San Jose Wind Symphony

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Program Notes

Sunday, May 23, 2010, 3:00 PM

"AMERICAN CLASSICS"
Campbell United Methodist Church, Campbell, CA

Dr. Edward C. Harris, conductor

Blue Lake Overture for Band

John Barnes Chance (1932–1972)

A Texas native, John Barnes Chance played percussion in high school before he began composing. He studied under Clifton Williams at the University of Texas and earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in music. After graduation he joined the Army service bands as a percussionist and arranger. After his discharge he received a grant from the Ford Foundation’s Young Composers Project and wrote seven pieces for school ensembles, including Incantation and Dance. The following year he was appointed to the faculty of the University of Kentucky, where he was later appointed head of the theory/composition program.

Blue Lake was written in 1971 and dedicated to the Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp of Twin Lake, Michigan. Beginning with a tempo marking of slancio (“with impetuosity”), the initial motive is heard in the horns. The pulsing 3+3+2 pattern transitions into a soft waltz and a restatement of the initial theme. The energy of the opening returns to carry the work to its finale.

Acrostic Song, from Final Alice

David Del Tredici (b. 1937), arranged for band by Mark Spede

A native of Cloverdale, California, David Del Tredici is widely regarded as the leader of the Neo-Romantic movement in contemporary American music. After making his piano debut with the San Francisco Symphony at age 17, he went on to receive a B.A. from the University of California, Berkeley, and an M.F.A. in 1964 from Princeton University. Del Tredici enjoys a successful career as a composer and teacher. He has received several prestigious awards, including the 1980 Pulitzer Prize for In Memory of a Summer Day. Del Tredici has had works commissioned and premiered by nearly every major American and European orchestra. Currently, he maintains an active composition schedule while serving on the music faculty at the City College of New York.

Early in his career, many of Del Tredici’s compositions consisted of elaborate vocal settings of texts by James Joyce and Lewis Carroll. Del Tredici completed Final Alice in 1975, inspired by Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. It is a large-scale work intended for amplified soprano voice, folk group (comprised of two soprano saxophones, banjo, and accordion) and full orchestra. This work is a series of arias, separated by various dramatic episodes, which, in the words of the composer, “teeters between the worlds of opera and concert music.” The final aria, “Acrostic Song,” is a setting of the concluding poem from Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass. The poem itself is an acrostic, with the initial letters of each line spelling out the name of the “real” Alice, Alice Pleasance Liddell.

Symphony for Band (Symphony No. 6), Op. 69

Vincent Persichetti (1915–1987)

Vincent Persichetti was born in Philadelphia and began his musical life at the age of five, first studying piano, then organ, double bass, tuba, theory, and composition. By the age of 11, he was paying for his own musical education, supporting himself by performing professionally as an accompanist and church organist. By age 20, Persichetti was simultaneously head of the theory and composition departments at Combs College, a conducting major at the Curtis Institute and a piano major at the Philadelphia Conservatory. He joined the faculty of The Juilliard School in 1947. Persichetti established himself as a leading figure in contemporary music as a virtuoso keyboard performer, scholar, author and energetic teacher. He wrote more than eighty compositions, including major works in almost every genre. The influence of his music is widely felt, thanks to his expert teaching and his book on harmonic practices.

The Symphony for Band was composed during the winter of 1955-56, originally commissioned by the Washington University Chamber Band as an eight-minute piece. While composing the work, Persichetti had to inform band director Clark Mitze that his idea had developed into a four-movement symphony. Symphony for Band was premiered at the Music Educators National Conference in St. Louis in 1956. The opening section of the first movement contains themes used throughout all four movements. His sketches for the work show that Persichetti composed the percussion and low brass parts first. He fully integrated the percussion section into the melodic and thematic development of the piece. The second movement is based on a hymn tune taken from Persichetti’s Hymns and Responses for the Church Year, entitled “Round Me Falls the Night.” The third movement opens with a new clarinet theme, which is passed around throughout the movement. The symphony closes with an exciting “Vivace” finale that reintroduces all the themes, and it ends with a chord containing all twelve chromatic pitches.

