Orchestra

Britten, Benjamin - The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra op. 34

Theme: Allegro maestoso e largamente

Variation A (flutes and piccolo): Presto

Variation B (oboes): Lento

Variation C (clarinets):Moderato

Variation D (bassoons):Allegro alla marcia

Variation E (violins): Brillante-alla polacca

Variation F (violas): Meno mosso

Variation G (cellos): L'istesso tempo

Variation H (basses): Cominciando lento ma poco a poco accelerando al allegro

Variation I (harp): Maestoso

Variation J (horns): L'istesso tempo

Variation K (trumpets): Vivace

Variation L (trombones):Allegro pomposo

Variation M (percussion): Moderato

Fugue: Allegro molto

Britten gained valuable early experience as a composer writing scores for documentary films, for which speed and fluency were as vital as the ability to match his sounds to the images on the screen. But when his career blossomed with such early masterpieces as the Sinfonia da Requiem; Serenade for Tenor, Horn, and Strings; and especially the opera Peter Grimes, it seemed unlikely that he would ever return to the documentary film studio. But perhaps a film on the instruments of the orchestra was just too tempting an opportunity to turn down. It would give him a chance to address a wide general audience, especially children, whose musical abilities he was always eager to develop. He created the score in two forms- one with a spoken commentary by Eric Crozier that named each of the instruments as it appeared and said a few words about its use, the other as a purely orchestral work without narrator. Though the two titles connected with the work are both used more or less interchangeably, it would seem sensible to call the version with narrator The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra in recognition of its clear educational function and the other version by the more formal title Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Henry Purcell. Henry Purcell (?1659-1695) was one of Britten's favorite composers, not only as the last great native-born English composer before Edward Elgar, but also for his special gift at setting the English language to music, from whom Britten learned much of his craft as a composer of songs and operas. He took the Rondeau from Purcell's music to the play Abdelazer as the basis of his "teaching" piece. In just eight measures, this splendid tune offers a fanfare-like figure and a descending sequential pattern, both seemingly made for the development of variations. Britten presents it first in the full orchestra, then takes it traveling through the various orchestral families (woodwind, brass, strings, and percussion in turn). Another full orchestral statement leads to the variations for each instrument in the orchestra, starting with the flutes and piccolos and progressing through the entire ensemble. In these variations Britten manages the feat of capturing the personality of each instrument as composers have traditionally tended to use it, while at the same time inventing something that is clearly "Brittenish." After the variations, Britten begins a lively and cheerful fugue subject and starts again with the piccolo. Once more the instruments come in, one by one, in the same order as before, finally culminating in a glorious climax fusing Britten's fugue theme with Purcell's Rondeau melody sounding forth one last time in its full glory.

Gershwin, George - Piano Concerto in F Major

Allegro

Adagio - Andante con moto

Allegro Agitato

Had George Gershwin lived even a normal lifespan, rather than his tragically short thirty-eight years, who knows what musical marvels would have extended from a life of brilliant musicianship and imagination? After all, Gershwin did something that few composers have managed to do so easily and so well: he spanned the two cultures of classical and popular music in America, crossing a chasm that had already begun to open up by the middle of the nineteenth century, when composers had to choose whether they wanted to be popular (and, with luck, get rich) or to be taken seriously as artists (which often meant a penurious life). They might address an audience of hundreds in the concert halls, or they might reach millions via the popular theater, sheet music, and (later) sound recordings, radio, and television. Since Gershwin showed the way, other composers like Morton Gould, Leonard Bernstein, and André Previn found success in different areas, but none of them created a full body of music that is so consistently welcomed from Broadway to Carnegie Hall. Gershwin's talent was recognized early. By the time he was twenty-one he had written his first full Broadway score (for La, La, Lucille in 1919) and the following year his song "Swanee" became a sensational hit for Al Jolson and remained his number-one money maker for the rest of his life. Clearly he was destined to become a "popular" composer. But even then he composed a short opera-Blue Monday-for the Scandals of 1921, a revue produced by George White. The audience was not prepared for a serious musical-dramatic number ending in murder as part of their light entertainment, and Blue Monday was dropped after a single performance. But it showed that Gershwin was interested in more than the thirty-two-bar song form and led Paul Whiteman to commission a work for his "Experiment in Modern Music." The result was Rhapsody in Blue, and it made history. Suddenly, out of the world of American popular music, there was a piano concerto that could swing and snap its fingers. The Concerto in F would never have been written but for the success of Rhapsody in Blue. Even though that work was loose-limbed in its architecture as befits a rhapsody), it demonstrated Gershwin's ability to write a piece much larger than a popular song, so when the New York Philharmonic offered a commission for a genuine fullscale piano concerto, he accepted. Now he had to demonstrate his mastery of a traditional classical form. With his characteristically brash confidence, Gershwin signed for the Concerto on April 17, 1925; it stipulated that the piece had to be presented in time for a performance on December 3, a deadline that might have daunted many a more experienced composer. Soon after, he left for London to supervise a performance of the show Tip-Toes. He later commented that he had picked up a few books in London to learn "what a concerto was," but this was surely only an expression of nervousness before the premiere. While in England, he sketched a few themes, but only on his return to New York did he start to work on it consistently. The first draft of the full work was completed in early October and work on the orchestration took him to November 10, only three weeks before the premiere. The premiere attracted mixed reviews, as was often the case with Gershwin's concert music. From the beginning there were those who called it a "jazz concerto," likely with intentions to tar the piece with that label. But Gershwin insisted that to label the entire work as jazz was not correct: "I have attempted to utilize certain jazz rhythms worked out along more or less symphonic lines." Some critics insisted that writing music of this type did not come naturally to Gershwin, and that the strain showed. One of the most negative comments came from Prokofiev, who complained that the Concerto was only "thirty-two-bar choruses ineptly bridged together." Possibly Prokofiev was referring to the development of the first movement, which is the simplest part of the piece in traditional classical terms. But even there, Gershwin's key choices are fresh and effective. Beyond harmony, there is a series of diverse themes to admire: an opening wind and percussion fanfare, a Charleston motive cited by almost everyone, a dotted-rhythm arpeggiated figure. In Rhapsody in Blue, Gershwin showed his mastery of melodic development. Here he shows his ability to work with several melodies simultaneously in a more elaborate and interactive development-precisely the kind of technique that marks a "real" composer. The lyrical slow movement recalls the sheer melodic grace of Rhapsody in Blue. The form is a simple rondo (A-B-A-C-A), but throughout Gershwin unfolds melodies of warm humanity and anticipates elements to come. This is the movement that took him the longest time to complete and the one that even the most dubious critics at the premiere managed to praise. The finale breaks forth with the lively spirit of a rondo, though it is one with a rather complex layout. Many of the themes are derived and further developed from the earlier movement, simultaneously unifying the overall work and bringing on a virtuosic close.

