"Time And Arenas Reclaimed"...The Chamber Music of Black Composers on MLK Day

North Carolina Chamber Music Institute

Faculty Chamber Music Recital In Celebration of The Birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

As A National Holiday

Monday, January 20, 2020, 7:00 pm

The Church Of The Nativity, 8849 Ray Road, Raleigh, NC

String Quartet in C Major, Opus 1, No.1 (1773)     Chevalier de Saint-Georges (1739-1799)

Allegro; Rondeau: Tempo di minuetto, grazioso

Alice Ju, Greg Logan, violins; Jacobus Hermsen, viola; Timothy Holley, violoncello

Three Spirituals for String Trio (2005)                           arr. Adolphus Hailstork, b.1941

We Shall Overcome; Kum Ba Yah; Great Day

Alice Ju, violin; Jacobus Hermsen, viola; Timothy Holley, violoncello

"Daybreak In Alabama"                                                   Ricky Ian Gordon, b.1956

"Night"                                                                              Florence Price (1887-1953)

"Feet o’Jesus"                                                                   Florence Price

"Dream Variations"                                                          Margaret Bonds (1913-1972)

Waltye Rasulala, soprano; Olga Kleiankina, piano

Five Negro Melodies, Opus 59 (1904)                            Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (1875-1912)

My Lord Delivered Daniel; Sometimes I Feel Like A Motherless Child; Didn’t My Lord Deliver Daniel

Olga Kleiankina, piano; Greg Logan, violin; Timothy Holley, violoncello

"Lift Ev’ry Voice And Sing" (1900)*                    James Weldon Johnson & John Rosamond Johnson

                                                (1871-1938)                  (1873-1954)

Waltye Rasulala, soprano; Olga Kleiankina, piano

Alice Ju, Greg Logan, violins; Jacobus Hermsen, viola; Timothy Holley, violoncello

Program Notes, “Time and Arenas Reclaimed”…

This evening’s program is the result of several “fortunate coincidences including both patience and good timing”. Our national celebration of the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. is the “timely reason” for this concert. Dr. King lived and died in the pursuit of freedom from racial and economic inequality. Our celebration is both an anthem and a prayer for perseverance in the face of our own history and habits of everyday living, borne out of struggles involving skin color, class and even religion. “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing” will close the program as a clear and direct exemplar of this desired ideal.

The hashtag #ReclaimingMyTime attributed to U. S. Congresswoman Maxine Waters (D-California) might fit best here as both a borrowed program title and description of the current resurgence of the music of Florence Price (1887-1953): the discovery of unpublished manuscript orchestral scores and parts in an abandoned house near Kankakee, Illinois created a storm of resurgent interest, curiosity and notoriety around this African American female composer, who in 1943 sent a letter to conductor and music director Serge Koussevitzky of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, introducing herself with the oddest mannerism of near desperation: “My Dear Dr. Koussevitzky, to begin with I have two handicaps— those of sex and race. I am a woman; and I have some Negro blood in my veins. Knowing the worst, then, would you be good enough to hold in check the possible inclination to regard a woman’s composition as long on emotionalism but short on virility and thought content—until you shall have examined some of my work? As to the handicap of race, may I relieve you by saying that I neither expect nor ask any concession on that score. I should like to be judged on merit alone”. 

In the United States we tell ourselves meritoriously that “our gifts will make room for us”. Despite her conservatory education and training and nominal notoriety, Florence Price struggled to penetrate that “glass-plated cement ceiling” of both race and gender biases in 19^th and 20^th century America. All the composers featured on this program have their unique stories to tell--of personal struggle, dogged perseverance and “legacies left, marked in gradual, hopeful forward progress”.

Joseph Boulogne, le Chevalier de Saint-Georges (1739-1799) was the son of a French nobleman Guillaume-Pierre Boulogne and a Senegalese slave Nanon on the French Caribbean island of Guadeloupe. He was taken to France and received a classical education in Paris. He excelled on three sociopolitical and artistic “fronts”: he became the finest swordsman in France, an accomplished violinist, composer and conductor who was offered the directorate of the Paris Opera in 1776 (a royal appointment), but was cheated out of it by socially influential women at court who refused to “take orders from a mulatto”. Nevertheless, Saint-Georges led an orchestra known as the Concert des Amateurs (one of the best in Europe) and later “Le Concert de la Loge Olympique”, which commissioned a set of six symphonies for orchestra by Franz Joseph Haydn. Saint-Georges served as intermediary and conducted the first performances of the commissioned works (now known as the “Paris” symphonies, Nos. 82-87, composed in 1786). Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart also spent two years of “touring residency” in Paris (1777-79), during which he composed his “Paris” Symphony (No.31 in D Major, K.297, 1779) for the Concerts des amateurs, an ensemble of which Saint-Georges was a well-known member. (In fact, the origin of the sobriquet “Le Mozart noir” for Saint-Georges can be traced back to this residency.) The String Quartet in C Major which opens the concert dates from 1773, nestled among a wealth of creativity between all three men: the six highly original and influential “Sunrise” quartets of Haydn (op.20, 1771), and the two sets of early quartets of Mozart, the “Milanese” (K.155-160, late 1772-early 1773) and the “Viennese” (K.168-173, 1773). The opening movement unfolds in the manner influenced by the Mannheim orchestral style, while the second movement functions as a minuet moving in the form of a rondeau.

Adolphus Hailstork is one of the “elders” of the present generation of composers of African American concert music. A native of Rochester, New York, he studied at Howard University with Mark Fax (who was a friend of Jessye Norman and her family in Augusta, Georgia while teaching at Paine College), the Manhattan School of Music with Vittorio Giannini, and H. Owen Reed at Michigan State University. A cultural laureate of the Commonwealth of Virginia, he taught at Norfolk State University and Old Dominion University. One of his best-known and most riveting works, the cantata Done Made My Vow (1985) was composed for the 50^th anniversary of the founding of Norfolk State University. He arranged the Three Spirituals for string trio in 2005; they are described as “the perfect storm”—a cross-pollination of African American and European traditions. “We Shall Overcome” is given the contrapuntal treatment of a Bach chorale prelude (with the viola occupying the cantus firmus!!); “Kum Ba Yah” is a souful meditation with blues and gospel-style nuances, and the anthem “Great Day” is a no-holds barred exuberant finale!!

Ricky Ian Gordon has been a well-known composer of songs to texts of American poets, most notably (but not exclusively) Langston Hughes (1902-1967). His biography is best discussed—and viewed online!! (www.rickyiangordon.com). The opening song, “Daybreak In Alabama” should be the global anthem of all creative persons: the beauty and grandeur of “composing”—at daybreak, amid the wonder of daybreak, and all that a day comprises--its original innocence and imaginative potential. Florence Price composed “Night” in 1946 to the poetry of Louise C. Wallace (1876-1928), a poet and colleague from Springfield, Illinois she had met prior to her family’s migration from Little Rock, Arkansas to Chicago. The poem is a surreal collage of word-pictures proceeding in muted ecstasy. The brief musical setting enshrouds the poem with lovely quiet grandeur. In addition to volumes of written poetry, short stories, plays and a chronicle of the Harlem Renaissance, Langston Hughes also composed blues lyrics. “Feet o’ Jesus” is a text dressed in the supplicative garb of the Negro spiritual, perhaps most reflective of the memories of Langston’s early years spent in Lawrence, Kansas with his maternal grandmother, Mary Patterson Leary Langston (whose second husband, Lewis Sheridan Leary died with John Brown at Harpers Ferry, Virginia in 1859). Margaret Bonds was a good friend of both Florence Price and Langston Hughes; in fact both Price and Bonds made art song settings of the poem Dream Variations!! A literal anthem of the Harlem Renaissance (1924), the poem’s imagery is a COMPLETE celebration of the dark-skinned body—mind and soul!!

