Scheherazade Wednesday, August 1, 2012 at 6:30PM

Transcription

1 Grant Park Orchestra and Chorus Carlos Kalmar, Principal Conductor Christopher Bell, Chorus Director Scheherazade Wednesday, August 1, 2012 at 6:30PM Jay Pritzker Pavilion Grant Park Orchestra Carlos Kalmar, Conductor CARPENTER Adventures in a Perambulator En Voiture The Policeman The Hurdy-Gurdy The Lake Dogs Dreams RIMSKY-KORSAKOV Scheherazade, Symphonic Suite, Op. 35 The Sea and Sinbad s Ship The Story of the Kalandar Prince The Young Prince and the Young Princess Festival at Baghdad The Sea Shipwreck 2012 Program Notes, Book 4 A21

2 Wednesday, August 1, 2012 carlos kalmar s biography can be found on page 10. Adventures in a Perambulator (1914) John Alden Carpenter ( ) Adventures in a Perambulator is scored for piccolo, two flutes, two oboes, English horn, two clarinets, bass clarinet, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, harp, piano, celesta and strings. The performance time is 28 minutes. This is the first performance of the work by the Grant Park Orchestra. Carpenter was born on February 28, 1876 in Park Ridge, Illinois into one of Chicago s most prominent families: he had his given names from his direct ancestor, John Alden of Pilgrim fame. John s father was president of a prosperous company that he eventually joined; his mother was a talented singer, trained in Paris, from whom he received his first musical instruction. He studied piano with Amy Fay (who recounted her lessons with Liszt in a charming memoir) and theory with William Seeboeck before entering Harvard University in 1893 as a composition student of John Knowles Paine. Carpenter showed such promise at Harvard (including writing the music for two Hasty Pudding productions) that Paine tried to convince him to pursue a career as a professional composer, but to no avail since Carpenter was drafted into the family business and returned home after his graduation in Despite his responsibilities at Geo. B. Carpenter & Co., Carpenter refused to abandon music. Carpenter established his reputation with his first orchestral work, the delightful Adventures in a Perambulator, premiered in Chicago in March In the early 1920s, he adopted jazz idioms for the ballets Krazy Kat (based on George Herriman s popular comic strip) and Skyscrapers (commissioned by Diaghilev for an American tour, ultimately aborted, of his Ballet Russe, and premiered by the Metropolitan Opera), and the Jazz Orchestra Pieces (for Paul Whiteman, famous as the godfather of Gershwin s Rhapsody in Blue). By the late 1920s, Carpenter s jazz phase had run its course, and the works of his remaining years follow more traditional paths: a string quartet, two symphonies, a violin concerto, choral and orchestral compositions inspired by Whitman, Shakespeare and George Washington. Carpenter was held in high regard during his lifetime, and his music was performed frequently and prominently across the country. He was recognized with membership in the National Institute of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Letters, honorary degrees from Harvard, Northwestern and the University of Wisconsin, and Knighthood in the French Legion of Honor; on his 75th birthday, two months before he died in Chicago on April 26, 1951, the National Arts Foundation promoted performances of his music at special concerts in America, Australia and Europe. Carpenter loved children he adored his only child, Genevieve, and served for years as a director of the Illinois Children s Home and Aid Society so it is fitting that what is perhaps his most enduring work is the orchestral suite depicting a day in the life of a most observant infant, Adventures in a Perambulator. He provided a scenario and musical analysis for the work which capture its humor, whimsy and tenderness: I. En Voiture! [ To the Carriage! ]. Every morning after my second breakfast if the wind and the sun are favorable, I go out. I should like to go alone, but my will is overborne. My Nurse is appointed to take me. She is older than I, and very powerful. While I wait for her, resigned, I hear the cheerful steps, always the same. I am wrapped in a vacuum of wool, where there are no drafts. A door opens and shuts. I am placed in my perambulator, a strap is buckled over my stomach, my Nurse stands firmly behind me, and we are off! (The first movement is in the nature of a short prologue, introducing the principal A Program Notes, Book 4