Nabors, Brian Raphael - Of Earth and Sky: Tales form the Motherland

Huveane Moves Away from the Humans

Anansi

Nyami Nyami

Celebration

I have a whimsical project for you, Brian Raphael Nabors recalls conductor Robert Spano saying in their first conversation about the piece that would become Of Earth and Sky: Tales from the Motherland. Spano has long been a champion of Nabors's music and has commissioned or premiered several of his works, including this one for Spano's first season as music director at the Fort Worth Symphony. The concert featured a set of pieces each with their own mythical worlds. Nabors jumped at the opportunity to create his own fantastical musical world and ultimately decided to tell a few folk tales from around the African continent. After extensive research, he settled on the stories of three gods whose tales hadn't, as far as he knew, been previously set to music. The first movement features Huveane, the central god in the creation myth from the Basotho and Bavenda people of Lesotho and Southern Africa. In the myth Huveane creates the world and everything in it. While at first he lives alongside his creation, the cacophony of different creatures eventually becomes too much, and Huveane climbs back to the sky on pegs that he pulls up so nobody will follow him. The musical possibilities of the tale seem limitless. Nabors's setting is vibrant, teeming with the life that Huveane tried to escape. For the second movement, Nabors turns to Anansi, a trickster god present in many African and African diaspora cultures. Since there are so many discrete fables of Anansi-tales where people have adventures to find the answers to his riddles-Nabors chose to center his depiction on Anansi's overarching mischievousness. The orchestra keeps you on your toes, pressing to the extremes, bounding with unexpected surprises. The third movement tells a sadder tale, of Nyami Nyami, dragon god of the Zambezi River between Zambia and Zimbabwe. For most of the river's history, Nyami Nyami and his wife were free to travel as they pleased and occasionally intercede in human affairs. But the construction of the Kariba Dam in the 1950s destroyed their peace, separating them permanently. To this day, the Tonga people attribute any seismic activity to Nyami Nyami's rage. The movement is a kind of before and after, with chaotic exploration first, followed by Nyami Nyami's dolorous lament at the current state of affairs. In the finale, Nabors arrays an extended battery of percussion -djembes, cajons, agogos, the largest assortment of instruments he's ever written for-for a grand celebration of different dances from around Africa. He specifically mentions the "Bata" dance of the Yoruba people of southwestern Nigeria and the Zaouli dance of the Guro people of Côte D'Ivoire, cultures to which he traces his own ancestry. "I definitely wanted to approach it from a more personal place," he says of the piece as a whole. "I know that I have these cultures within my purview, my bloodline, my whole makeup as a human being. It gives me some sort of platform to then be able to go in and sift out the kind of stories that mean as much to me that they can for this piece.