Following the sweep of her distinguished educational background and training in piano, organ and composition, our #TimeAndArenasReclaimed composer of the program Florence Price wrote a contrastively limited amount of chamber music…that is, what has been discovered THUS FAR!!: two string quartets (and a third possibly extant), a quintet for piano and strings, at least one character piece (“Adoration”), and a set of spiritual arrangements for violin and piano. While her vocal, piano and symphonic music remains the backbone of her compositional output, the chamber music expresses a contrastively intimate and equally profound artistic “gesture”. The Five Folksongs In Counterpoint were composed gradually, appearing in varied settings and differing song order between 1927--the year of her migration from Little Rock, Arkansas to Chicago—and 1951, the same autumnal year in she received a commission from the British conductor Sir John Barbirolli to compose an orchestral suite. (Her String Quartet in G Major of 1929 stands apart from this set of folksongs. It is available commercially and was performed at the 2017 Gateways Music Festival at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York.) The two movements included on this evening’s program, “Drink To Me Only With Thine Eyes” and “Clementine” reflect the poetic ballad and popular folksong tradition, chronicling moments of emotional “extremity”—romantic love and tragic loss. The National Baptist Hymnal, however, does contain an adopted and lengthened text-variant of “Clementine”--the invitational hymn “Come To Jesus”!!

Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (1875-1912) was one of the best-known members of “the race” in his time. As an “Afro-British” musician and composer, the weight of his notoriety rests on several artistic triumphs, three of which are mentioned here: his visit to the United States in 1899 to conduct a performance of his cantata Hiawatha in Washington D.C., with a chorale named in his honor; three concert tours of the United States in 1904, 1906 and 1910; and the celebrated publication of the Twenty-Four Negro Melodies arranged for solo piano opus 59 (1904), for which Booker T. Washington wrote the Preface. The eminent historian and sociologist W. E. B. Du Bois dedicated a memorial essay to Coleridge-Taylor titled “The Immortal Child” from Darkwater: Voices From Within The Veil (1920). Coleridge-Taylor was the youngest delegate to attend the First Pan-African Conference at London in the summer of 1900; he provided musical interludes between the conference sessions, and personally entertained Du Bois at his home in Croydon.  Du Bois’s reminiscent essay reflects upon that pair of now-historic occasions: his meeting Coleridge-Taylor and the development of Pan-Africanism. In Booker T. Washington’s view, the full set of “Negro melodies” constituted the Negro’s contribution to the body of art-music compositions that made him (and her!!) a worthy voice of expression on the heels of what had become a global, fully human “conference and conversation”--whether that Negro place of origin is the African continent, the Caribbean, the United Kingdom or the United States of America. Five of the melodies were arranged for piano, violin and cello and published by Novello in 1906, of which three are featured here.

James Weldon Johnson (1871-1938) was the “Renaissance Man of the Harlem Renaissance”—two decades after writing the poem “Lift Ev’ry Voice And Sing” in honor of the birthday of Abraham Lincoln and a 1899 school visit and speech made by Booker T. Washington in Jacksonville, Florida. James Weldon Johnson had at least seven “careers” in the course of his life: composer-entertainer, diplomat, literary historian and university professor, lawyer, public administrator and civil rights advocate. The half of his story still awaits complete telling. His brother the composer John Rosamond Johnson (1873-1954) set “Lift Ev’ry Voice And Sing” to music, and it quickly became known as the “Negro national anthem” and remains so today. Two challenges of “performance-practice tradition” also persist for all audiences to meet: singing all three verses AND standing up to sing!! TWH

"Daybreak in Alabama" (Langston Hughes)

When I get to be a composer
I'm gonna write me some music about
Daybreak in Alabama
And I'm gonna put the purtiest songs in it
Rising out of the ground like a swamp mist
And falling out of heaven like soft dew.
I'm gonna put some tall tall trees in it
And the scent of pine needles
And the smell of red clay after rain
And long red necks
And poppy colored faces
And big brown arms
And the field daisy eyes
Of black and white black white black people
And I'm gonna put white hands
And black hands and brown and yellow hands
And red clay earth hands in it
Touching everybody with kind fingers
And touching each other natural as dew
In that dawn of music when I
Get to be a composer
And write about daybreak
In Alabama.

"Night" (Louise C. Wallace)

Night comes, a Madonna clad in scented blue.
Rose red her mouth and deep her eyes,
She lights her stars, and turns to where,
Beneath her silver lamp the moon,
Upon a couch of shadow lies
A dreamy child,
The wearied Day.

"Feet o’ Jesus" (Langston Hughes)

At the feet o’ Jesus,
Sorrow like a sea.
Lordy, let yo’ mercy
Come driftin’ down on me.

At the feet o’ Jesus
At yo’ feet I stand.
O, ma little Jesus,
Please reach out yo’ hand.

"Dream Variations" (Langston Hughes)

To fling my arms wide
In some place of the sun,
To whirl and to dance
Till the white day is done.
Then rest at cool evening
Beneath a tall tree
While night comes on gently,
Dark like me–
That is my dream!

To fling my arms wide
In the face of the sun,
Dance! Whirl! Whirl!
Till the quick day is done.
Rest at pale evening . . .
A tall, slim tree . . .
Night coming tenderly
Black like me.

"Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing" (James Weldon Johnson)

Lift ev’ry voice and sing
Till earth and heaven ring
Ring with the harmonies of Liberty
Let our rejoicing rise
High as the list'ning skies, let it resound loud as the rolling sea.
Sing a song full of faith that the dark past has taught us
Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us
Facing the rising sun of our new day begun
Let us march on till victory is won.

Stony the road we trod
Bitter the chast'ning rod
Felt in the day that hope unborn had died
Yet with a steady beat
Have not our weary feet
Come to the place on which our fathers sighed.
We have come over a way that with tears has been watered
We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered
Out from the gloomy past, till now we stand at last
Where the white gleam of our bright star is cast.

God of our weary years
God of our silent tears
Thou who has brought us thus far on the way
Thou who has by Thy might
Led us into the light
Keep us forever in the path, we pray.
Lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met Thee
Lest our hearts, drunk with the wine of the world, we forget Thee
Shadowed beneath Thy hand
May we forever stand
True to our God
True to our native land.

Hidden Gems and Hidden Figures...

