Suite from Billy the Kid by Aaron Copland ( )

Transcription

1 PROGRAM NOTES by Daniel Maki Suite from Billy the Kid by Aaron Copland ( ) Duration: Approximately 21 minutes First Performance: October 16, 1938 in Chicago Last ESO Performance: April, 2000; Robert Hanson, conductor Aaron Copland and Henry McCarty (a.k.a. William Bonney, a.k.a. Billy the Kid) had little in common except that they were both apparently native New Yorkers. Copland hailed from Brooklyn, not necessarily the most likely place at the turn of the twentieth century to look for one of the world s leading composers of art music. McCarty s birthplace is not well documented, but is generally considered to be the Irish slums on the east side of Manhattan, not the most likely place to look for cowboys. That these two New Yorkers had anything at all to do with each other was due to the instigation of Lincoln Kirstein, one of America s leading ballet producers. In 1938 Kirstein commissioned Copland to write a ballet, suggesting the subject of the famous outlaw. Somehow the idea of using actual cowboy songs came up, and although such musical fare was not exactly Copland s cup of tea, he soon found himself dutifully studying such classics as Git Along Little Dogies, The Old Chisholm Trail, and Old Paint. (The listener is advised not to expect Home on the Range. As Copland said, I decided to draw the line someplace. ) The ballet was first produced by Kirstein s Ballet Caravan in the Chicago Civic Opera House in October The score was an immediate hit, earning the composer fame and substantial royalties. As the composer charmingly put it, it was after Billy, when I was almost forty years old, that my mother finally said the money spent on piano lessons for me was not wasted. The suite heard today was prepared by the composer himself and contains about twothirds of the original ballet score. The opening section begins with open parallel fifths, a technique avoided for centuries by composers of art music and still forbidden to beginning college music theory students. Copland has said that he used the technique to create the impression of space and isolation on the prairie. The next two sections, Street in a Frontier Town and Card Game at Night, make use of a number of cowboy tunes, including Great Grand-Dad, Git Along little Dogies, and Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairie. The Gun Battle section features appropriately ballistic percussion effects and leads to the Celebration After Billy s Capture in which an out-of-tune piano whacks out an incessant tune. Quietly mournful music announces Billy s death (in the complete ballet he had escaped from jail only to be recaptured and shot), and finally French horns majestically take us back to the wide open spaces of the prairie that greeted us at the beginning of the work.

2 Concerto for Clarinet and Orchestra by Aaron Copland Duration: Approximately 18 minutes First Performance: November 6, 1950 in New York Last ESO Performance: February, 2001; Richard Stoltzman, clarinet; Apo Hsu, conductor Despite his great popular success as a jazz player, Benny Goodman yearned also for recognition as a legitimate musician. From time to time even when he was at the peak of his fame he would study with some of the greatest classical clarinetists such as the English virtuoso Reginald Kell and the legendary American player Robert Marcellus, former principal clarinetist of the Cleveland Orchestra. Although his performances of serious music may not have matched the artistry of his jazz playing, he certainly made a lasting contribution to the cause of clarinet playing not only through his own performance but also by commissioning some of the leading composers of the time to write works for him. These included such luminaries as Darius Milhaud, Bela Bartok, and Paul Hindemith, as well as Aaron Copland, who finished his concerto for Goodman in the fall of Copland s Concerto for Clarinet breaks the time-honored concerto mold in many ways, including his use of two movements rather than the traditional three. The opening is a wonderfully expressive slow movement whose bittersweet sentiment was strongly colored by Copland s stage and film music style. The main theme of the movement came from sketches for a ballet score, and other passages refer to the movie scores for Our Town and The Cummington Story. If this poignant style, of which Copland said I think it will make everyone weep, sounds familiar, it is because innumerable film composers have imitated it. A cadenza serves as the connecting link between the two movements and for the first time introduces jazz elements into the work. Unlike most cadenzas, which exploit melodic material already heard, this one previews the themes of the jazzy finale and thus helps bring about what the clarinetist Richard Stoltzman has called the move from

