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Revolutionaries
October 8, 2016, 7pm Broadmoor Community Church October 9, 2016, 2:30pm First Christian Church |
Joseph Schwantner New Morning for the World (Daybreak of Freedom)
John Register, Narrator Ludwig van Beethoven Ah, Perfido!, op. 65, for Soprano & Orchestra Katherine Johnson, soprano Elliott Carter Sound Fields Ludwig van Beethoven Symphony No. 2 in D Major, op. 36 Pre-concert lecture 45 minutes prior to each concert with George Preston, General Manager, KCME 88.7 There is no greater musical revolutionary than Beethoven, who changed the course of music for all time. Revolutionaries brings Beethoven together with Elliott Carter and Joseph Schwantner, who have rocked the musical world in their own right. For this program, the music and the ideas are timeless! |
Katherine Adam-Johnson, soprano
Katherine Adam-Johnson is from Colorado Springs, where she has been seen as Countess in Le Nozze di Figaro, Nedda in Pagliacci and Hannah in The Merry Widow with Opera Theater of the Rockies, as well as the First Lady in The Magic Flute with Colorado Opera Festival. Other operatic roles include: Pamina in The Magic Flute, Fiordilidgi in Cosi Fan Tutte, and Gertrude in Hansel and Gretel, Mimi in La Bohème, Alida in Roman Fever, Bellezza in L'egisto and Mrs. Gleaton in Susannah. Katherine has appeared as a soloist singing Mozart’s Requiem, Schubert’s Mass in G, Mendelssohn's Elijah, Brahm's Requiem, Haydn's Mass in Time of War, Handel's Messiah, Respighi's Lauda per la Nativita del Signore, Vaughan Williams' Mass in G Minor, Mozart’s Solemn Vespers, and Fanshawe's African Sanctus with such organizations as Greeley Philharmonic, Colorado Springs Symphony, Colorado Springs Chorale, Larimer Chorale, Soli Deo Gloria, Colorado College, and the University of Northern Colorado Concert Choir. Katherine has won first place awards with the Denver Lyric Opera Guild, Allied Arts of Denver, the Rocky Mountain Concerto Competition, and the regional NATS competition. She has a Masters in Music degree from the University of Northern Colorado. She is currently the music director of St. Mary Cathedral in Colorado Springs.
Katherine Adam-Johnson is from Colorado Springs, where she has been seen as Countess in Le Nozze di Figaro, Nedda in Pagliacci and Hannah in The Merry Widow with Opera Theater of the Rockies, as well as the First Lady in The Magic Flute with Colorado Opera Festival. Other operatic roles include: Pamina in The Magic Flute, Fiordilidgi in Cosi Fan Tutte, and Gertrude in Hansel and Gretel, Mimi in La Bohème, Alida in Roman Fever, Bellezza in L'egisto and Mrs. Gleaton in Susannah. Katherine has appeared as a soloist singing Mozart’s Requiem, Schubert’s Mass in G, Mendelssohn's Elijah, Brahm's Requiem, Haydn's Mass in Time of War, Handel's Messiah, Respighi's Lauda per la Nativita del Signore, Vaughan Williams' Mass in G Minor, Mozart’s Solemn Vespers, and Fanshawe's African Sanctus with such organizations as Greeley Philharmonic, Colorado Springs Symphony, Colorado Springs Chorale, Larimer Chorale, Soli Deo Gloria, Colorado College, and the University of Northern Colorado Concert Choir. Katherine has won first place awards with the Denver Lyric Opera Guild, Allied Arts of Denver, the Rocky Mountain Concerto Competition, and the regional NATS competition. She has a Masters in Music degree from the University of Northern Colorado. She is currently the music director of St. Mary Cathedral in Colorado Springs.