“Hidden Gems…and Hidden Figures: The Cello Music of African American Composers, Women And Less Visible Artists”

Friday, October 4, 2019, 7:30pm

Recital Hall, Edwards Music Building, North Carolina Central University 

Still Waters Running Deep (1984)                                        Barbara York, b.1949

Melodie (1911)                                                              Frank Bridge (1879-1941)

Seven Variations in E flat Major on “Bei Mannern” from Mozart’s The Magic Flute (c.1795)

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)

Comments on the music

Deep River                                                                   arr. Moses Hogan (1957-2003)

This Little Light Of Mine (1945)                                                John W. Work (1901-1967)

This Little Light Of Mine (2001)                                                James Lee III, b.1975

Troubled Water (1964)                                                               Margaret Allison Bonds (1913-1972)

About these “Hidden Figures and their Hidden Gems”…

The amended titles and content of this afternoon’s program are both intriguing and a bit misleading. One name is by no means a “hidden figure”; during his lifetime Beethoven was one of Europe’s best-known pianists, composers and larger-than-life characters. His Third Symphony nearly became a portrait of Napoleon Bonaparte, and his Ninth Symphony remains a musical metaphor for our yearnings for brotherhood and peace. In contrast, the other composers of this program might appear overshadowed in terms of notoriety; by the close of this program you'll see that Beethoven is rolling in league with some “tough musical competition”!!

The opening work, Still Waters Running Deep of Barbara York possesses both a pastoral and flowing character, evoking several familiar images in its title: “sheep” (human or cloven-hoofed!!) being led by "The Good Shepherd" of the 23^rd Psalm, the depth of thought in human nature (Proverbs 18 & 20), but the depth of this piece lies in the beauty of its melodic line and its harmonic and rhythmic “course”, which resembles a river flowing and cutting deeply through its watershed.

Frank Bridge (1879-1941) lived during two of three crucial national periods of British history, the reign of Kings Edward VII (1901-10) and George V (1910-1936), marked by tremendous industrial, economic, political and military development, turmoil and upheaval. Bridge was a student at the Royal College of Music from 1899 to 1903, and his earliest string music dates from this youthful period. Melodie (1911) was composed for the Felix Salmond (1888-1952), who studied at the Royal Academy of Music in London and the Brussels Conservatory; he was one of the leading cellists in Europe during the years of the Great War (World War I). [It possesses a strong Edwardian sense of dramatic vision that was tragically cut short by the national carnage and sacrifice during the War, which wiped out most of a generation of Britons who believed that “the sun of Britannia would never set”.] Salmond joined the cello faculty of The Juilliard School in 1924, and then the Curtis Institute of Music the next year. He would teach jointly at both institutions for seventeen years (1925-1942). He is one of a host of significant pedagogues who emigrated from Europe, and trained and mentored “an American school” of cello playing. Some of his American students (and “grand-students”!!) are still well-known as performers and pedagogues even today: Orlando Cole, Leonard Rose, Louis Potter, Bernard Greenhouse, Samuel Mayes, Ronald Leonard, and Kermit Moore--Salmond’s only African-American pupil.

The Seven Variations in E flat Major of Ludwig van Beethoven were composed during the early years of Beethoven’s residency in Vienna (c.1795), one that would prove to be life-long. The theme is drawn from the melody (“Bei Mannern welche Liebe fuhlen”) in Act I of Mozart’s opera The Magic Flute, sung by Prince Tamino’s friend Papageno and Princess Pamina as they ponder and discuss the noble desire to live by the power of love (even though they have yet to find those respective significant companions). This operatic dialogue is effectively translated to the instrumental conversation, and the variation form enhances that dialogue between instruments, flowing with equal interest within each variation. The shifts of tempo, key and mood also further magnify the profundity of that flowing progress.

The remainder of this program continues the mining of “gems most strangely hidden”; the African-American folksong genre called the “spiritual” is a familiar gem with a seeming guise of familiarity, due to its adaptive use in many of the nonviolent protest songs of the Civil Right Movement (c.1951-1968), and the international notoriety gained by the touring activities of the Fisk Jubilee Singers (1873-1878). The themes of water and waterways flow very strongly within and throughout the spiritual folksong tradition; all three works of Moses Hogan, John W. Work and James Lee III are drawn from that vocal tradition.

“Deep River” is one of a host of spirituals arranged for voice and piano by Moses Hogan, a pianist and choral conductor who left us ‘way too soon. The two settings of “This Little Light Of Mine” couldn’t be more complimentarily contrastive in their harmonic and expressive effect. John W. Work was the second of three generations of musicians associated with Fisk University and the historic Jubilee Singers. James Lee III is a nationally recognized “STILL young” composer who studied piano and composition at The University of Michigan. He now serves as associate professor of music at Morgan State University.

“Troubled Water” is the closing movement of the Spiritual Suite for solo piano, composed by Margaret Bonds in 1947-48; she arranged it for cello and piano for the cellist Kermit Moore. Both musicians performed together quite frequently; in addition to being great friends, they also worked under the same artist management as a duo.

The Golden Rule Door...

This door is what I now call "The Golden Rule Door". It is the southeast entry and exit door of the Farrison-Newton Communications Building at North Carolina Central University in Durham, North Carolina.  It faces the parking lot  behind the building, which borders it to the east. The black rail pictured separates a wheelchair access walkway to the door and a sidewalk running alongside part of the parking lot. I'm sure that both building (and door!!) have been there longer than I have thus far. Many of the buildings on campus that share such an architectural design and style date from the same general year of construction (c.1975-77), but this particular door intrigues--and occasionally frustrates!!... everyone who enters and exits this building every day!!

Murphy's Law or the Golden Rule...
A closer look and encounter will reveal several wondrous details: its hinges are located on the left, and the handle and doorjamb on the right. Most single-door thresholds have those elements reversed so the door opens from left to right, and one approaching the threshold can do so from the left and find reaching for the door handle much easier. However, DIS heah doh'...ain't set up this here way!! ERR'BODY who comes from the most accessible direction (south) has to reach across the threshold to grab the door handle. This is where "Murphy's Law" swings into enthusiastic motion!! The door borders a rear sidewalk and the parking lot, but the other side of that threshold...is a short basement landing at the bottom of three floors worth of the southeast stairwell. Most folks (faculty/staff) who have reserved (purchased) parking privileges in the lot approach from the north side of the door...the "handle" side. But most people who don't park in that lot or walk to the building as pedestrians...approach from the southeast, the "long reach side". Folks who exit the building at this point have NO visual forewarning of anyone on approaching from the other side of the door.  As also pictured in the photograph, the window mounted in the door offers a laughably scant field of vision (c.3 inches wide and 2.5 feet high)...out and in. At this point, individually, collectively, hypothetically and/or realistically...the principle of "The Golden Rule"...MUST come into play.

The Conclusion of the Matter...
Aside from this moral/ethical/philosophical juncture, it is all too convenient to hasten and conclude that the State of North Carolina, the UNC System and North Carolina Central University have each colluded to place each citizen--guest, student, staff, faculty member and administrator--at the open risk of injury both small and substantial. But in my regular daily entries and exits via this doorway, one unwritten yet profound rule always manages to prevail: that of "doing unto the one coming in...as you would wish to have done for you coming out". Those who open the door from the inside can often be found holding the door and waiting for numerous fellow students/colleagues approaching from nearly thirty feet away. Those who arrive to open the same door from the outside do so often with care and patience, knowing that someone is at or very close to the other side of the same threshold!!