3 classic chalumeau to licorice stick. (The chalumeau was a 17 th and 18 th century instrument which evolved into the modern clarinet.) The finale is in free rondo form, meaning a movement that has a recurring, refrainlike theme. Incidentally, in addition to the references to North American jazz, there are also Latin influences as well. Copland wrote some of the concerto while on tour in South America, and actually identified one of the themes as Brazilian. The movement comes to a brilliant close with that joyful noise known to some as a glissando and to others as a clarinet smear. Symphony No. 4 in F minor, Opus 36 by Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky ( ) Duration: Approximately 44 minutes First Performance: February 22, 1878 in Moscow Last ESO Performance: February, 2010; Robert Hanson, conductor Writers of program notes must earn their pay and are perhaps, as has occasionally been alleged, guilty of spending too much time delving into the private lives of composers. Biography, particularly of the more scandalous sort, is more interesting to the general public than technical analysis and provides many temptations for making unwarranted connections between a composer s private life and work. Valid as such criticism may sometimes be, however, there clearly are occasions when such connections between art and life do exist, and to ignore them would be ridiculous. One of the most striking such cases is Tchaikovsky s Fourth Symphony. Although the bizarre circumstances surrounding the composition of the work may read like pulp fiction, they do give insight not only into the heart-rending tragedy of the composer s private life but into his work as well. Tchaikovsky began work on the symphony during the winter of in Moscow and completed it in January of 1878 in Sanremo, Italy. In the intervening period he experienced several of the most momentous events of his life. First, he began his famous relationship, conducted entirely by correspondence, with his patron Mme. Nadezhda von Meck. The relationship would last some thirteen years and produce over a thousand letters, constituting one of the most interesting testaments ever left by a major artist. Then, despite his homosexuality, Tchaikovsky foolishly succumbed to social pressure and entered into a disastrous marriage with a former pupil whom he barely knew. The marriage lasted barely three months, driving Tchaikovsky to a nervous collapse and a suicide attempt. He was sent to convalesce in Western Europe, where he stayed for a time in a pension in Switzerland and then traveled to various places including Paris and Venice. As his condition improved he was finally able to return to work on the

4 symphony, finishing it in Italy. The new work was dedicated to Mme. von Meck and received its first performance in Moscow in February of 1878, less than two months after its completion. The composer was not present. In letters to Mme. von Meck Tchaikovsky poured out his feelings about his life as well as his thoughts about his new work, which, incidentally, he described to her as our symphony. From these confessions it is quite clear that he intended the work as a kind of psychogram, as one critic has called it, expressing some of the turbulent feelings of this period of his life. The quotations which follow are all taken directly from Tchaikovsky s own correspondence. The symphony opens with a fanfare figure in the brass which Tchaikovsky called the chief thought of the whole symphony and a representation of Fate, the fatal power which hinders one in the pursuit of happiness. Tchaikovsky was quite explicit in saying that he had in mind Beethoven s Fifth Symphony, supposedly the original Fate symphony, which begins in a dark minor key but ends in triumphant major. After the introductory Fate motif dies away, Tchaikovsky begins the largest symphonic movement that he had yet written. The first theme is in 9/8 time, an unusual meter for a symphonic movement and one which gives the theme the impression of a melancholy waltz. David Brown, the distinguished Tchaikovsky scholar, has done some brilliant detective work about the theme, deducing that it is pieced together from two themes from Bizet s opera Carmen, which Tchaikovsky had seen in Paris in 1876 and which overwhelmed him by its own concept of Fate. We expect a movement in sonata form to have a contrasting second theme and Tchaikovsky actually gives two. The psychological import of these themes is again explained by the composer. If the first theme expressed the idea that Fate is invincible and can t be overcome, these new themes provide escape. Is it not better to turn away from reality and submerge yourself in daydreams? The first of the themes begins with a clarinet solo in mincing rhythm with comments from other woodwinds. The other is a gentle theme in rocking rhythm played by the violins, signifying the possibility of happiness. Everything gloomy, joyless is forgotten. Very simply put, the remainder of this vast movement explores the possibilities of these contrasting themes and their psychological implications. The menacing Fate motif is clearly heard in the brass several times. The slow second movement with its expressive oboe solo evokes a gentler melancholy about which the composer writes: This is that melancholy which comes in the evening when, weary from labour, you are sitting alone. You take a book- but it falls from your hand. There comes a whole host of memories. There were happy moments when young blood boiled, and life was satisfying. There were also painful moments, irreparable losses. It is both sad, yet somehow sweet, to immerse yourself in the past. The famous third movement scherzo marks a turning point in the symphony, introducing a new feeling of lightness. Tchaikovsky orchestrates in masterly fashion, omitting percussion but dividing the orchestra into the remaining three families. The opening string section with its novel pizzicato effect presumably is an imitation of the balalaika. The woodwind family then follows with its sprightly tune, followed by the brass. The composer s comments state that we are hearing disjointed images including the sounds of drunken peasants, a street song, and a military procession.

5 The jubilant finale begins with an explosion in F major, symbolizing, like the finale of Beethoven s Fifth symphony, that joy has finally triumphed over Fate. Tchaikovsky s commentary states that joy is to be found among the people, a notion that he may have borrowed from Tolstoy s Anna Karenina, which had been recently published. For his second theme Tchaikovsky uses a well- known Russian folk song called There Stood a Little Birch, which recurs several times. Finally, the menacing Fate theme casts its melancholy shadow one more time near the end of the movement but is vanquished by another outburst of joy. Rejoice in others rejoicing, the composer tells us. To live is still possible!