John Register, narrator
Since childhood, sports have been John Register’s passion. He began swimming competitively at a young age and soon added baseball, football, and eventually track and field to his repertoire. After high school, Register earned a scholarship to the University of Arkansas, where he became a four-time All-American athlete. Upon earning his Bachelor of Arts degree in Communications in 1988, John enlisted in the United States Army and proudly served six years. A Desert Shield and Desert Storm veteran, he continued to pursue athletic excellence while on active duty, participating in the Army’s World Class Athlete Program and winning nine gold medals in the Armed Services Competition, as well as two World Military Championships. In 1988, John qualified for the Olympic trials in the 110-meter hurdles, and again in 1992 for the 400-meter hurdles. He seemed destined to compete as a member of the 1996 Olympic team, but on May 17, 1994, his life was forever altered with one misstep over the hurdle. A faulty landing hyper-extended John’s left knee, resulting in a severed popiliteal artery. An attempt to reconstruct the artery using a vein from his right leg failed; within days, gangrene turned the muscle black, and amputation was suggested. The alternative was a useless left knee and ankle, which would restrict him to a wheelchair. Though the experience was devastating, John refused to be stopped by the injury. With a strong faith in Christ and the support of his wife Alice, he chose amputation … and through the use of a prosthetic leg, he walked again – and ran. During his road to recovery, John used sports as a means of rehabilitation. At the Brooke Army Medical Center, he began swimming, and it was during the first few sessions with his coach that an inspiration to compete again was born. After only 18 months, John qualified for – and made – the 1996 Paralympic team, competing in Atlanta, Georgia. Afterward, John was fitted with a running prosthesis and set a goal of competing in track and field at the 2000 Paralympic Games. John began to run – and made history! Two years after his first run with his artificial leg, he earned the silver medal in the long jump and set the American long jump record in the process with a distance of 5.41 meters (17.8 feet). John’s life has truly come full-circle. His story of courage and inspiration led him to found Inspired Communications, where he serves as an inspirational speaker and helps his audiences apply life lessons learned through times of testing to focus on what is possible. John has been also been a spokesperson for the Hartford Insurance Company, the American Plastics Council, the Ohio Willow Wood Company, and Disabled Sports usa. He has been a speaker for more than 50 companies, and has been featured on numerous national television programs including pax tv’s It’s a Miracle with Richard Thomas, fox’s The Edge with Paula Zahn, nbc’s Weekend Today Show with Sara James, and msnbc’s Morning Blend with Solidad O’Brian. He has also been profiled several times in the New York Times, the Washington Post, espn Magazine, and the Washington Kid’s Post. In 2003, John accepted a position with the United States Olympic Committee and began the Paralympic Military Program, which uses sports to assist in the recovery of wounded, ill, or injured service members. The program, which serves both active duty and retired military personnel, has helped thousands create a “new normal.”
Since childhood, sports have been John Register’s passion. He began swimming competitively at a young age and soon added baseball, football, and eventually track and field to his repertoire. After high school, Register earned a scholarship to the University of Arkansas, where he became a four-time All-American athlete. Upon earning his Bachelor of Arts degree in Communications in 1988, John enlisted in the United States Army and proudly served six years. A Desert Shield and Desert Storm veteran, he continued to pursue athletic excellence while on active duty, participating in the Army’s World Class Athlete Program and winning nine gold medals in the Armed Services Competition, as well as two World Military Championships. In 1988, John qualified for the Olympic trials in the 110-meter hurdles, and again in 1992 for the 400-meter hurdles. He seemed destined to compete as a member of the 1996 Olympic team, but on May 17, 1994, his life was forever altered with one misstep over the hurdle. A faulty landing hyper-extended John’s left knee, resulting in a severed popiliteal artery. An attempt to reconstruct the artery using a vein from his right leg failed; within days, gangrene turned the muscle black, and amputation was suggested. The alternative was a useless left knee and ankle, which would restrict him to a wheelchair. Though the experience was devastating, John refused to be stopped by the injury. With a strong faith in Christ and the support of his wife Alice, he chose amputation … and through the use of a prosthetic leg, he walked again – and ran. During his road to recovery, John used sports as a means of rehabilitation. At the Brooke Army Medical Center, he began swimming, and it was during the first few sessions with his coach that an inspiration to compete again was born. After only 18 months, John qualified for – and made – the 1996 Paralympic team, competing in Atlanta, Georgia. Afterward, John was fitted with a running prosthesis and set a goal of competing in track and field at the 2000 Paralympic Games. John began to run – and made history! Two years after his first run with his artificial leg, he earned the silver medal in the long jump and set the American