I would love to know about any other public institutions in the State of North Carolina built around the same time as the Farrison-Newton Communications Building...that might have a similar or even identical plan for their entry and exit thresholds. The one most mysterious takeaway in all this is both the oddest and most profound: in the matter of communication, the portal of greatest hazard...is also the portal of greatest potential opportunity. Perhaps this is the true metaphor...of all manner of communication. An awkwardly placed portal, threshold, window (narrow yet long) and angle of access, entry and exit...

Mo' Betta Friday: Jazz as a Musical Expression of the Gospel...and one mis-reaction to the term (19 April 2019)

Some regular--FAITHFUL--observers and readers of this blog series will know that I perform, teach at a university, volunteer at a local hospice...and occasionally write about my experiences.  I had one such experience while working live during the "Midday Jazz Adjustment" on 90.7 FM, WNCU in Durham (www.wncu.org), which airs on Monday through Friday from 11am-1pm.

I have done live shows on Good Friday for two years now, but the title of this blog post actually derives from a much earlier NON-musical event and memory. From 2006-2010, one of my responsibilities as Director of the University Honors Program at North Carolina Central University involved chairing the planning committee for the Honors Convocation for Academic Excellence, which convenes in early April--often a week or two removed from Passion Week and the culmination of the Lenten season. From department chairs I would receive names of students to be recognized University-wide, and prepare them for two public documents--a rather large laminated poster for display around campus lobby areas, and the event program book. In a faculty meeting I made a brief presentation and advertisement of the Honors Convocation, and referred to the event's date (that year) as "Mo' Betta Friday", borrowing from the title of the motion picture "Mo' Betta Blues" produced and directed by Shelton "Spike" Lee,  starring Denzel Washington, Wesley Snipes, Nicholas and John Turturro. Most of my colleagues caught and chuckled at my sincere play on words, appreciating the strange malapropism attempted amid a bunch of academics!!

In my Good Friday programs in 2018 and 2019, I have intentionally chosen and played selections aimed at providing inspiration and opportunities for some measure of reflection from the wide varieties of jazz repertoire and tradition. Evangelical hymns, Negro spirituals, music of Duke Ellington and many others form my playlist for the show--which actually flies by rather quickly!! I had just finished playing the last tune for the first hour of my show when the studio telephone lit up. Upon answering, a female caller was on the line, most incensed by my on-air use of the term "Mo' Betta Friday". To her ears, apparently my mention of this created holy-day term constituted a sacrilegious replacement of this Holy Week Day, an attempted verbal tantamount to heresy!! She gave me a piece of her mind and attitude that she just couldn't afford to keep to herself!! I patiently heard her out, but even the few comments and words of attempted alleviation offered interjectively...fell on "deaf ears"--or perhaps a closed mind. (Part of me is convinced that she hung out with the Pharisees near the Garden of Gethsemane on Maundy Thursday night!!)  

Nonetheless, my listening ear and representative position kindly and carefully heard and endured her harangue, even though my rising blood pressure was elevated as a result of the awkwardness of "such a mountain made out of molehill". While the second hour proceeded without any further incident (or phone calls!!), it was overshadowed--partly by my biblical recollection of the time of day during which the Crucifixion took place, "from the sixth to the ninth hour", 12 noon until 3 pm, by current daylight saving time clock reference. I had hoped to make it through the midday hours with my reverent on-air corniness intact, but that one call broke the streak and marred the experience.  

On an aesthetic, artistic and musical level, this time of day is one of special meaning and function, as the sum of my "taste" is permitted a most unique platform--one having a very sensitive membrane of aural exposure, access, information, understanding and appreciation. The few callers who make and take the time to call the studio during my leg of the radio relay--usually call with questions about what's been played, suggestions for future selections or my even speech-rhythm!! But such a call as on Good Friday occupies the most unusual category in my suggestion box, and will for quite some time!!

My stepson occasionally poses a quasi-sarcastic question for his mother at the end of a bizarre day of work and interaction with total characters in the workplace, phrased as follows: "so what did we learn today"?? Here is what I learned...on "Mo' Betta Friday": 1. In this nationalized American Judeo-Christian culture, we have been socialized to venerate events and holidays but haven't learned to work harder at following the Golden Rule: doing unto others AS we would have them do unto us. 2. We often listen--NOT for the purpose of learning and understanding, but for the aim of response. Immediate response, with the aim of "one-ups-speakership". The caller called me onto her carpet of cultural correctness over the issue of word choice, usage and grammar...not the relevance of ANY musical selection heard on WNCU/90.7 FM between 11 am and 1 pm on April 19, 2019--the Friday of the Passover celebration known as Good Friday. 3. I learned anew that communication, whether verbal or musical--takes time. People need time and space quite often. The lady who called in to the radio studio on "Mo' Betta Friday" will need time--to just listen to the music I program. WITHOUT any reference to religion, holidays, history or even her own thoughts and attitude. I will need time...to reconsider my motives and thinking for choosing the music I do. Nevertheless, the comfort I retain is that of knowing and loving so many of these organized moments of uncommon grandeur so much...that they defy complete or even coherent description at times. 

I also need to remember...that the folks who didn't call in to fuss about what I called the day...were moving through their pensive day touched by whatever they heard in ways I cannot hope to completely fathom. That is more than sufficient encouragement and validation for me.  Happy Easter to all!! 

#LiveInLove #LiveInPeace #GrowInFreedom

"Works In Progress": Solo Cello Music of African-American Composers (31 March 2019, NCCU), Program Notes...

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.

"Melanin Messiah Notes: Confessions of a Rogue Basso Continuo Player"

"Melanin Messiah Notes: Three-Year Confessions of a Rogue Basso Continuo Player"

Three years ago I got a call to play a “Messiah gig”, which for most string players is a common holiday season musical experience. (For most orchestral players, if you're not playing Messiah, then you're playing Nutcracker!! Either oratorio or ballet!!) These gigs usually involve one two-hour rehearsal and the performance—also of about two hours’ duration.  A violinist once told me that she played sixteen different performances of the oratorio Messiah of George Frideric Handel (1685-1759) in one holiday season...done by that many respective choral groups!! While I have been hearing the music of this work as long as I can remember, my first-hand performing experience of this work began during my graduate school years three decades ago, and they continue today!!

In the "orchestra"--I played as cellist of a string quartet, along with a pianist (a rehearsal necessity for most choral ensembles) and an organist. (Organists have a traditional “odd instrument out” position in such productions, depending on the availability and capability of an instrument. Most organs are electric and/or electronic for performances and tend to be played…TOO loudly.)  The choir was a “community” ensemble, directed by an elderly woman whose conducting “technique” left me with more than a few surprises, which I discovered with surprising astonishment and sometimes even fearful trepidation!! The choir sings for the love of the music and the cooperative experience of singing together. While its membership is racially integrated, it should be mentioned with emphasis that the majority of the ensemble is comprised of African Americans. This matter will receive additional comment later.

