LINCOLNSHIRE POSY Works for Wind Ensemble

Transcription

1 Eloq uene LINCOLNSHIRE POSY Works for Wind Ensemble GRAINGER PERSICHETTI KHACHATURIAN HARTLEY ROGERS Eastman Wind Ensemble Frederik Fennell

2 $ % ^ &

3 PERCY GRAINGER ( ) Linolnshire Posy 1 I Lisbon (Sailor s Song) II Horkstow Grange (The Miser and his Man: a loal Tragedy) III Rufford Park Poahers (Poahing Song) IV The brisk young Sailor (returned to wed his True Love) V Lord Melbourne (War Song) VI The Lost Lady found (Dane Song) Hill Song No VINCENT PERSICHETTI ( ) Symphony for Band (Symphony No. 6) 8 I Adagio Allegro II Adagio sostenuto III Allegretto 3 07! IV Vivae 4 13 ARAM IL YICH KHACHATURIAN ( ) Two Armenian I Allegro moderato 3 02 II Allegro 3 02 WALTER S. HARTLEY (b. 1927) Conerto for 23 Winds $ I Andante Allegro non troppo 5 29 % II Vivae 2 41 ^ III Lento 5 02 & IV Allegro molto 3 37

4 T a h m p to e o tw s BERNARD ROGERS ( ) Three Japanese Danes * I Dane with Pennons 3 00 ( II Mourning Dane 4 17 ) III Dane with Swords 3 45 Eastman Wind Ensemble Frederik Fennell E a st th w w tr li in e o h th m Total timing: A MERCURY LIVING PRESENCE RECORDING P e

5 Example has long been the great teaher of the arts. Propelled by the reative fore and stimulated by its results, eah entury of man s ivilization has produed those exemplary works that mark an art s progression. Those whose work has been exemplary and who have reated without the benefit of model are as rare as the true genius in any entury. The vast musial literature of the symphony orhestra, for instane, is traeable in its evolution from the exemplary reative ahievements of a few omposers of genius in eah of the three and one-half enturies of its growth. From those few have sprung hundreds who rise or fall with what they reate through talent and industry from models furnished by genius. The situation is no different in our time. The awesome presene of masters and masterworks has not suppressed the reation of additional musial literature. In fat, the sope of a pratiing omposer in this area has broadened to inlude the wind band as a serious and exiting medium for whih to reate a fresh kind of instrumental writing. On this dis are five twentieth-entury omposers exemplary reators all from whose models yet more signifiant musi is ertain to be written. Pery Aldridge Grainger venerable reator of exemplary musi for winds was born on 8 July 1882 at Brighton, Melbourne, Australia, and died on 20 February 1961 at White Plains, New York, where he had mainly resided sine Possessed sine hildhood of an insatiable uriosity about everything musial, he lived a nomad s life in searh of those answers to the mysteries of his art that most intrigued him. Among his earliest ompositions is Hill Song No. 1 (1902), sored originally for wind instruments. It is as fresh today as it must have been bold at the turn of the twentieth entury. His impressionable assoiations with Edvard Grieg awoke in him a desire to know all he ould about the English folk song and its singer. Like his ontemporary Béla Bartók (they were born a year apart), he pursued the folk song with a passion for its aurate notation. At first he wrote them in sketh books as fast as he ould srawl while the singer performed, but he soon replaed this method with the phonograph for the aurate on-the-spot preservation of tunes and their elusive meters as well as the appropriate voal infletions and peuliar tonal qualities of the folksinger. Among the first musiians to use the phonograph for these purposes, he lugged his own version of a portable mehanism and a supply of wax ylinders with him wherever he went. His wanderings throughout rural England took him