Woodland Sketches

Edward MacDowell (1860–1908)

Edward MacDowell was one of the first American composers to achieve international fame. He studied in Paris, eventually at the Conservatoire, before moving on to study piano and composition in Frankfurt. After his return to the United States, MacDowell established himself as a teacher, pianist and composer, with his ­appointment as the first Professor of Music at Columbia University, a position he held until 1904.

Woodland Sketches reflects MacDowell’s impressions of the natural beauty surrounding his summer home in Peterborough, New Hampshire. “To a Wild Rose” became his best known melody, almost by accident. MacDowell wrote a short melody every morning, which he would later throw away, in order to keep his melodic composition technique finely honed. Upon hearing one of these cast-offs, his wife remarked that it reminded her of some wild roses growing close to their cabin. MacDowell retrieved the tune and titled it accordingly. “Will o’ the Wisp” is an example of MacDowell’s effortless bagatelle style. “At an Old Trysting-Place” does not refer to lovers; it is an expression of the homesickness of a group of people who originated in Peterborough but had to travel west in search of fertile lands. “In Autumn” vibrates with cheer and is brisk and snappy, just like a fall day after summer’s languor.

Cole Porter: A Medley for Concert Band

Cole Porter (1891–1964), arranged by Robert Russell Bennett

Cole Porter was born into a prosperous family in Peru, Indiana, unlike his musical contemporaries George Gershwin and Irving Berlin, who grew up in the poor immigrant neighborhoods of New York. As a boy, Porter studied piano and violin and began writing songs while in prep school. He attended Yale College (Class of 1913), where he composed fight songs that are still used today. After graduating, he went on to Harvard Law School, but he had little interest in law and soon began studying music instead. Porter later completed his musical education at the Schola Cantorum in Paris. Eventually, he earned a large income from his songs. Porter was thus able to live the life of high society, enjoying frequent trips to Europe and countless parties with celebrities and aristocrats. Porter’s first Broadway show, See America First, was staged in 1916. Over the ensuing decades, he wrote several more shows, becoming one of Broadway’s most popular composers. His credits include Gay Divorce, Anything Goes and Kiss Me, Kate. He composed numerous songs that became standards and distinguished himself by writing his own lyrics, which were notable for their wit and sophistication..

Cole Porter: A Medley was arranged by the renowned Broadway arranger Robert Russell Bennett (1894–1981). Bennett was an American composer and arranger, best known for his orchestration of many well-known Broadway and Hollywood musicals by other composers, such as Irving Berlin, George Gershwin, Jerome Kern and Richard Rodgers. The medley features Porter’s timeless “Anything Goes,” “Begin the Beguine,” “Night and Day,” “Just One of Those Things” and “Blow, Gabriel, Blow.”

Bugles and Drums March

Edwin Franko Goldman (1878–1956), edited by Edward S. Lisk

Edwin Franko Goldman was one of America’s prominent band composers of the early 20th century. At the age of 14, he attended the National Conservatory of Music, where he studied music theory and trumpet. He composed over 150 works and is best known for his marches. He founded the American Bandmasters Association and served as its second Honorary Life President, after John Philip Sousa. Goldman’s works are loved for their pleasant and catchy tunes, as well as their fine trios and solos. He encouraged audiences to whistle or hum along to his marches, and this became a tradition with his most famous march, On the Mall.

Bugles and Drums is a regimental march that pays homage to Sousa’s Semper Fidelis in style. It features an extended dialog between the bugle-style passages in the trumpets and the melodic passages in the full band. In a rousing 6/8, the dialog alternates until a drum break in the middle is followed by the bugles again.

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Program notes are edited by Karen Berry and excerpted from the composers’ notes, Band Notes by Norm Smith, The Pepper Music Catalog and the following sources:

Wikipedia

Foothill College Symphonic Band

J. W. Pepper

naxos.com

answers.com

Calvin College Music Department

Henderson State University Symphony Band

Cole Porter Online Archive