The rehearsal began with the gradual arrival and participation among all performing forces (minus the organist). The choir was of “late middling age” (they're mostly senior citizens--I just don't think that they have all moved to those communities of downsized apartments). I doubt very seriously that there were any members who were above 85 years of age (but there may be!!). I only recall noticing one or two members who appeared to be less than forty. All of the soloists were drawn from the choir, and sang with moderate vocal distinction. While the work opens with an instrumental Overture, the rehearsal began instead with the opening recitative and aria for tenor, “Comfort Ye”. Such is not a problem generally--in fact, it’s a rather “user-friendly beginning”--except for the tenor soloist. It was at this point that I began to discover exactly HOW the choral director communicated her musical intentions and directives to the choir and instrumentalists. She did not “conduct” in the way expected by most musicians; she used a choral-piano score sitting on a music stand RAISED HIGH, but kept her hands close to the stand--making it very difficult for me to see and follow her conducted gestures. Now “those gestures”--didn’t always pertain to the rhythms, meter, tempo, mood and character of the music…OR even the tone of the text!! This made for a “guessing game” that I had never encountered before!! When I tried to ask a few questions about her conducted intentions, I failed to get helpful information nor any clearer indications upon repeated rehearsal.

The largest ensemble issue I encountered was the matter of tempo establishment and maintenance—which is not unusual, given the demands of Handel’s imitative writing in so many of the commonly-sung choruses. The conductor “conducted”—not to the instrumentalists but to the choir…even to the extent that she would even stop conducting during the orchestral postlude to seat the choir--following the choir’s “exit”--but before the music of the chorus had finished singing. While such a motion didn’t disrupt the performance, it wasn’t entirely necessary; it didn’t save very much time in performance, and might be viewed as a “LESS than GOOD directorial habit”. ALL…and I do mean ALL of her conducted cues required the strangest measure of “visual guesswork” on the part of the instrumentalists—because she kept her hands so low and the music stand so high!! She gave little to no clear preparatory beats, which serve to indicate the conductor’s intended tempo. Since the choir never sang in the first measure of any chorus, the job of “catching the tempo”…fell to the instrumentalists. Therefore, the practice of this “community” choir pretty much excused any excesses of tempo (often due to the technical limitations of the pianist, upon whom the choir is HIGHLY dependent!!). The instrumentalists are brought in ONLY for the rehearsal the day before the performance--which is but a run-through, NOT a rehearsal. In fact, MOST rehearsals involving orchestral musicians are really run-throughs, which is both a reflection of good choral and conductor preparation, but not always a guarantee of the most effective degree of musical learning.

Needless to say, that first year was a doozy!! I learned how difficult the conductor was to follow, but in the second year I learned…how to solve a few musical problems without frustrating the limited abilities of the conductor!! At this point I must pause and describe the design of the performance space, a church sanctuary. The pulpit and choir loft occupied the majority of a triangle-shaped area. The choir occupied three rows of the loft, but sat nearly ten feet behind the strings, who were all but trapped between the immovable pulpit lectern, the conductor, and the large pulpit "thrones" against a low wall that separated the main pulpit from the front section of the choir loft, which was humanly unoccupied but taken up instead by a trap drum set and other unused electrical instruments of “praise-band worship”. The piano and organ were situated at the opposite “points of this triangle”, which made visual and acoustic coordination difficult. At the “rehearsal-through” (which the organist did not attend, it wasn’t necessary for me to stay seated next to the organ where I had been the previous year...'remember my previous comment about rehearsals?), I took the proactive “liberty” of moving away from the traditional seating of the string quartet to sit next to the pianist. Once I got seated next to the pianist, I assured her that I would try to match her left hand on every beat. Once that happened, the sense of rhythmic stability and coordination for everyone...solidified almost immediately. The adjusted seating choice of mine had a mixed advantage: I was able to match the attack of the piano sound with immediate consistency, but I ended up with a rather uncomfortable sitting position...on the steps leading up into and from the choir loft itself.

The one issue that didn’t get solved was the sight problem between the first violinist of the string quartet: while the conductor was hard enough to watch and follow (or not!!), the first violin had to play with her back to the pianist and me. The only way avert such a blind playing situation would’ve been to use an organ loft mirror!! Fortunately there was only one bad moment of coordination, and hopefully there were ten great ensemble moments to offset that one!!  Even though I was able to play right with the pianist (who wore bangles on her right arm that jingled as she played!!), the challenge of “maintaining ensemble” between the choir (who were seated some ten feet behind the instrumentalists), the conductor (who maintained her hand and stand positions) fell to the “New Rhythm Section--#CelloArtBlakey and #Ms88Keys”!!  The challenge of the second year’s performance--watching, anticipating, coordinating, adjusting…and when necessary “usurping the choreographed attack”—made that performance both memorable and even downright “insurrective”!!

The next “lesson” I learned from that Year Two experience involved navigating the tricky matters of vocal phrasing during the recitatives and arias: some recitatives contained completely unforeseen moments of flexibility, sometimes connected to a key word, a pitch or place in the vocal ranges of each soloist. The “rehearsal-through” was the only time and place to hear, learn and “catch” these idiosyncrasies..quickly!! The soloists have practiced these nuances all throughout the year “beyond the point of habit”, but the expectation of instrumentalists is that all these nuances resonate as clear as day because this work is so…“familiar”. So the demand of correct and “sensitive” accompaniment and ensemble amid this MOST unique coincidence of performance circumstances fell to me. (It’s the strange, hidden curse of bass players; somehow, singers in bands are known to complain the most...'about the bass player!!).

Year Three’s performance turned out to be the “victim” of two strangely fortunate events: the original performance date was postponed due to a water leak that caused flooding in the sanctuary. A substitute venue was located, but a recent "winter storm" caused all events in the area to be cancelled. The relocated and rescheduled event took place three weeks later. The secondary venue sanctuary was a larger and more resonant having more open and flexible space. Sight lines between instrumentalists were all more direct, and all were able to be seated more closely together. The conductor’s technique hadn’t changed ('neither better nor worse), the choir sang like they knew how ('they've found a tempo that they could maintain and stuck with it!!), and the instrumentalists, on predictable occasions, had to: a) watch for what we may see and be expected to play with; b) anticipate that which will be expected but not necessarily conducted; c) coordinate that which may be helpful to all involved; d) adjust to the need of the vocalists, from the recitatives and arias to the full choruses; e) and when absolutely necessary, “usurp” the choreographed “attack”, in the defiant interest of forcing clarity in moments that can’t be redone.

The Unexpectable…and Ineffable...

The effect of the music upon the audience, regardless of the “rehearsal-through challenges”: I’ve often remarked to my students and colleagues that “the music is most often the result of gracious adjustment IN THE MOMENT, and not always a repetition of details gained only through practice, repetition and rehearsal.” (Translation: we can practice and rehearse until we are blue in the face, but the most important use of that time is gaining an acquisition of ultimate intimacy so that WHATEVER HAPPENS, the integrity of the learning process remains constant, sometimes leading to a higher and deeper level of musical expression...that would’ve been impossible to attain otherwise.)  The audience was profoundly moved by the performance of all involved. The host pastor of the church spoke of his desire to sing in the chorus himself—a GREAT indicator of moving interest in future activity!! I believe that the venue made the greatest difference in the quality of interaction between all performers, all previous challenges strangely notwithstanding!!