6 to the region of Linolnshire in 1905 where, during that time and in the year that followed, he olleted the folk songs that are the basis for his Linolnshire Posy. He found their folksingers on wharves, in workhouses, hospitals any plae where the exitement of a song he had not heard might await him. Skethes for an extended set of Linolnshire folk songs sored for wind instruments date from Their remarkable harmoni and rhythmi audaity reveals the omposer of Country Gardens as a man of sinewy musial speeh befitting an English yeoman. The atual soring was ompleted in 1937 after Grainger had long beome an established Amerian itizen. A period of military servie in the band program of the US Army in 1917 afforded him unlimited opportunities to experiment in soring for winds expressive instruments that he always maintained were needlessly ignored by omposers. A long line of major works for the wind band are a sonorous reaffirmation of this belief. Of them all, Linolnshire Posy is the most impressive. The sore, aording to the omposer s illuminating prefae, is dediated to the old folksingers who sang so sweetly to me. Indeed, eah number is intended to be a kind of musial portrait of the singer who sang its underlying melody a musial portrait of the singer s personality no less than his habits of song Grainger onsidered Hill Song No. 2 high on his list of original ompositions, and he wrote about its genesis thus to me: I have always been in love with the wildness, the freshness & the heroi qualities of hill ountries, hill peoples & hill musi. This love of the hills was brought to a head in 1900 by a 3-day s walk I took in Argyleshire, in the Western Highlands of Sotland. I was entraned by the sound of the bagpipes (whih is my favourite of all musial sonorities) & by the sound of some oriental double-reeds that I heard at about the same time. I felt a great urge to weave these fiere nasal sounds into a polyphoni weft. The result was my Hill-Song No. 1, omposed in , whih onsisted of both fast & slow elements, sored mainly for double-reed instruments (6 oboes, 6 English horns, 6 bassoons, et.). Wishing also to write a bagpipe-like Hill-Song that onsisted only of fast and energeti material omposed in This time the soring, for 24 solo wind instruments, was mainly for a mixture of double-reeds (oboes, et.) & single-reeds (larinets, saxophones, et.). This is probably the first time in known musi that suh a large body o H fr h m w o b im w n b e V e P im in P T S 1 U p o a a

7 s s t f l l t - l s of solo winds was brought together in hamber musi. Hearing my Hill-Songs in 1907 my beloved friend Frederik Delius as keen a lover of the hills as I was led to write, around 1912, his master-work The Song of the High Hills. There was, however, one basi differene in his oneption of Delius s & my hill-musis. His Song of the High Hills (aording to statements made by him to me) sought to express the feelings & impressions of a man wandering thru the hills. In writing my Hill-Songs, on the other hands, I was not onerned with man s impressions of nature, but strove, as it were, to let the hills themselves express themselves in musi. Vinent Persihetti ( ) was another exemplary reator of musi for the wind band. Persihetti was also a gifted pianist, an imaginative editor, a stimulating teaher and an informed riti. He lived and worked in Philadelphia, where he was born, until his death. The Symphony for Band, Op. 86, his Sixth Symphony, was omposed in the winter of on ommission from the Washington University Chamber Band, whih played the first performane under the diretion of Clark Mitze on April 16, 1956, in St. Louis, Missouri. Mitze and Persihetti had their first onversations about the ommission in Otober of 1955; they entred around the writing of a six-minute piee in the style of his Psalm. Persihetti informed him two months later that things had gotten a little out of hand and that his six-minute ommission had developed into a four-movement symphony. The first movement s opening Adagio ontains important themati material that leads to the statement marked Allegro. A hymn taken from Persihetti s Hymns and Responses for the Churh Year, Round Me Falls the Night, is the basis for the seond movement. The ontrasting Allegretto third movement is followed by a breathtaking Vivae finale. The Armenian-Soviet omposer Aram Khahaturian ( ) is best known as a omposer of dazzling onertos and tuneful, exiting ballet sores. Armenian folk art and Oriental musi and its instruments are his fields of authority, and although these influenes permeate his musial atmosphere, the two Danes, reorded here for the first time, are the only works titled Armenian. They were written originally for a Red Army avalry band in The teaher who most influened his ballet style (from among the many with whom he studied) was Niholas Miaskovsky, whose Symphony No. 19 was also written for a avalry band. The seond movement from Miaskovsky s Symphony is strikingly similar to Khahaturian s appealing

