Program Notes
This
afternoon’s program takes its inspiration from the opening work, a selection
from By Grace (2008) by Mark Lomax II (b. 1979)—a four-movement
composition for violoncello and piano. The third movement contains a section
reserved for the solo cello, to be played (as Lomax writes) “freely, like a
lined hymn.” However, this “lined hymn” instead takes on the quality of another
vocal tradition known as a “church moan,” which is connected to the lining
tradition and to West African song. Having origins from both sides of the
Atlantic Ocean, the hymn lining or “raising” tradition migrated and spread in
several directions in response to the Great Awakening in the 18th century: a)
to northern colonial churches whose founding congregations may have been semi-literate
or illiterate; b) toward the frontier via the Appalachian Mountains; and c) to the
“invisible churches” among enslaved persons in the southern colonies. According
to the Smithsonian Institute, hymn lining is “the oldest English-language
religious music in oral tradition in North America.” The relative age of West
African song is more complex and challenging to determine. Seven centuries’
worth of Moorish (Islamic/North African) influence on the Iberian Peninsula
(Spain and Portugal) from 711 to 1492 must be taken into consideration, followed
by the determination of how far into West Africa that influence extended.
Despite
its listed year of composition (2005), the Suite
for Cello of Primous Fountain III
(b. 1949) is in some measure a “much younger” work. Its seven movements were
not given a premiere performance until September 2018 at the National
Autonomous University of Mexico by cellist Kristen Yeon-Ji Yun in Mexico City.
The two opening movements heard here move with seamless progression, sounding
like two sections of a single movement. The opening “Cantabile” resembles a prelude,
having several surprising melodic cross-relations and expressive declamatory
pauses. While the Baroque dance tradition is clearly alluded to in the “Gigue,”
this movement is concerned with more than meter and choreographed gestures.
Touches of flowing, recitative-like melody provide a brief disruption of the
dancing character of the jig.
The "aesthetic Montparnasse" of the solo cello repertoire is the Six Suites of Johann Sebastian Bach, a sequence of Baroque dances
in the French style following an introductory prelude. The Baroque Suite of Dorothy
Rudd Moore (b. 1940) is a three-movement homage to this tradition written
as a wedding present for the composer’s husband Kermit Moore. It follows the
Bach model but maintains its own noticeable peculiarities. The opening movement
is both prelusive and choreographic: a rousing dance resembling a polonaise
typically rendered in triple meter but cast in five instead! The middle movement is a moving aria that unfolds in
slowly expansive quintuple meter. Its long beautiful phrases tempt the ear away
from the lopsided asymmetric feeling in the opening movement. As with the
Fountain suite, the closing movement is a gigue dominated by cross-metric
accents, overlapping melodies, and “short-shrift” musical phrases.
Prior to
her immigration to the United States, Tania
León (b. 1943) was a graduate of the National Conservatory of Music in
Havana. She came to the US in 1967 during the 1965–73 “Freedom Flights” that
brought over 260,000 Cuban citizens to the US in response to premier Fidel
Castro’s invitation for them to leave Cuba permanently. She made her way alone
to New York City’s Harlem and supported herself teaching piano in the basement
of a local church. Not long afterward, León met dancer and choreographer Arthur
Mitchell and ballet master Karel Shook, with whom she founded the Dance Theater
of Harlem in 1969 as its first music director. Several of her earliest pieces
were composed for the company. The Four
Pieces for Violoncello were composed in 1981, her first work completed
after the death of her father. Of the four movements, the second piece is a
quiet memorial to him; clear references are made to his homemade flute via the overtones
of the open strings. Beginning, ending, and interspersed with repetitions of
the instrument’s second lowest pitch, a low C♯ (“c-sharp”), the closing fourth
piece is a rhapsodic tour de force.
Trevor
Weston
(b. 1967) has kindly provided the following comments about Shapeshifter, which was written for and premiered by cellist Jason
Calloway in 2011: “I began working on Shapeshifter
with the intention of writing a piece from the standpoint of a machine,
thinking that machines would organize music with dramatic changes in material
from moment to moment in order to be expressive (what would HAL 9000 compose?). This form of expression should be
nonlinear, containing sequences of seemingly unrelated musical events. The idea
of a mythical shapeshifter (a being that can change its form and shape rapidly)
seemed an appropriate title for this piece, but the actual piece developed into
something slightly different. The musical material contains melodic inflections
of the blues—flatted thirds and fifths along with mechanical rhythmic ideas
(hence the subtitle). So, the two ideas merged: blues-like performance
practices, foot-stomping as if playing a blues guitar or piano, along with
music that seems to toggle between these different ideas. Like a shapeshifter,
all the different facets of the piece stem from the same “DNA”; this becomes
most apparent at the end of the piece.” Weston studied at Tufts University and the
University of California-Berkeley with T. J. Anderson, Olly Wilson, Andrew
Imbrie, and Richard Felciano. He is an associate professor of music and chair
of the music department at Drew University in Madison, New Jersey.
Adolphus Hailstork (b. 1941) was named a
Cultural Laureate of the Commonwealth of Virginia in 1992, enjoying a
distinguished career as Professor of Music emeritus at Norfolk State University
and Old Dominion University. “Draw the Sacred Circle Closer” is a melody taken
from his cantata EarthRise (A Song of
Healing), written for two ethnically diverse choirs and orchestra using
texts by Friedrich von Schiller, whose “Ode to Joy” Beethoven used as the
choral finale to the Symphony No. 9. Five variations follow the theme, drawing from
a range of contrasting moods: pastoral, playful, introspective, melancholic,
and jubilant. Allusions to blues melody can be heard occasionally, even though
this is not a work based on the blues. I gave this work its premiere
performance in 2010 and prepared the commercial edition at the composer’s
request.