NOW to the Lesson: What Have I Learned In And Through All This??

1.     “The whole is greater than the sum of its parts”. The message of the music—the story of Messiah and His glory--is greater than the musical score itself. In the formalist arm and aim of the Euro-American classical music tradition (where “access to and the wield of information somehow inbreeds privilege”), this second message gets lost amid our desire to excel and be appreciated.

2.     Stability and Consistency are greater than “Perfection”. When musicians can get to a place of stability and consistency in rhythm, ensemble coordination and expression, all other matters shrink in importance. (They don’t disappear altogether; they just shrink.)

3.     Even the technical limitations of the conductor, and the "habitual" singing of the chorus…can help make us better musicians. When those choral tempi sag to painful slowness, there is still an opportunity to play with great musicality.

4.     Usurping the downbeat…or the tempo should happen “as a last resort” in the defense of ensemble stability.

5.     Knowing the score, and knowing your part…makes a HUGE difference. But “knowing the score…ISN'T KNOWING IT ALL”… (Gracious scholarship instead of knowledgeable egotism and vanity). Be Great to Work With, instead of just Being a Great Player…

The Larger Matter--Considering the Importance and Meaning of Maintaining This Tradition In The African American Community: It goes without saying that the present time is quite unique in American history; it isn’t new, and yet much of the cognitive dissonance which has plagued American history appears to have a strange newness to it. Our African American cultural traditions are also in unique flux as well; even the function and flow of previous traditions have changed. As the traditions change, so the functional relevance and meaning of those traditions also undergo both resistance and change. In another blog project in progress, I'll discuss the challenge of uncovering the history of the earliest documented performance traditions of Messiah by African American communities in the United States. Documented evidence of such performances among white American denominations can be found, but such traditions among African American denominations are less numerous, and not given copious or even historical coverage.

Parting Words: “I’m Sure Going To Miss You”… At the end of the performance it was announced that the conductor had given her final performance of Messiah. She was warmly applauded for four decades of directorate leadership of the community choir. As I was making my way out of the sanctuary, I paused to shake her hand and said (with less than veiled sarcasm), “I’m sure going to miss you”. She simply replied…”Thank You for all your help”, expressed with the same warmth and gratitude to me as in both previous years. The simplest and most sincere response for a job well-done is and always should be a word of gratitude, which also includes the expression “You’re welcome”. Whatever changes await us ALL as change ensues, the one fact of which I am convinced is that my short-order assistance, even in the throes of the “rehearsal-through” are greatly and deeply appreciated. The only other and larger challenge that remains is that of helping to bring a generation who sang this music in church or in school…back to it, regardless of how much or little technology help to make it “functionally relevant”.

In the meantime...may the Prince of Peace...be with us all!!

Archives of Past Performances of Cello Music (with program notes attached)...beginning on April Fool's Day!!

Programs and notes for past faculty recitals (c.2004-2017)...

North Carolina Central University

Department of Music

Presents

Timothy Holley, violoncello

In Faculty Recital

Assisted by 

Deborah Hollis, piano

Alice Tien, piano

Saturday, April 1, 2006, 4:00 PM

Recital Hall, Edwards Music Building

Twelve Variations on a theme from Handel’s Judas Maccabaeus, WoO 45 (c.1796)
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)

                                    *          *          *          *          *          *

Blues (“…kind of…”) from Sonata for Cello and Piano (1968)        

David Baker (1931-2016)

Berceuse, Opus 16 (1883)                                          Gabriel Fauré (1845-1924)

Melodie:

Les Berceaux

Automne

Aurore

En Sourdine

Green

Dans la forêt de septembre

En Prière

                                    *          *          *          *          *          *

Madrigal in a minor (c.1910)                                      Enrique Granados (1867-1916)

INTERMISSION

Vocalise, Op.34, No.14 (1912)                                   Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943)

Sonata, Opus 6 (1932)                                                            Samuel Barber (1910-1981)

            Allegro ma non troppo

            Adagio-Presto-Adagio

            Allegro appassionato

“April’s Fool” recital thoughts, amid the NCAA Final Four Weekend)…

It is a strange enough experience to live in this part of the United States, and be found NOT watching the seemingly nonstop NCAA Basketball Tournament coverage on television--and yet here you are!!  On behalf of the artists and faculty of North Carolina Central University--WELCOME!!  I have only had the rare and even dubious distinction of attending one such recital given on this holiday of humor and practical joking.  While a graduate student at The University of Michigan, I went to hear a joint faculty duo recital given by violist Donald McInnes and pianist Martin Katz, both world-renowned musicians--McInnes now teaches at the University of Southern California, while Katz, in spite of being a USC alumnus, is still in Ann Arbor.  Both musicians appeared onstage, yet one thing was obviously out of place: Katz was carrying the viola (with a careful grip, I might add), and McInnes carried a piano score.  Both men went to their “places” at center stage and bowed nobly to the audience.  McInnes sat down at the piano, and played one note, the “A” which all string players have played for them in the onstage pre-performance ritual of tuning.  Katz in turn, plays that “one note” on the viola, but it sounded only of a raspy, scratching noise, much to the mirthful mixture of confusion and chuckling of the audience members, who really knew all along that they’d been “had”!!  Both gentlemen leaned toward the audience and said in unison, “April Fool’s!!”  The audience erupted in boisterous laughter, the men “re-exchanged” instruments--and gave the audience a performance so special for its technical and musical virtuosity that it has endured for decades in more than my own memory, distinct from any connection to the calendar or the “holiday”. 

This afternoon’s program opens with the variations on the familiar chorus from Part I of George Frideric Handel’s oratorio Judas Maccabaeus (“Hail, conquering hero…”).  I still have vivid memories of playing this melody as a young quasi-Suzuki method cellist.  Ludwig van Beethoven composed this set of variations during his early years in Vienna, along with the two sonatas for piano and cello (Op.5), probably for the cellist Jean-Louis Duport, with whom he performed for Friedrich Wilhelm II of Prussia (the grandson of Frederick the Great) on a visit to Berlin.  In spite of his quickly budding sense of virtuosity and a pianist and composer, the variations are quite evenly matched throughout.  Each variation calls for each partner to “converse”, one with the other in the most intriguing manner--sincere musical conversation, neither competitive nor argumentative.  In the avoidance of temptation--the commission of an “April Fools” musical joke or prank--and for the sake of audience understanding, the variations unfold according to the following design:  we begin with the Theme (in the key of G Major); the first variation is for solo piano--Beethoven either felt the need to have his say immediately, or to give the cellist an early break!!  Variations 2 through 4 follow the theme closely--both musicians at work conversing; in Variation 5 the dialogue becomes more commentary than conversation.  One performer’s secret: listen for the manner in which each variation ends, and the manner in which the next variation begins; Beethoven’s genius of craftsmanship shines forth here--in places that even performers often overlook.  After about the sixth variation, one is apt to feel a bit “lost”, so here are a few more good sound “safety spots” so the audience will know where to “hang their hats.” Variation 7 features the cello, not by loud declamation but by quiet skittering around while the piano plays the main theme.  Variation 8 is a short and stormy variation, while Variation 9 resembles “two people on a blind date that doesn’t quite work out (pleasant but not quite special enough for a seconddate!!”)  The only instance where the theme is restated in its opening “triumphal garb” is at Variation 10, in which the cello carries the melody throughout.  Variation 11 is a beautiful Adagio (very slow tempo), featuring each instrument, and the final variation closes the work as an “open-collared” jig.