long jump record in the process with a distance of 5.41 meters (17.8 feet). John’s life has truly come full-circle. His story of courage and inspiration led him to found Inspired Communications, where he serves as an inspirational speaker and helps his audiences apply life lessons learned through times of testing to focus on what is possible. John has been also been a spokesperson for the Hartford Insurance Company, the American Plastics Council, the Ohio Willow Wood Company, and Disabled Sports usa. He has been a speaker for more than 50 companies, and has been featured on numerous national television programs including pax tv’s It’s a Miracle with Richard Thomas, fox’s The Edge with Paula Zahn, nbc’s Weekend Today Show with Sara James, and msnbc’s Morning Blend with Solidad O’Brian. He has also been profiled several times in the New York Times, the Washington Post, espn Magazine, and the Washington Kid’s Post. In 2003, John accepted a position with the United States Olympic Committee and began the Paralympic Military Program, which uses sports to assist in the recovery of wounded, ill, or injured service members. The program, which serves both active duty and retired military personnel, has helped thousands create a “new normal.”
Program Notes by Mark Arnest
For hundreds of years, the development of music followed a more-or-less logical course. The greatest revolution of the past millennium occurred around the start of the 17th Century, when music based on a melody with accompaniment replaced the polyphonic style that had been the norm since the 11th Century. (Modern popular music still follows this basic pattern established since the time of Monteverdi.) This was followed by three centuries during which composers first developed the idea of tonality – giving coherence to large stretches of time through movements away from and back to a home key – expanded it, weakened it, and finally overthrew it. Instrumental color was treated with increasing detail, and pieces – and composers’ styles – became more and more individual. Composers in the 20th Century were the most individual and experimental bunch ever, developing many new ways, apart from traditional tonality, to organize large-scale works. But while many composers adopted such modernist styles as Neo-Classicism and Serialism, since 1900 there has been no single underlying compositional language comparable to tonality. For today’s composers, this means the idea of revolution is hardly meaningful: there is no longer any contemporary musical style sufficiently dominant to rebel against.
Joseph Schwantner New Morning for the World: Daybreak of Freedom
“I was excited by the opportunity to engage my work with the profound and deeply felt words of Dr. King, a man of great dignity and courage whom I had long admired. The words that I selected for the narration were garnered from a variety of Dr. King’s writings, addresses, and speeches, and drawn from a period of more than a decade of his life. These words, eloquently expressed by the thrust of his oratory, bear witness to the power and nobility of Martin Luther King Jr.’s ideas, principles, and beliefs. This work of celebration is humbly dedicated to his memory.” One of America’s most distinguished composers, Joseph Schwantner won a Pulitzer Prize for Aftertones of Infinity while still in his mid-30s, and has created an impressive body of mostly orchestral music. Schwantner began his career as a mainstream modernist, but in the mid-1970s, he says he “began to look around and realize that a way to move forward was not only to abandon the past, but to embrace it. You think of composers like George Rochberg and George Crumb, and others who began to decide that the past would not be denied. And as a result of that kind of inclusionary thinking, my style changed and I grew out of the academic part of my life.” Schwantner’s music is characterized by its rhythmic energy and by its exceptional sensitivity to timbre and texture. Though unmistakably the work of a contemporary composer, it’s expressively direct. Schwantner is perhaps more counter-revolutionary than revolutionary; his emergence was part of the movement away from atonal modernism to today’s more audience-friendly post-modern music. However, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s revolutionary credentials are impeccable, despite his dedication to non-violence; he sought nothing less than a political and spiritual transformation of a nation that had systematized racism for centuries. New Morning for the World was composed for large orchestra in 1982; Schwantner made this chamber orchestra version in 2003. The text is drawn from four of King’s speeches and writings: Stride Toward Freedom, 1958; Behind the Selma March, 1965; Letter from Birmingham Jail, 1963; and I Have a Dream, 1963. Though the work is in one large, continuous movement, it breaks clearly into three sections as the text emphasizes the past, the present, and the future. The opening is both agitated and mysterious. The contemplative slow movement begins before the words “now is the time to make real the promise of democracy.” The music is fast again at “when the history books are written in future generations,” but turns calm and consoling for “I have a dream.” The hushed ending is a transfigured recollection of the beginning. New Morning for the World is one of Schwantner’s most successful pieces, both on its own terms and with the public. It manages to be both epic and intimate, and while it is frequently compared to its model, Aaron Copland’s Lincoln Portrait, Schwantner’s piece beautifully emerges from Copland’s shadow, a masterpiece in its own right.