Stravinsky, Igor - The Rite of Spring

The Adoration of the Earth

Auguries of Spring

Dance of the Young Girls

Mock Abduction

Spring Rounds

Games of the Rival Clans

The Wise Elder

Dance of the Earth

The Sacrifice

Mystical Circles of the Young Girls

Glorification of the Chosen Victim

The Summoning of the Ancients

Ritual of the Ancients

Sacrificial Dance

In creating The Rite of Spring, Stravinsky turned to one of the strongest and most evocative memories of his Russian childhood: the much-anticipated coming of spring after the long, dark winter. "The violent Russian spring seemed to begin in an hour and was like the whole earth cracking," he told his amanuensis Robert Craft. "That was the most wonderful event of every year." Stravinsky expressed his love for the dramatic seasonal changes occurring in the natural world in the title he gave to the ballet's first part: "Potselui zemli, meaning literally "a kiss of the earth, but rendered in French as "L'Adoration de la Terre" (Adoration of the Earth.) In Russia and other northern countries, where snow (at least until the climate change of recent years often covers the ground from October until April, the advent of spring and the renewal of nature that it heralded was so intensely and eagerly awaited that it spawned all manner of rituals over the centuries, both pagan and Christian. It was these that Stravinsky had in mind when he began composing what became his third ballet for Sergei Diaghilev's trend-setting Ballets Russes company in Paris in 1911-13. In later years, Stravinsky intentionally obscured the exact details of the ballet's origin to minimize the contributions of others. The truth is that he received essential assistance from his friend Nicholas Roerich, a stage designer and Russia's leading expert in folk art and ancient ritual, who helped Stravinsky realize a scenario the composer claimed to have seen in a dream. Roerich helped him find folk songs and provided ethnographic advice. Stravinsky then suggested the ballet to Diaghilev, who agreed to stage it, with Roerich's designs and choreography by the celebrated dancer (and Diaghilev's lover) Vaslav Nijinsky. But the music Stravinsky created exceeded all expectations -including those of the composer. Even he professed surprise at what he had produced: "I heard, and I wrote what I heard. I am the vessel through which the Rite passed." What was startling about the Rite was not so much its harmonic dissonance, which had already been extensively employed by Debussy and Schoenberg and others, but its fragmentary, dynamic, montage-like structure, built from small units that collided with each other like atoms in a particle accelerator. Stravinsky's score boasts many innovations, but perhaps its most revolutionary feature is the prominence of rhythm as an organizing principle. The various small sections of the action are structured around rhythmic ideas (or cells) repeated in complex and frequently asymmetrical patterns. Harmony, the central element in Western music since the eighteenth century, plays a much less important role. So does melody: the strikingly short themes (some derived from folk sources) do not carry either the main interest or the forward impetus. The technique Stravinsky used has often been described as cinematic, because it progresses through abrupt juxtapositions of blocks of material, like the cuts in a film. Layers of conflicting meters, harmonies and melodies clash violently with each other without a clear sense of progression or logical movement. Nor does the ballet's "story"-really a collection of loosely connected scenes that culminate in the human sacrifice of a young maiden chosen as an offering to honor pagan ancestors-provide a clear structure, as was the case with the "story ballets" of Tchaikovsky that Stravinsky grew up with. The score represented a giant leap forward from the much more traditional ballets Stravinsky had previously written for the Ballets Russes-The Firebird (1910) and Petrushka (1911). Because it is a very challenging ballet to choreograph and to dance, and because few ballet companies possessed the huge orchestral forces required to perform the score, The Rite became more popular as a concert work apart from the theatrical stage. The premiere of The Rite of Spring on May 29, 1913, at the Theâtre des Champs-Elysees in Paris was a defining event of twentieth-century cultural history. With this savage portrayal of pre-historic pagan ritual, the nineteenth century officially expired on the eve of World War I, shattering existing sensibilities into tiny cubist pieces. Even though they were used to being surprised and titillated by the cutting-edge productions of Diaghilev's Ballets Russes, most members of the sophisticated Paris audience in attendance found the Rite's violence, brutal sonic force, aggressive dissonance, tonal ambiguity, and pounding rhythmic irregularity so unexpected and disturbing that they fell into a state of emotional shock. Stravinsky spent the evening in a distracted condition that prevented him from appreciating the full impact of what had transpired. When heheard the "derisive laughter" that greeted the first bars of the prelude, he left the auditorium and took refuge backstage from the "terrific uproar" going on in the hall. Stravinsky had to prevent the choreographer Nijinsky from running on stage to "create a scandal" as he wrote in his Autobiography. "Naturally the poor dancers could hear nothing by reason of the row in the auditorium and the sound of their own dance steps. . .. Diaghilev kept ordering the electricians to turn the lights on or off, hoping in that way to put a stop to the noise." Like James Joyce's Ulysses or Kazimir Malevich's painting "Black Square," The Rite of Spring is an icon of Modernism, one that forced a radical rethinking of the traditionally genteel and confined potential of ballet as an art form. It also stands as one of the most compelling musical expressions of the power of the natural world to shape creativity and human behavior-including violence.