Overture Magazine: 2016-2017 Season May-June 2017 | Page 28

{ program notes
actually “saw” tonal colors in terms of the
visual spectrum. His music was mystical
and often radiantly joyous, sounding like
no one else’s before or since.
Messiaen wrote his first orchestral work,
Les Offrandes oubliées (The Forgotten
Offerings), in 1930 when he was only 22.
An expression of his profound Catholic
faith, it is in the form of a triptych. Three
sections comprise extraordinarily slow,
quiet outer sections surrounding a fast,
rhythmically and sonically violent middle
section. The composer prefaced it with his
own prose poem:
“Arms outstretched, sad unto death,
you shed your blood on the cross.
We have forgotten, sweet Jesus, how
you love us. Driven by madness on a
breathless, headlong course, we have
fallen into sin like a tomb. Here is the
unspoiled table, the source of charity,
the banquet of the poor; here is the
compassion offering the bread of life
and of love. We have forgotten, sweet
Jesus, how you love us.”
Messiaen also described the three
brief movements as follows:
“THE CROSS (very slow, grieving,
profoundly sad): Lament of the strings
whose plaintive ‘neumes’ divide the
melody into groups of different lengths,
broken by deep gray- and mauve-
colored sighs.
“SIN (quick, fierce, desperate, breath-
less): A type of race toward the abyss at
an almost mechanized pace. One will
note the marked accents, the whistling
of the connecting notes in the glissando
[slides], the cutting cry of the trumpets.
“THE EUCHARIST (extremely
slow): The long, slow motion of the
violins, which raises itself over a carpet of
pianissimo chords in tones of red, gold
and blue (like a church window) to the
light of soloists playing string instruments
with mutes. Sin is forgetfulness of God.
The cross and Eucharist are offerings
to God, who gave His body and shed
His blood.”
Instrumentation: Three flutes, two oboes,
English horn, two clarinets, bass clarinet, three
bassoons, four horns, three trumpets, three
trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, strings.
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Gershwin
Wanting to capture the
characteristic sounds of the
city’s bustling streets,
he purchased four authentic
Parisian taxi horns.
A n A merican in P aris
George Gershwin
Born in Brooklyn, New York, September 26,
1898; died in Beverly Hills, California,
July 11, 1937
George Gershwin's talent came to him
naturally. His Russian-Jewish immigrant
family didn’t acquire a piano until he was
12 years old, yet within a short time he was
playing the songs he heard around him with
intuitive harmonization and the beginnings
of the rhythmic flair that would become a
trademark. At 15, he quit school to become
a “song plugger” for the publishing firm
Remick’s on West 28 th Street, immortalized
as “Tin Pan Alley.” While pounding out
other people’s songs, he began writing his
own. By his mid-20s, Gershwin was one of
the leading composers on Broadway and al-
ready a wealthy and celebrated young man.
Paris first entranced Gershwin when
he visited the French capital as a wide-
eyed young tourist in 1923. Returning in
1926 with both Rhapsody in Blue and the
Concerto in F under his belt, he appar-
ently was already casting his experiences
into music. By early 1928, conductor
Walter Damrosch was pressuring him
for a new concert work for the New York
Philharmonic, and Gershwin began
writing what he first called an “orchestral
ballet,” then a “tone poem” about his
Parisian impressions.
Gershwin decided another research trip
was needed and in March installed him-
self and a piano at Paris’ Hôtel Majestic.
Here, despite a whirl of professional and
social activities, he managed to compose
most of the marvelously atmospheric
central blues section in An American in
Paris. Wanting to capture the characteris-
tic sounds of the city’s bustling streets, he
went to an auto parts store and purchased
four authentic Parisian taxi horns, whose
off-key honks animate the score’s opening
moments. An American in Paris received
an enthusiastic reception at its premiere
under Damrosch’s baton at Carnegie Hall
on December 13, 1928.
Gershwin’s own commentary provides
the best guide to this ever-vital piece.
“My purpose here is to portray the
impressions of an American visitor in Paris
as he strolls around the city, listens to the
various street noises and absorbs the French
atmosphere,” he wrote. “The rhapsody is
programmatic only in a general, impres-
sionistic way, so that the listener can read
into the music such episodes as his imagi-
nation pictures for him.
“The opening gay section is followed by
a rich ‘blues’ with a strong rhythmic un-
dercurrent. Our American friend, perhaps
after strolling into a café and having a few
drinks, has suddenly succumbed to a spasm
of homesickness….
“This ‘blues’ rises to a climax followed
by a coda in which the spirit of the music
returns to the vivacity and bubbling
exuberance of the opening part with its im-
pressions of Paris. Apparently the homesick
American, having left the café and reached
the open air, has downed his spell of blues
and once again is an alert spectator of
Parisian life.
“At the conclusion, the street noises and
French atmosphere are triumphant.”
Instrumentation: Three flutes including piccolo,
two oboes, English horn, two clarinets, bass
clarinet, two bassoons, three saxophones, four
horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba,
timpani, percussion, celesta, strings.
Notes by Janet E. Bedell, Copyright ©2017