{ program notes over 20 minutes, Barber has taken us on a compelling symphonic journey that many other composers would have needed twice as long to travel.
Instrumentation: Three flutes including piccolo, two oboes, English horn, two clarinets, bass clarinet, two bassoons, contrabassoon, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, strings.
A Lincoln Portrait
Aaron Copland
Born in Brooklyn, New York, November 14, 1900; died in North Tarrytown, New York, December 2, 1990
In December 1941, shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Aaron Copland— along with two other prominent American composers Jerome Kern and Virgil Thomson was approached by the conductor Andre Kostelanetz to compose a work about a great American, political or literary, to be premiered at Kostelanetz’ s concerts with the Cincinnati Symphony in summer 1942 and then to be presented around the country. The commission’ s underlying motive was to create morale-boosting orchestral pieces for a country facing dark times.
Though Copland initially thought he would focus on poet Walt Whitman as his subject, he soon switched to Lincoln, probably the most revered figure in American history at that time. The magnificent seated statue of Lincoln by Daniel Chester French had been added to the Lincoln Memorial in 1922, and Carl Sandburg’ s two-volume biography of the Illinoisan was of even more recent vintage. Lincoln had led the country through the terrible Civil War, and Americans in 1942 looked to him for inspiration as they faced an even more challenging international struggle.
Copland’ s Lincoln Portrait was given its first performance on May 14, 1942 in Cincinnati and today ranks as America’ s most celebrated piece for narrator and orchestra. Dozens of famous Americans have voiced its simple, powerful text, including public figures like Eleanor Roosevelt and Adlai Stevenson and actors such as Gregory Peck and James Earl Jones; even Carl Sandburg himself became a noted interpreter. As Copland explained,“ The letters and speeches of Lincoln supplied the text. It was a comparatively simple matter to choose a few excerpts that seemed particularly apposite to our own situation today [ i. e. 1942 ]. I avoided the temptation to use only well-known passages, permitting myself the luxury of quoting only once from a world-famous speech [ the“ Gettysburg Address”]. The order and arrangement [ as well as the connecting words ] are my own.”
In a note for the work’ s premiere, Copland wrote:“ I worked with musical materials of my own, with the exception of two songs of the period, the famous‘ Camptown Races’ and a ballad that was first published in 1840 under the title of‘ The Pesky Sarpent,’ but is better known today as‘ Springfield Mountain.’ …
“ The composition is roughly divided into three main sections. In the opening section, I wanted to suggest something of the mysterious sense of fatality that surrounds Lincoln’ s personality. Also, near the end of that section, something of his gentleness and simplicity of spirit. The quick middle section briefly sketches in the background of the times he lived in. This emerges into the concluding section where my sole purpose was to draw a simple but impressive frame about the words of Lincoln himself.”
Instrumentation: Two flutes including piccolos, two oboes, English horn, two clarinets, bass clarinet, two bassoons, contrabassoon, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, harp, celesta, strings.
Concerto for Cello and Orchestra in B minor, opus 104
Antonín Dvořák
Born in Nelahozeves, Bohemia( now Czech Republic), September 8, 1841; died in Prague, May 1, 1904
Dvořák’ s two most popular orchestral works— the“ New World” Symphony and the Cello Concerto— were both
“ made in America” during the three years the composer spent as director of the National Conservatory in New York City. But while the symphony partly draws its inspiration“ from the New World,” the concerto is definitely“ from the Old World.” In fact, many commentators hear in this work an expression of Dvořák’ s homesickness for his beloved Bohemia. In a letter to his mentor and friend Johannes Brahms written from New York in December 1894 as he was composing this work, Dvořák alluded to his yearning for Bohemia:“ I left five children in Prague, and my only boy Otakar and my wife are here, and so we are often homesick. If I can write something, that is the only recovery for me.”
The slow movement stresses the cello’ s ability to sing with the pathos and feeling of the human voice.
The composer had been lured to America by Mrs. Jeannette Thurber, a passionate arts patron and wife of a multi-millionaire grocery magnate. A visionary who had already launched an opera company producing opera in English, she now created a conservatory in New York City that was intended to launch an American school of composition and train talented musicians of all backgrounds, with special attention to African Americans. She offered Dvořák the princely sum of $ 15,000 per annum( around a quarter of a million in today’ s dollars) to head the National Conservatory and teach its advanced composition students. For three seasons from 1892 to 1895, the composer spent most of his time in New York and threw himself wholeheartedly into the task of encouraging an indigenous American musical voice.
But by late 1894, Dvořák was longing to return home. The Czech cellist Hanus Wihan had been begging Dvořák for a concerto, and when the composer heard Victor Herbert— a prominent cellist before he became the toast of Broadway— play his new Second Cello Concerto with
January – February 2017 | Overture 33