3 Wednesday, August 1, 2012 characters, viz., My Nurse, My Perambulator and Myself. The themes representing these ideas reappear constantly throughout the composition in varying form. My Nurse announces herself promptly at the beginning of the first movement by means of two solo cellos. This soon is followed by the first appearance of the Perambulator motive in the celesta and strings, over which, almost immediately, the first flute announces the ingenuous idea, a descending scale, which stands for Myself. ) II. The Policeman. Out is wonderful! It is always different, though one seems to have been there before. I cannot fathom it all. Some sounds seem like smells. Some sights have echoes. It is confusing, but it is Life! For instance, the Policeman; an Unprecedented Man! Round like a ball; taller than my Father. Blue fearful fascinating! I feel him before he comes. I see him after he goes. I try to analyze his appeal. It is not buttons alone, nor belt, nor baton. I suspect it is his eye, and the way he walks. He walks like Doom. My Nurse feels it too. She becomes less firm, less powerful. My perambulator hurries, hesitates, and stops. They converse. They ask each other questions some with answers, some without. I listen, with discretion. When I feel that they have gone far enough, I signal to my Nurse, a private signal, and the Policeman resumes his Enormous Blue March. He is gone, but I feel him after he goes. (A few introductory measures, suggesting an interested and hurrying perambulator, are followed by the Policeman, who makes himself known in flute and clarinets over a pizzicato accompaniment. After a short development, this is followed by a sort of Intermezzo which is intended to suggest the conversation between the Policeman and the Nurse the remarks of the former being voiced in a solo bassoon, and the responses of the latter in four solo violins, divisi [i.e., divided into separate parts]. The conversation is interrupted by the private signal sounded by a muted trumpet, fortissimo [i.e., very loudly], over an agitated suggestion of the Perambulator theme in celesta and piano. The first part of the movement is then, in substance, repeated.) III. The Hurdy-Gurdy. Then suddenly there is something else. I think it is a sound. We approach it. My ear is tickled to excess. I find that the absorbing noise comes from a box something like my music box, only much larger, and on wheels. A dark man is turning the music out of the box with a handle, just as I do with mine. A dark lady, richly dressed, turns when the man gets tired. They both smile. I smile too, with restraint, for music is the most insidious form of noise. And such music! So gay! I tug at the strap over my stomach. I have a wild thought of dancing with my Nurse and my perambulator all three of us together. Suddenly, at the climax of our excitement, I feel the approach of a phenomenon that I remember. It is the Policeman. He has stopped the music. He has frightened away the dark man and lady with their music box. He seeks the admiration of my Nurse for his act. He walks away, his buttons shine, but far off I hear again the forbidden music. Delightful forbidden Music! (There is no new material in this movement. Bits of familiar masterpieces are heard on the Hurdy-Gurdy [two xylophones and harp] with excited interjections by Myself and Nurse. We all dance together to a little waltz based on the Perambulator theme. The remainder of the movement requires no analysis.) IV. The Lake. Almost satiated with adventure, my Nurse firmly pushes me on, and almost before I recover my balance I am face to face with a new sensation. The land comes to an end, and there at my feet is The Lake. All my other sensations are joined in one. I see, I hear, I feel, the quiver of the little waves as they escape from the big ones and come rushing up over the sand. Their fear is pretended. They know the big waves are amiable, for they can see a thousand sunbeams dancing with impunity on their very backs. Waves and sunbeams! Waves and sunbeams! Blue water white clouds dancing, swinging! A white sea-gull in the air. That is My Lake! (The only themes necessary to mention as belonging to this movement are the first, suggesting the little waves, allotted to the flute, and another, suggestive of the large and amiable ones, which is heard in the strings and the horns.) V. Dogs. We pass on. Probably there is nothing more in the World. If there is, it is superfluous. There IS. It is Dogs! We come upon them without warning. Not one of them all of them. First, one by one; then in pairs; then in societies. Little dogs, with sisters; 2012 Program Notes, Book 4 A23