David Baker is one of the few remaining musical “elders” that continue to serve as “guardians of the flame” of American jazz.  A renowned performer, educator, author, composer-arranger and conductor, he has directed the Jazz Studies Program at Indiana University since 1966.  He has directed the Smithsonian Jazz Masterworks Orchestra since 1990, and his own small ensemble at IU, the 21^stCentury Bebop Band.  No less than three generations of musicians have studied, performed or toured with him.  He is an incredibly prolific composer in both the jazz and concert traditions, and his concerted works often seek to draw the aural boundaries between the two as nebulously as possible--to the extent that both traditions become conclusively “classical” in and of themselves.  Such is the case in the Sonata for Cello and Piano(1968), in which classical cello technique meets and interacts with jazz and blues phraseology throughout all three movements of the work.  Only the middle movement, whose actual tempo marking is “Slow”, will be performed here.  The “Blues” title was coined by the venerated cellist and pedagogue Janos Starker over the course of many performance opportunities of the Sonata at IU and beyond.  However, its “bluesy” sound is less related to the actual standard, triple-phrased, twelve-measure long harmonic formula of blues-based music than it is to a distinct style of modern jazz played on the classic recording of the Miles Davis Sextet, Kind of Blue (1959). The music is heavily saturated in modal writing, and the individual performance styles of Miles Davis, John Coltrane and guitarist Wes Montgomery can be clearly heard throughout the work. The movement is largely a cello “soliloquy”, opening unaccompanied followed by a quasi-improvisatory cadenza midway through the work.  The piano plays austerely, but the reserved manner of writing is poignantly expressive throughout the movement.

My first exposure to the music of Gabriel Fauré came when I was in high school, upon hearing a recording of the Requiem, Opus 48.  While the beauty of the melodies was quite attractive, it was the unusual beauty of his harmonic palette that captivated me as a young listener.  Fortunately, he wrote a fair amount of music for the cello (his Elegy, Opus 24 is one of the best-known works of the cello repertoire), but his melodie have long held a special place on my list of musical favorites.  I have collected a number of them over the years, but this performance is the first attempt to perform them as a set, extolling their melodic and harmonic variety.   I chose to do an entire “set” of short pieces and songs that have reasonably attractive melodic lines and mostly exploit Fauré’s “kaleidoscopicism”.   The set opens with an unlikely choice of work for a recital, but expectable given the date of this recital--how “occipitally appropriate” (or just plain bone-headed) to place a berceuse(lullaby) ‘smack in the middle of the front half of the program!!  Notwithstanding the title and temperament of the berceuse, its beauty of melodic line and harmonic language make a nice introduction to Fauré’s oeuvre, which is dominated by the piano--many works for solo piano, vocal and piano chamber music.  “Les Berceaux” speaks of the double-entendre imagery of large rocking ships at port and small cradles rocked by their mothers; cast in 12/8 meter, the song has a long-phrased “rocking” feeling, reflective of a large ship at sea.  “Automne” deals with melancholy brought on by past regrets of thought and deed over a substantial period of time (two decades).  It is the stormiest song of the set, where the piano dominates the “dramatic texture”, the right hand creating a cloudy skyline while the left plays a repetitive figure that might represent the sentiment of regret.  “Aurore”--as its title implies--signals a change of mood, imagery and tonal color from stormy gray to full-spectrum, rainbow palette; no less than nine references to visual color or astronomy can be found in the poetry.  The sound texture is light and open, with a simple accompaniment and attractive melody, giving the song a placid disposition interrupted only by a brief excursion into the parallel minor key.  “En sourdine” continues the pleasantry of mood and image with a “cloak” of thick forestry, silence and wordless passionate love.  This setting is a languorous sylvan tone-poem gently propelled by the 16^thnote figures cascading throughout; the serene melody is well suited for the high baritone voice or the cello, with very few real conflicts of acoustic balance.  It is interesting to note that the title of this song is also a musical term, meaning “use the mute”.  In “Green”, the muted image opens up to unabashed Romantic emotional expression; Fauré’s harmonic palette is at its most chromatic in this song, one that receives scant exploration throughout his oeuvre.  The philosophical “deep point” of the set is reached in “Dans le forêt de septembre”, where the aches of an ancient forest in autumn encounter a solitary man weeping, and the forest “consoles” the man by presenting him its token of “mortal fraternity”--its first dead leaf. The song is most attractive, not for its melody which has a recitative-like flow, but for the beautiful piano accompaniment that undulates between key regions using enharmonic modulations.  The culmination of this set is something of a restrained “high point” discovered by “good chance” and dialogue with my esteemed colleagues in preparation of this program.  “En Prière” is simply what it is, a prayer--but the prayer is that of Jesus Christ said prior to his eventual betrayal, arrest, trial, crucifixion--and resurrection.  The tone and style of this setting are fittingly reminiscent of either the Sanctus or Pie Jesu sections of the Requiem.  As in “Aurore”, simplicity of melody and accompaniment are all that is necessary to convey this message of devout faith.

Enrique Granados was born in Lerida, Spain, and studied piano in Barcelona and Paris, returning to Barcelona in 1889, where he opened a school of music.  He won distinction as a pianist and composer, and championed the zarzuela, the Spanish nationalist operatic genre which takes its name from the Palace of La Zarzuela (the opulent derivative of Versailles), and whose earliest work for the stage was produced in 1629.  His best-known work, Goyescas, was produced at the Metropolitan Opera in 1916; while en route back to Spain from the U. S. (via Liverpool, England), his ship was torpedoed and sank in the English Channel.  Granados and his wife were among the passengers lost at sea.  Granados wrote Madrigal in c.1910 for the renowned Spanish cellist Pablo Casals.  Zarzuelas include the recitative and madrigal forms, and both can be found in the cello work, which gradually moves from a free-flowing recitative to a slow stately march by its bravura conclusion.

Sergei Rachmaninoff has as an unavoidable connection to April Fool’s Day--he was born on April 1, 1873.  One of my “grand-teachers”, Mr. Louis Potter (Professor of Music emeritus at Michigan State University for 45 years), was also born on April Fool’s Day--at last hearing, he should be 94 years young today!!  Rachmaninoff was one of the last of the great performer-composers of the Romantic tradition, and his piano performances as well as his works--still stand out as legendary for their technical virtuosity and artistry, beauty and grandeur.  The Vocalise is the last of the Fourteen Songs (Op.34) of 1912, written for Antonina Neshdanova, a gifted coloratura soprano of the Moscow Grand Opera.  It quickly became a favorite with audiences, and soon appeared in arrangements for almost every solo instrument, and an orchestral transcription also followed--at Serge Koussevitsky’s urging in 1916.  Oskar von Riesemann, the editor of Rachmaninoff’s memoirs, wrote the following about the Vocalise:  “The wonderfully curved melodic arch, with its even tranquility, spans the song from beginning to end in one unbroken line…We find in it a resemblance, without any similarity of notes, to Bach’s Air on the G String, which moves in the same clarified atmosphere of divine tranquility.”