Beethoven Ah, Perfido! for Soprano and Orchestra, Op. 65
Beethoven’s revolutionary credentials are impeccable, as he turned the musical world inside out not once but twice in his career: first with the massive, heroic works of his middle years; and again with the introspective, visionary music of his last years. He left his mark on nearly every genre he touched. With opera, however, Beethoven had a stormy relationship. No work cost him more labor than Fidelio, and it was only a modest success. “This opera will win me a martyr’s crown,” he wrote to one of his librettists. Preceding Fidelio by a decade, Ah, Perfido! is the earliest large-scale work in which Beethoven displays interest in the operatic idiom, and it shows that he came to his revolutionary works only after thoroughly digesting the existing style of Haydn and Mozart. Beethoven was already looking past his models. While the three-part structure of Ah, Perfido! – recitative-ariaallegro – recalls Mozart’s concert aria Bella mia fiamma, Beethoven’s piece is far larger and expressively more ambitious. The opening recitative – a style of writing that’s very free, in order to give maximum flexibility in following the text’s nuances – ends with a lovely transition from rage to despair. And while Mozart’s closing allegro is in the usual single tempo, Beethoven alternates two: a fast, fiery theme, and a slower, more elegiac one. (Mozart’s concert aria is, however, far more harmonically adventurous.) The most beautiful section of the piece may be the central aria, a tender adagio. The text for the opening recitative comes from Pietro Metastasio’s 1736 opera libretto, Achille in Sciro. Metastasio was the most important writer of opera libretti during the mid- 1700s, and his work was used by nearly every major opera composer of the period. Although he died in 1782, his libretti had not yet fallen completely out of fashion; even Mozart used an old Metastasio libretto for his final opera, La clemenza di Tito. The author of the remainder of the text is unknown. elliott carter Sound Fields (2007) “As a young man, I harbored the populist idea of writing for the public. I learned that the public didn’t care. So I decided to write for myself. Since then, people have gotten interested.” Of those composers fortunate enough to live long lives, few continue working past the age of 80. Aaron Copland’s experience is common: in his early 70s, he told critic Paul Moor, “It was exactly as if someone had simply turned of a faucet.” For Elliott Carter, the faucet never turned of. Not only did he continue working until his death at the age of 103, but in his later years, his pace of composition actually increased. Of the 179 works Carter completed in a career that spanned over 75 years, 72 were composed after the composer had turned 90; 24 of those were completed after he turned 100! There may not be a comparable case in the history of the arts. As Carter’s pace of composition increased, there was an inevitable trade-of – but it’s one for which audiences are glad. The works of Carter’s middle years, upon which much of his reputation is based, are fearsomely complex. Carter’s late rush of inspiration led him to a simpler style that – while retaining the hallmarks of the composer’s personality – are less daunting to first-time listeners. Sound Fields is one of the simplest of Carter’s late works. Carter wrote of the piece, “In thinking about musical contrasts between thick textures and thin ones, I had the idea of composing a piece which depended only on such contrasts, always remaining at the same dynamic and tone color using strings non-vibrato. Helen Frankenthaler’s fascinating Color Field pictures encouraged me to try this experiment.” Reviewing the premiere, Allan Kozinn wrote that the piece “does away with almost everything you expect in a Carter work. Counterpoint, sharply contrasting dynamics, tempos and coloration: all gone. This work is about shifting densities, from single notes to thick textures, and is scored for a homogenous string ensemble that plays entirely at a calm mezzo piano.” There is nothing resembling a tune in Sound Fields; instead, chords overlap to create interesting sonic juxtapositions. For most of the piece, the registration of particular pitches is fixed. For example, aside from a brief passage halfway through the piece, the note g is always played in the same, low octave. However, Carter freely passes these fixed notes around from instrument to instrument, creating variety in the music’s spatial configuration. The d played at the piece’s opening by the cellos, for instance, appears later in the second violins and in the final chord in the first violins. The result is a contemplative piece that is approachable for audiences while still displaying Carter’s rigorous analytical approach to organizing sounds.