4 big dogs, with aged parents. Kind dogs, brigand dogs, sad dogs and gay. They laugh, they fight, they flirt, they run. And at last, in order to hold my interest, the very littlest brigand starts a game of Follow the Leader, followed by all the others. It is tremendous! (The woodwind bears most of the burden of furnishing descriptions of dogs, in various themes and snatches of themes. Ach, Du lieber Augustin may be detected in the mêlée, as well as Where, O Where Has My Little Dog Gone?. A variation of the last is used toward the end of the movement as the theme of a short fugue in the woodwind, suggesting dogs playing Follow the Leader. ) VI. Dreams. Those dogs have gone! It is confusing, but it is Life! My mind grows numb. My cup is too full. I have a sudden conviction that it is well that I am not alone. That firm step behind reassures me. The wheels of my perambulator make a sound that quiets my nerves. I lie very still. I am quite content. In order to think more clearly, I close my eyes. My thoughts are absorbing. I deliberate upon my Mother. Most of the time my Mother and my Nurse have but one identity in my mind, but at night or when I close my eyes, I can easily tell them apart, for my Mother has the greater charm. I hear her voice quite plainly now, and feel the touch of her hand. It is pleasant to live over again the adventures of the day the long blue waves curling in the sun, the Policeman who is bigger than my Father, the music box and my friends, the Dogs. It is pleasant to lie quite still and close my eyes, and listen to the wheels of my perambulator. How very large the world is. How many things there are! (A resume of all the preceding excitements. It may be worthwhile simply to call attention to the softened and broadened version of the original Nurse theme, which here represents My Mother, and also the final berceuse, or cradle song, which is made up in part of the Child theme over an accompaniment drawn from the Perambulator motive.) Spend Your Time Building Your Business, Not Searching For Office Space I ll save you time and money on your next offi ce lease Tenant Representation, from consultation through lease negotiations Commercial Real Estate Consultants Serving Chicago Since S. Morgan St., Suite 3A Darryl Brehm Chicago, IL (312) dbrehm@anovitz.com A Program Notes, Book 4

5 Scheherazade Symphonic Suite, Op. 35 (1888) Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov ( ) Scheherazade is scored for pairs for woodwinds plus piccolo and English horn, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, harp and strings. The performance time is 42 minutes. The Grant Park Orchestra first performed this work on August 1, 1935, with Eric De Lamarter conducting. In the middle of the winter [of 1888], engrossed as I was in my work on Prince Igor and other things, I conceived the idea of writing an orchestral composition on the subject of certain episodes from Scheherazade. Thus did Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov give the curt explanation of the genesis of his most famous work in his autobiography, My Musical Life. His friend Alexander Borodin had died the year before, leaving his magnum opus, the opera Prince Igor, in a state of unfinished disarray. Rimsky-Korsakov had taken it upon himself to complete the piece, and may well have been inspired by its exotic setting among the Tartar tribes in 12th-century central Asia to undertake his own embodiment of musical Orientalism. The stories on which he based his work were taken from The Thousand and One Nights, a collection of millennium-old fantasy tales from Egypt, Persia and India which had been gathered together, translated into French and published in many installments by Antoine Galland beginning in They were in large part responsible for exciting a fierce passion for turquerie and chinoiserie among the fashionable classes of Europe later in the century, a movement which left its mark on music in the form of numerous tintinnabulous Turkish marches by Mozart, Beethoven, Haydn and a horde of lesser now-faded lights, and in Mozart s rollicking opera The Abduction from the Seraglio. The taste for exoticism was never completely abandoned by musicians (witness Bizet s The Pearl Fishers or Puccini s Madama Butterfly or Turandot or even The Girl of the Golden West; Ravel prided himself on his collection of Oriental artifacts), and proved the perfect subject for Rimsky-Korsakov s talent as an orchestral colorist. To refresh the listener s memory of the ancient legends, Rimsky-Korsakov prefaced the score with these words: The sultan Shakriar, convinced of the falsehood and inconstancy of all women, had sworn an oath to put to death each of his wives after the first night. However, the sultana Scheherazade saved her life by arousing his interest in the tales which she told him during 1,001 nights. Driven by curiosity, the sultan postponed her execution from day to day, and at last abandoned his sanguinary design. Scheherazade told many miraculous stories to the sultan. For her tales she borrowed verses from the poets and words from folk-songs combining fairy-tales with adventures. To each of the four movements of his symphonic suite Rimsky gave a title: The Sea and Sinbad s Ship, The Story of the Kalandar Prince, The Young Prince and the Young Princess and Festival at Baghdad The Sea Shipwreck. At first glance, these titles seem definite enough to lead the listener to specific nightly chapters of Scheherazade s soap opera. On closer examination, however, they prove too vague to be of much help. The Kalandar Prince, for instance, could be any one of three noblemen who dress as members of the Kalandars, a sect of wandering dervishes, and tell three different tales. I meant these hints, advised the composer, to direct but slightly the hearer s fancy on the path which my own fancy had traveled, and leave more minute and particular conceptions to the will and mood of each listener. All I had desired was that the hearer, if he liked my piece as symphonic music, should carry away the impression that it is beyond doubt an Oriental narrative of some numerous and varied fairy-tale wonders Dr. Richard E. Rodda 2012 Program Notes, Book 4 A25