing snare drum tattoo, but when he arrives in New York, seeing the Statue of Liberty, a quiet, hymn-like theme for the strings is heard, recurring at a later mention of the Statue.  5) Helen Rosenthal, born 1910, was originally from Poland.  At age 30 she escaped the Nazis to find freedom in America, though her entire family perished at Auschwitz.  A solo violin plays a lament, characteristically Jewish.  6) Emanuel “Manny” Steen, born 1906, came from Ireland at age 19.  On his first day in America he was walking down Broadway, so his story receives a “Tin Pan Alley” treatment.  7) Katherine Beychok, born 1910, came from Russia at age 10.  She was welcomed by her father, already in America.  The well-known poem by Emma Lazarus, 1883, on the Statue of Liberty, with these immortal words:  “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free…” closes this moving composition.