Beethoven Symphony No. 2 in D Major, Op. 36
Beethoven’s Third Symphony – the Eroica – is justly celebrated as one of the most revolutionary pieces of music ever composed. No previous symphony matched it in length, complexity, or expressive intensity. For a generation of composers it defined the symphony. But the Eroica didn’t come out of a vacuum. Before the Eroica, the longest symphony – and in many respects the most complex – was this one, Beethoven’s second. This symphony’s importance was widely recognized at the time. A critic for the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung wrote, “It is a noteworthy, colossal work, of a depth, power, and artistic knowledge like very few. It has a level of di�ficulty, both from the point of view of the composer and in regard to its performance by a large orchestra (which it certainly demands), quite certainly unlike any symphony that has ever been made known. It demands to be played about the composer Ludwig van Beethoven was born December 1770 in Bonn, Germany, and died March 26, 1827 in Vienna, Austria. composed 1801 – 1802 why it matters A creative stretch before the breakthrough of the Third Symphony again and yet again by even the most accomplished orchestra, until the astonishing number of original and sometimes very strangely arranged ideas becomes closely enough connected, rounded out, and emerges like a great unity, just as the composer had in mind.” However, in one of history’s most famous bad reviews, another Viennese critic called the symphony “a crass monster, a hideously writhing wounded dragon, that refuses to die, and though bleeding in the Finale, furiously beats about with its tail erect.” Beethoven composed much of this joyful work at a time when his personal spirits were as low as they would ever be – during the summer of 1802, as he was losing hope that there would be any cure for the deafness that increasingly afflicted him. That October, in the Heiligenstadt Testament, one of the frankest expressions of despair ever penned by a composer, he wrote, “… what a humiliation when one stood beside me and heard a flute in the distance and I heard nothing, or someone heard the shepherd singing and again I heard nothing, such incidents brought me to the verge of despair, but little more and I would have put an end to my life – only art it was that withheld me, ah! it seemed impossible to leave the world until I had produced all that I felt called upon me to produce, and so I endured this wretched existence ...” The vast gulf between Beethoven’s emotional state and the symphony’s mood is often cited as evidence that a creative artist’s emotions do not inspire his works. In this case it is surely so, but in other cases it is surely not so: for instance, Beethoven himself described the first movement of his Sixth Symphony as his emotional response to his environment. All the Second Symphony proves is that some composers have the ability to follow their artistic instincts regardless of their emotional state. The symphony begins with a slow and long introduction, notable for its large number of accents and its strong dynamic contrasts. It’s as if Beethoven is giving fair warning that this symphony is intended to surprise and even astonish us. The first movement continues in sonata form, with a vigorous first theme, an energetic minor-key transition, a cheerfully martial second theme, and an extended closing that both refers to the opening theme and rounds of the section – but not before an unusual detour to the minor key. The large and eventful development treats both main themes in turn; the following recapitulation is full of surprises, including an unusually long coda. The second movement’s pastoral sweetness foreshadows the Sixth Symphony. The boisterous third movement is a scherzo – Italian for “I joke,” or “I jest” – instead of the traditional minuet. Although scherzos were common in string quartets and sonatas, this is probably the earliest appearance of this form in a symphony. In the fourth movement, which caused the critic of the Zeitung fur die Elegente Welt such distress, Beethoven expands the symphonic concept: the opening theme is more of an effect than a theme, and the structure is not the customary rondo but the much more dramatic sonata. And lastly – literally – the coda is immense. It takes up nearly a third of the movement, making it in terms of percentage probably the most substantial coda ever composed. The dragon indeed refuses to die.
