Program Notes

Fanfare from La Péri

Paul Dukas (1865—1935)

Instrumentation:  Brass choir

According to Persian myth, the character la Péri in the one-act ballet by Dukas is a winged supernatural being of remarkable beauty, in possession of the Flower of Immortality. In a fateful encounter, Iskandar (a.k.a. Alexander the Great) steals the flower from her, but loses it when she takes it back after transfixing him with a dazzling dance. Paul Dukas, composer of The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, was also a teacher of composition at the Paris Conservatory and an important musical critic. This ballet of 1912 was actually the last composition that he allowed to be published. The brilliant fanfare that opens the work is frequently programmed as a stand-alone piece. As a composition, it is an effective fusion of traditional fanfare motifs and the rich harmonies of early 20^th-century French Impressionism.

Down a Country Lane

Aaron Copland (1900—90)

Instrumentation: Full orchestra

Copland wrote this short piece for beginning pianists in 1962, on a commission from Life Magazine, where it was published that year to accompany an article about America’s “budding crop” of piano students. Following the model of Béla Bartók’s 6-volume set of teaching pieces entitled Mikrokosmos, Copland kept the technical abilities of young players in mind, while taking the opportunity to introduce them to the musical language of a 20^th-century composer. An arrangement for orchestra of this popular piece appeared in 1965, followed by one for band in 1988. The piece opens with a simple melody in F over a gently rocking accompaniment. After a shift to F minor in the middle, the listener gets a taste of the chords associated with 20^th-century modernism and with much of Copland’s music as well.

Finlandia, op. 26

Jean Sibelius  (1865—1957)

Instrumentation: Full orchestra

Finland’s most celebrated composer and iconic artist composed his most famous work to serve as the last of seven pieces intended to accompany a multimedia November 1899 event in Helsinki called “Press Days”. The event was actually a veiled protest against the Russian government’s escalation from regular censorship to the actual shutting down of presses in the Grand Duchy of Finland, which would not declare independence from Russia until 1917. The creative team behind the Press Days of 1899 brought together the talents of artists, writers, actors, dramatists, musicians and engineers, all of whom were recruited to glorify Finnish history and culture, from the distant past to an industrialized present, as symbolized by a paper mache locomotive.

In the years before recording technology of any sort, soundtracks for such an event required live orchestras and, ideally, original compositions. At the premiere, the work Finlandia was entitled Finland Awakes, which was a battle cry for Finnish patriots. With respect to structure, it has no formal precedent. With respect to emotion and character, it progresses vividly from inchoate rumblings (to make that paper mache locomotive roar!) through struggle to the quiet creation of a hymn to inspire the Finnish people. Sibelius’s deep knowledge of Franz Liszt’s program music bore fruit in Finlandia, especially in the vivid orchestral timbres and thematic material: low brass and horns to simulate a locomotive’s engine, short violent motives in winds to convey struggle, brass fanfares to boost spirits, a pious woodwind choir to intone the first phrases of the hymn, and the full orchestra to sound a final triumph.

Symphony No. 9 in E Minor, op. 95

Antonín  Dvořák (1841—1901)

(“From the New World”)

Instrumentation: Full orchestra

When Dvořák began to compose his ninth and final symphony, he was 52 years old and serving as the director of the National Conservatory of Music in New York. Throughout his career he had collected and made multiple effective uses of the folk music of his Czech homeland. In America he was drawn to the music of Native Americans and African Americans, recommending that his young students explore the compositional possibilities to be found therein. The famous English horn melody of the second movement Largo was long thought to be a borrowing from a genuine African-American spiritual. In fact, it was Dvořák’s own creation, but unquestionably influenced by music he heard in America and by the rich voice of his composition student Henry Burleigh (1866—1949), who sang spirituals  to his teacher. Actually, it was another Dvořák student, William Fisher (1861—1948), who added words and the title “Goin’ Home” to the tune, a song which would forever after be mistaken for an authentic “Negro spiritual”. While deservedly famous as a musical postcard sent from the New World to the Old, this symphony was unquestionably the work of an expert European symphonist, well versed in a wide array of musical styles, and in orchestral music from Beethoven to Brahms and Wagner.

While there is no evidence to suggest that the four movements of the “New World” Symphony are based on a secret unifying programmatic plan, its multiple quasi-narrative aspects make the topic rife for speculation. In this light, the slow opening of the first movement establishes a mysterious opening to the forthcoming drama. The action commences in the ensuing allegro, with a minor-key fanfare in third and fourth horns. True to the norms of first movement formal structure, this theme is followed by two contrasting themes, the first in flutes and oboes, the second for solo flute: a theme that, for some, echoes “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot.”  The development section that follows erupts with the most dramatic struggle yet.   It is followed by a return to the opening series of themes and a final coda section that resolves nothing of the drama.

True to a tradition established long before Dvořák wrote songlike soulful melodies for his second movement at tempo Largo, the second movement allows various instruments of the orchestra to sing.  After a soft reverent chorale, scored for brass and woodwinds, then strings, we hear the most famous orchestral passage ever written for English horn: Dvořák’s unforgettable tribute to the spirituals he had heard in America.  Next in line is a contrasting melody in a minor key, intoned by flute and oboe. Subtle changes of mood follow, until a sudden crescendo builds to a climactic return of the main theme of Movement One, transformed into a victorious major key and played by the trombones. Thereafter the English horn returns and guides the movement to a soft close.

The third movement scherzo opens with a powerful timpani rhythm clearly meant to echo the scherzo of Beethoven’s Ninth. Thereafter, a series of Czech-inspired folk dance themes appear, each with its own mood and orchestral scoring. The lightest of these, featuring woodwinds, appears in the central “trio” section. True to tradition, this section is followed by a return to the opening music.  What is certainly not true to tradition is the final coda section, in which the allegro theme of the first movement returns yet again, in a stunning transformation, reminding us that there is still more unfinished business.

Dvořák never divulged the inspiration for the dramatic, disturbing opening measures of his finale, which were destined to become an obvious influence on the even more menacing shark leitmotiv used in the film Jaws (whose role in the film became seminal when malfunctioning mechanical sharks proved unable to create the planned special visual effects). In the symphony, this passage is followed by a hymn-march theme in a minor key, but traceable to similar major-key themes in the finales of Beethoven’s Ninth, Schubert’s Ninth, and Brahms’s First Symphonies, as well as to Dvořák’s own Eighth Symphony. Unlike the aforementioned symphonies, however, the prevailing mood of this symphony’s finale is not one of triumph but of struggle. Moments of respite do arrive, though, with its gentle second theme.  Thereafter, and once again, Dvořák breaks with tradition, by allotting so much time to returns of themes from previous movements, like returns of characters introduced earlier in a novel. Toward the end, a wistful transformation of the hymn-march theme for a solo horn, playing softly, and as if from afar, heralds the ending of the entire composition. In the climactic final bars, the main themes of both the first and the last movements sound together, but somewhat abrasively, thereby allowing audience members to form their own opinions about the outcome of this symphony’s epic struggle.

Provided by Orchestra Member David Haas