8 style. The gifted Amerian musiian and sholar Ralph Satz adapted Khahaturian s avalry-band soring to the setting reorded here. Walter Hartley (b.1927) is one of Ameria s most gifted omposers. This reording of his Conerto for 23 Winds introdues him to reord olletors. He is a native of Washington DC, where he was eduated in its publi shools. His entire ollegiate training, from freshman through the PhD degree in Composition was guided by the Eastman Shool of Musi and its two prinipal teahers in omposition, Howard Hanson and Bernard Rogers. During these years as a student, Hartley produed a variety of works for orhestra, hamber ensembles and solo instruments whih gained immediate urreny. He wrote the Conerto for 23 Winds in 1957 for the Eastman Wind Ensemble, to whih it is dediated, after having followed that Ensemble s development from its first rehearsal on 20 September We played its premiere on 3 May 1958 in the Eastman Shool s 28th Annual Festival of Amerian Musi. Hartley has written me the following apt omments about his Conerto: It is in four movements roughly orresponding to those of the lassial symphony or sonata in form, but is texturally more related to the style of the Baroque onerto, being essentially a large hamber work in whih different soloists and groups of soloists play in ontrast with eah other and with the group as a whole. The olour ontrasts between instruments and hoirs of instruments are sometimes simultaneous, sometimes antiphonal; both homophony and polyphony are freely used and the musial interest is distributed widely among these omponents of the wind setion of a symphony orhestra. The first and last movements make the most use of the full ensemble; the seond, a sherzo, features the brass instruments, and the slow third movement, the woodwinds. The harmoni style is freely tonal throughout. There is a ertain three-note motif (asending G-A-D) whih is heard harmonially at the beginning and dominates the melodi material of the last three movements. Three Japanese Danes is one of a series of sores written by ontemporary Amerian omposers espeially for the Eastman Wind Ensemble, who performed it for the first time. Its omposer, Bernard Rogers ( ), who set these danes for orhestra in 1933 and reast them for the wind band twenty years later, writes of this musi a follows: Two aspets of oriental expression have held a strong appeal for me: the Bible; and the arts of China and Japan. T Ja H a m I is w s e p A T s p rh h

9 t, f r. r f, l t, s t f. The latter arises from my response to the art of Japanese wood blok masters, partiularly Hiroshige, Hokusai and Sharaku. There are no atual pitorial models. The three piees are merely ats of fany. In the first, a Dane with Pennons, the olouring is ool and gay, vernal and naïve. Young girls weave to and fro asting ribbons of silk. The seond is a Dane of Mourning. The dane is lad in white (the olour of mourning). An elaborate group of perussion instruments ombine in a omplex bell sonority against a primitive motive sounded by flute and bass flute. A distant mezzo voie, unaompanied, adds a entral episode, and the first material returns. The final panel is a Dane with Swords, suggested by the violent, distorted ator portraits of Sharaku. The musi is fierely rhythmi, propelled by thrusting rhythms and highly oloured by perussion. Adapted from notes by Frederik Fennell

10 Reording diretor: Wilma Cozart Musial supervisor: Harold Lawrene Reording engineer & Tehnial supervisor: C. Robert Fine Assoiate engineer: Robert Eberenz (Armenian Danes, Symphony for Band, Hill Song, Conerto for 23 Winds) Remastering produer: Wilma Cozart Fine Remastering engineer: Dennis Drake Reording loation: Eastman Theater, Rohester, New York, USA, Marh 1958 (Linolnshire Posy, Japanese Danes); May 1959 (Hill Song, Symphony for Band, Armenian Danes, Conerto for 23 Winds) Eloquene series manager: Cyrus Meher-Homji Art diretion: Chilu Tong Booklet editor: Brue Raggatt

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