For hundreds of years, the development of music followed a more-or-less logical course. The greatest revolution of the past millennium occurred around the start of the 17th Century, when music based on a melody with accompaniment replaced the polyphonic style that had been the norm since the 11th Century. (Modern popular music still follows this basic pattern established since the time of Monteverdi.) This was followed by three centuries during which composers first developed the idea of tonality – giving coherence to large stretches of time through movements away from and back to a home key – expanded it, weakened it, and finally overthrew it. Instrumental color was treated with increasing detail, and pieces – and composers’ styles – became more and more individual. Composers in the 20th Century were the most individual and experimental bunch ever, developing many new ways, apart from traditional tonality, to organize large-scale works. But while many composers adopted such modernist styles as Neo-Classicism and Serialism, since 1900 there has been no single underlying compositional language comparable to tonality. For today’s composers, this means the idea of revolution is hardly meaningful: there is no longer any contemporary musical style sufficiently dominant to rebel against.
Joseph Schwantner New Morning for the World: Daybreak of Freedom
“I was excited by the opportunity to engage my work with the profound and deeply felt words of Dr. King, a man of great dignity and courage whom I had long admired. The words that I selected for the narration were garnered from a variety of Dr. King’s writings, addresses, and speeches, and drawn from a period of more than a decade of his life. These words, eloquently expressed by the thrust of his oratory, bear witness to the power and nobility of Martin Luther King Jr.’s ideas, principles, and beliefs. This work of celebration is humbly dedicated to his memory.” One of America’s most distinguished composers, Joseph Schwantner won a Pulitzer Prize for Aftertones of Infinity while still in his mid-30s, and has created an impressive body of mostly orchestral music. Schwantner began his career as a mainstream modernist, but in the mid-1970s, he says he “began to look around and realize that a way to move forward was not only to abandon the past, but to embrace it. You think of composers like George Rochberg and George Crumb, and others who began to decide that the past would not be denied. And as a result of that kind of inclusionary thinking, my style changed and I grew out of the academic part of my life.” Schwantner’s music is characterized by its rhythmic energy and by its exceptional sensitivity to timbre and texture. Though unmistakably the work of a contemporary composer, it’s expressively direct. Schwantner is perhaps more counter-revolutionary than revolutionary; his emergence was part of the movement away from atonal modernism to today’s more audience-friendly post-modern music. However, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s revolutionary credentials are impeccable, despite his dedication to non-violence; he sought nothing less than a political and spiritual transformation of a nation that had systematized racism for centuries. New Morning for the World was composed for large orchestra in 1982; Schwantner made this chamber orchestra version in 2003. The text is drawn from four of King’s speeches and writings: Stride Toward Freedom, 1958; Behind the Selma March, 1965; Letter from Birmingham Jail, 1963; and I Have a Dream, 1963. Though the work is in one large, continuous movement, it breaks clearly into three sections as the text emphasizes the past, the present, and the future. The opening is both agitated and mysterious. The contemplative slow movement begins before the words “now is the time to make real the promise of democracy.” The music is fast again at “when the history books are written in future generations,” but turns calm and consoling for “I have a dream.” The hushed ending is a transfigured recollection of the beginning. New Morning for the World is one of Schwantner’s most successful pieces, both on its own terms and with the public. It manages to be both epic and intimate, and while it is frequently compared to its model, Aaron Copland’s Lincoln Portrait, Schwantner’s piece beautifully emerges from Copland’s shadow, a masterpiece in its own right.