Samuel Barber is one of the most honored and frequently performed American composers of the mid-twentieth century.  Encouraged by his aunt and uncle--the contralto Louise Homer and the composer Sidney Homer, he entered the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia at age 14, where he studied composition, piano and voice.  Annual summer travels to Italy with his Curtis schoolmate (and would-be lifelong friend) Gian-Carlo Menotti, reinforced his interest in European culture and Romanticism.  With the help of Curtis Institute founder Mary Curtis Bok, Barber achieved significant recognition early in his career.  He gained international notoriety as a composer when Arturo Toscanini and the NBC Symphony Orchestra performed a live broadcast of Adagio for Strings in 1938.  After that time most of Barber’s compositions resulted from commissions from prominent performers and ensembles.  Barber began work on the Sonata for Violoncello and Piano in the summer of 1932.  It was dedicated “to my teacher, Rosario Scalero”, but early published editions bore an inscription to Orlando Cole, the cellist who gave the world premiere: “to Orlando, physician at the birth of this Sonata, in appreciation of his help and interest, Samuel Barber, seven years late”. Like Barber and Menotti, Orlando Cole was one of the first group of students to attend the Curtis Institute, studying with the British cellist Felix Salmond, and playing in a student string quartet that gave the first performances of the Serenade (Op.1), and Dover Beach (Op.3).   Barber’s primary compositional models for the Sonata were the cello sonatas of Johannes Brahms, with which Barber was thoroughly familiar with by his later years at Curtis.  In letters to his parents and uncle, he wrote of “playing sonatas of Brahms with David Freed” (cellist and Curtis schoolmate) while sailing across the Atlantic en route to Europe in June 1928.  The entire three-movement work is built upon one set of ascending tones (in sixths) in its opening measures, outlining a French augmented sixth chord.  This opening is reflective of the opening measures of the Sonata in F Major (Op.99) of Brahms, which contains a similar melodic idea built primarily of ascending fourths. Although Romantic in spirit, its contemporary features cannot be overlooked, especially that of complex rhythmic structures, as well as the dynamic balance of key relationships throughout the work.  Cole and Barber gave the first performances of the Sonata in Philadelphia and New York in 1933 and 1934; although from that time until 1947 it received no less than ten significant public performances, Barber never seemed confident about how the work would be received by audiences and critics.  Barber’s manner of composing placed him quite independent of the trends of his generation, according to Cole “even passé--in contrast to the music of Aaron Copland and other composers of the Boulanger school”.  However, since that time--until 1948 it was the only cello sonata in the repertoire written by an American composer--it has enjoyed great popularity with cellists, pianists and chamber music enthusiasts.  To give this work its greatest sense of artistic worth and perspective, a closing quote of creative wisdom from a letter to Barber from “Uncle Sid” is most appropriate: “Public life has its value and often lifts a man to great efforts and inspires great conceptions, but production is done in the dark, underground, as it were, and an honest acquaintance with himself and an understanding of his own convictions is the hardest but most necessary job a composer has, if he wants to do anything but artificial work…”  In no way should the Barber Sonata ever be considered “artificial…”

Dr. Timothy Holley, with the kind assistance of Deborah Hollis and Barbara B. Heyman

“Les Berceaux” (Sully Prudhomme)

Along the quays, the large ships, rocked silently by the surge, do not heed the cradles which the hands of women rock, but the day of farewells will come, for the women are bound to weep, and the inquisitive men must dare the horizons that lure them!  

And on that day the large ships, fleeing for vanishing port, feel their bulk held back by the soul of the far away cradles.

“Automne” (Armand Silvestre)

Autumn of misty skies, of heart-rending horizons, of hasty sunsets, of pale dawns,

I see flowing like the waters of a torrent your days filled with melancholy.

My thoughts, carried away on wings of regret, as if our lifetime could be reborn,

Roam dreaming through the enchanted hills, where in days gone by my youth delighted!

I feel in the bright sunlight of triumphant recollections

The scattered roses blooming again in a bouquet, and I feel tears rising to my eyes, which in my heart

My twenty years had forgotten!

“Aurore” (Armand Silvestre)

From the gardens of the night the stars fly away,

Golden bees attracted by an unseen honey,

And the dawn, in the distance, spreading the brightness of its canvas,

Weaves silver threads into the sky’s blue mantle.

From the garden of my heart, intoxicated by a languid dream,

My desires fly away with the coming of the morn,

Like a light swarm to the coppery horizon,

Called by a plaintive song, eternal and far away.

They fly to your feet, stars chased by the clouds,

Exiled from the golden sky where your beauty blossomed,

And, seeking to come near you on uncharted paths, 

Mingle their dying light with the dawning day.

“En Sourdine” (Paul Verlaine)

Serene in the twilight created by the high branches,

Let our love be imbued with this profound silence.

Let us blend our souls, our hearts, and our enraptured senses,

Amidst the faint languor of the pines and arbutus.

Half-close your eyes, cross your arms on your breast,

And from your weary heart drive away forever all plans.

Let us surrender to the soft and rocking breath

Which comes to your feet and ripples the waves of the russet lawn.

And when, solemnly, the night shall descend from the black oaks,

The voice of our despair, the nightingale, shall sing.

“Green” (Paul Verlaine)

Here are fruits, flowers, leaves and branches

And here, also, is my heart which beats only for you.

Do not tear it apart with your two white hands, 

And may this humble offering seem sweet to your so lovely eyes.

I come, still covered with dew, which the morning wind has turned to frost on my brow.

Permit that my fatigue, reposing at your feet, may dream of the cherished moments that will refresh it.

On your young bosom let me cradle my head, still filled with music from your last kisses,

Let it be soothed after the good storm, and let me sleep a little, while you rest.

“Dans le forêt de septembre” (Catulle Mendes)

Weakening murmuring branches, sonorous tree trunks, hollowed by age,

The ancient, aching forest is in tune with our melancholy.

O fir trees clinging to the gorge, dry nests in broken boughs,

Burnt thickets, flowers without dew, you know of suffering!

And when man, entering palely, cries in your solitary woods, 

Shadowy and mysterious plaints greet him with sympathetic tears.

Good forest!  Open promise of the exile that life implores,

I come with footsteps still quick into your depths still green.

But a slender birch on the path, a russet leaf grazes my head and alights trembling on my shoulder.

The aging forest--knowing that winter, when all comes to nought, 

Is now at hand in me as in it--presents me with a fraternal tribute: Its first dead leaf!

“En Prière” (Stephan Bordese)

If the voice of a child can reach you, O my Father,

Listen to the prayer of Jesus on His knees before you.

If You have chosen me to teach Your laws on the earth

I will know how to serve you, holy King of Kings, O Light!

Place on my lips, O Lord, the salutary truth,

So that whoever doubts should with humility revere You!

Do not abandon me--give me the gentleness so necessary to relieve the suffering, 

To alleviate pains, the misery!

Reveal Yourself to me, Lord, in whom I have faith and hope,

I want to suffer for You and to die on the Cross at Calvary!