Beethoven Ah, Perfido! for Soprano and Orchestra, Op. 65
Beethoven’s revolutionary credentials are impeccable, as he turned the musical world inside out not once but twice in his career: first with the massive, heroic works of his middle years; and again with the introspective, visionary music of his last years. He left his mark on nearly every genre he touched. With opera, however, Beethoven had a stormy relationship. No work cost him more labor than Fidelio, and it was only a modest success. “This opera will win me a martyr’s crown,” he wrote to one of his librettists. Preceding Fidelio by a decade, Ah, Perfido! is the earliest large-scale work in which Beethoven displays interest in the operatic idiom, and it shows that he came to his revolutionary works only after thoroughly digesting the existing style of Haydn and Mozart. Beethoven was already looking past his models. While the three-part structure of Ah, Perfido! – recitative-ariaallegro – recalls Mozart’s concert aria Bella mia fiamma, Beethoven’s piece is far larger and expressively more ambitious. The opening recitative – a style of writing that’s very free, in order to give maximum flexibility in following the text’s nuances – ends with a lovely transition from rage to despair. And while Mozart’s closing allegro is in the usual single tempo, Beethoven alternates two: a fast, fiery theme, and a slower, more elegiac one. (Mozart’s concert aria is, however, far more harmonically adventurous.) The most beautiful section of the piece may be the central aria, a tender adagio. The text for the opening recitative comes from Pietro Metastasio’s 1736 opera libretto, Achille in Sciro. Metastasio was the most important writer of opera libretti during the mid- 1700s, and his work was used by nearly every major opera composer of the period. Although he died in 1782, his libretti had not yet fallen completely out of fashion; even Mozart used an old Metastasio libretto for his final opera, La clemenza di Tito. The author of the remainder of the text is unknown. elliott carter Sound Fields (2007) “As a young man, I harbored the populist idea of writing for the public. I learned that the public didn’t care. So I decided to write for myself. Since then, people have gotten interested.” Of those composers fortunate enough to live long lives, few continue working past the age of 80. Aaron Copland’s experience is common: in his early 70s, he told critic Paul Moor, “It was exactly as if someone had simply turned of a faucet.” For Elliott Carter, the faucet never turned of. Not only did he continue working until his death at the age of 103, but in his later years, his pace of composition actually increased. Of the 179 works Carter completed in a career that spanned over 75 years, 72 were composed after the composer had turned 90; 24 of those were completed after he turned 100! There may not be a comparable case in the history of the arts. As Carter’s pace of composition increased, there was an inevitable trade-of – but it’s one for which audiences are glad. The works of Carter’s middle years, upon which much of his reputation is based, are fearsomely complex. Carter’s late rush of inspiration led him to a simpler style that – while retaining the hallmarks of the composer’s personality – are less daunting to first-time listeners. Sound Fields is one of the simplest of Carter’s late works. Carter wrote of the piece, “In thinking about musical contrasts between thick textures and thin ones, I had the idea of composing a piece which depended only on such contrasts, always remaining at the same dynamic and tone color using strings non-vibrato. Helen Frankenthaler’s fascinating Color Field pictures encouraged me to try this experiment.” Reviewing the premiere, Allan Kozinn wrote that the piece “does away with almost everything you expect in a Carter work. Counterpoint, sharply contrasting dynamics, tempos and coloration: all gone. This work is about shifting densities, from single notes to thick textures, and is scored for a homogenous string ensemble that plays entirely at a calm mezzo piano.” There is nothing resembling a tune in Sound Fields; instead, chords overlap to create interesting sonic juxtapositions. For most of the piece, the registration of particular pitches is fixed. For example, aside from a brief passage halfway through the piece, the note g is always played in the same, low octave. However, Carter freely passes these fixed notes around from instrument to instrument, creating variety in the music’s spatial configuration. The d played at the piece’s opening by the cellos, for instance, appears later in the second violins and in the final chord in the first violins. The result is a contemplative piece that is approachable for audiences while still displaying Carter’s rigorous analytical approach to organizing sounds.
Beethoven Symphony No. 2 in D Major, Op. 36
Beethoven’s Third Symphony – the Eroica – is justly celebrated as one of the most revolutionary pieces of music ever composed. No previous symphony matched it in length, complexity, or expressive intensity. For a generation of composers it defined the symphony. But the Eroica didn’t come out of a vacuum. Before the Eroica, the longest symphony – and in many respects the most complex – was this one, Beethoven’s second. This symphony’s importance was widely recognized at the time. A critic for the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung wrote, “It is a noteworthy, colossal work, of a depth, power, and artistic knowledge like very few. It has a level of di�ficulty, both from the point of view of the composer and in regard to its performance by a large orchestra (which it certainly demands), quite certainly unlike any symphony that has ever been made known. It demands to be played about the composer Ludwig van Beethoven was born December 1770 in Bonn, Germany, and died March 26, 1827 in Vienna, Austria. composed 1801 – 1802 why it matters A creative stretch before the breakthrough of the Third Symphony again and yet again by even the most accomplished orchestra, until the astonishing number of original and sometimes very strangely arranged ideas becomes closely enough connected, rounded out, and emerges like a great unity, just as the composer had in mind.” However, in one of history’s most famous bad reviews, another Viennese critic called the symphony “a crass monster, a hideously writhing wounded dragon, that refuses to die, and though bleeding in the Finale, furiously beats about with its tail erect.” Beethoven composed much of this joyful work at a time when his personal spirits were as low as they would ever be – during the summer of 1802, as he was losing hope that there would be any cure for the deafness that increasingly afflicted him. That October, in the Heiligenstadt Testament, one of the frankest expressions of despair ever penned by a composer, he wrote, “… what a humiliation when one stood beside me and heard a flute in the distance and I heard nothing, or someone heard the shepherd singing and again I heard nothing, such incidents brought me to the verge of despair, but little more and I would have put an end to my life – only art it was that withheld me, ah! it seemed impossible to leave the world until I had produced all that I felt called upon me to produce, and so I endured this wretched existence ...” The vast gulf between Beethoven’s emotional state and the symphony’s mood is often cited as evidence that a creative artist’s emotions do not inspire his works. In this case it is surely so, but in other cases it is surely not so: for instance, Beethoven himself described the first movement of his Sixth Symphony as his emotional response to his environment. All the Second Symphony proves is that some composers have the ability to follow their artistic instincts regardless of their emotional state. The symphony begins with a slow and long introduction, notable for its large number of accents and its strong dynamic contrasts. It’s as if Beethoven is giving fair warning that this symphony is intended to surprise and even astonish us. The first movement continues in sonata form, with a vigorous first theme, an energetic minor-key transition, a cheerfully martial second theme, and an extended closing that both refers to the opening theme and rounds of the section – but not before an unusual detour to the minor key. The large and eventful development treats both main themes in turn; the following recapitulation is full of surprises, including an unusually long coda. The second movement’s pastoral sweetness foreshadows the Sixth Symphony. The boisterous third movement is a scherzo – Italian for “I joke,” or “I jest” – instead of the traditional minuet. Although scherzos were common in string quartets and sonatas, this is probably the earliest appearance of this form in a symphony. In the fourth movement, which caused the critic of the Zeitung fur die Elegente Welt such distress, Beethoven expands the symphonic concept: the opening theme is more of an effect than a theme, and the structure is not the customary rondo but the much more dramatic sonata. And lastly – literally – the coda is immense. It takes up nearly a third of the movement, making it in terms of percentage probably the most substantial coda ever composed. The dragon indeed refuses to die.
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