Program Notes for September 2011
Program Notes
By Francis Lynch
Aaron Copland (1900-1990)
Buckaroo Holiday and Hoe-Down from Four Dance Episodes from Rodeo for Orchestra
Not ashamed to borrow from his own works, Copland (as an example) incorporated his Fanfare for the Common Man into both his Third Symphony and the Lincoln Portrait, but was always reluctant to repeat a work, perhaps in fear of being accused of stagnation. So when dancer/choreographer Agnes de Mille approached him in April, 1942, four years after his successful ballet Billy the Kid, with an idea for a cowboy ballet, Copland cried, “Oh no! I’ve already composed one of those. I don’t want to do another cowboy ballet!” But de Mille persisted and Copland eventually agreed, composing music for a ballet that de Mille had specified down to the level of timings for the various sections. He obliged her in every regard, and wrote in his memoirs that “I enjoyed composing the waltz and welcomed ‘Buckaroo’ and ‘Hoedown’ as opportunities for some lively rhythmic sections.” By the time Copland left for Tanglewood in late May of 1942, he had most of the music in his head, ready to be written down. The ballet was presented by the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York on October 16, 1942, and became an instant success. The story centers on a cowgirl who, infatuated with the head wrangler on a ranch, dresses and acts like a man to try to impress him. Claudia Cassidy in Chicago wrote of the touring production: “Rodeo is a smash hit. What Miss de Mille has turned out in this brilliant skirmish with Americana is a shining little masterpiece.”
Copland promptly extracted an orchestral suite from the ballet score and published it as Four Dance Episodes from Rodeo in 1943; it was first performed by the Boston Pops Orchestra under Arthur Fielder on 28 May. It contains all but five minutes of music from the original ballet and calls for slightly larger forces, including an important piano part. Tonight the Ars Viva Symphony Orchestra will perform the first and fourth episodes. Copland writes:
The first section, “Buckaroo Holiday,” is the most complex of the four. Included are variations on two folk tunes, “If He Be a Buckaroo by His Trade” and “Sis Joe.” I used a rhythmic device to achieve a lilting effect that, together with some unprepared key changes, make for a comic touch, further emphasized by a trombone solo in introducing the “Buckaroo” song. Extended pauses further exaggerate the syncopation. “Sis Joe” also undergoes rhythmic transformation before both tunes blend in a canonic treatment for full orchestra... The final movement, “Hoe-Down,” is the best known and most frequently performed of the four episodes. Two square dance tunes are included: “Bonyparte” and a few measures of “McLeod’s Reel” played in folk fiddle style. Pizzicato strings and xylophone add a comic effect to “Bonyparte,” and the music winds down like a clock before the tune returns for the last time.
Hershey Felder (born 1968)
Aliyah, Concerto for Piano and Orchestra on Israeli Themes
The meaning of the Hebrew word ALIYAH is “to rise up,” and given that Jerusalem to the worldwide Jewish Diaspora is considered the highest point in the world, anyone who moves to make their lives in Israel is said to make ALIYAH.
From a musical standpoint, one of the techniques employed in the composition of this work for piano and orchestra is the sudden and deliberate use of rising keys at specific moments. From the beginning of the work - a suggestion of a musical anagram for the letters H-I-T-L-E-R coupled with the flavor of an Eastern European Jew, the musical trajectory takes us through the beginnings of WW II with hints of Crystalnacht (The Night of Broken Glass), with a first movement entitled 1939, through the devastation, destruction and mourning with but only a memory of what was — 1945, up through the creation of the State of Israel, a direct result of the War in Europe, 1948.
It is the intention of ALIYAH to paint a picture of the time using familiar thematic material, where from the ashes, the State of Israel was born.
Stanley Black (1913-2002)
Music of a People —US Premiere
The following program notes were generously supplied by Anthony Clayden, who prepared biographical material for a release of Stanley Black’s music on CD in 2004:
Stanley Black was born Solomon Schwartz on June 14, 1913, in Whitechapel, in the heart of London’s Jewish East End; he was the youngest of four children. His father, Leon, had been a flute player in his native Rumania, whilst his mother was descended from a Polish Rabbinic family. Showing an early musical talent, and encouraged by his father, he started piano lessons at seven with the celebrity pianist Rae Robertson, and later studied at the prestigious Tobias Matthay School of Music in London.
By the age of twelve, Black had a composition broadcast by the BBC Symphony Orchestra, and it seemed that his inclinations would lead him in a classical direction. However, by his mid-teens, and having won an arranging competition promoted by the music paper Melody Maker, he was to be found playing professionally at a cinema in Islington, North London, and in a Dixieland band at the English seaside resort of Margate, where he achieved a reputation as an outstanding jazz pianist.
During the 1930s, he performed with a number of British bands, including those of Lew Stone, Bert Ambrose, and for four years, Harry Roy. Whilst on a trip to South America with the latter in 1938, he became fascinated with Latin-American rhythms, and this was to have a profound effect on his future career. During this time, he also played and recorded with some notable US jazz artists, including Coleman Hawkins, Benny Carter and Louis Armstrong. Amongst the British musicians with whom he was associated were Nat Gonella, Eric Winstone, Howard Jacobs and Maurice Winnick.
The outbreak of World War Two saw him join the Royal Air Force, and he became involved in managing the entertainments for Servicemen in the English Midlands. In 1944, he took over as conductor of the BBC Dance Orchestra, a position he was to hold for nine years. This was the heyday of British radio, and he was on the air as often as six nights a week, directing the orchestra for many top variety and comedy shows. He took part in more than 3000 broadcasts, often composing signature tunes and incidental music. In 1947 he married singer Edna Kaye, whom he had met when she appeared on one of his shows. Also around this time, he began what was destined to be a long association with the British Decca Record Company, (London Records in the US) as conductor and arranger.
Stanley Black’s work in the music industry led him to compose, arrange and conduct for around two hundred movies; his credits include It Always Rains On Sunday (1948), Laughter In Paradise (1951), and The Naked Truth (1957). In 1958, he succeeded Louis Levy as Musical Director for Associated-British Picture Corporation’s Elstree Studios. Many others followed, including Too Many Cooks (1958), The Long And The Short And The Tall (1961), and the Cliff Richard musicals The Young Ones (1961) and Summer Holiday (1962). In 1960 he wrote a new signature tune and a complete set of library music for the British newsreel company Pathe News.
His continuing radio and television work brought him in front of large audiences for programs such as Black Magic and The Marvellous World Of Stanley Black; this contributed to the ongoing success of his live concerts and commercial recordings. He was one of the first musicians to be chosen for the release of Decca’s long-playing records in the UK in 1950, and thus began a steady stream of albums which ultimately made him into one of the most prolific recording artists in the world. Extraordinarily, he never actually had a formal contact with Decca, but from then on he only ever recorded for that company. Alongside film themes and popular Latin hits, (including at least two LPs devoted entirely to tangos!), there were collections of light classics (e.g., Tchaikovsky and Gershwin) and an award–winning recording of Rimsky-Korsakov’s Capriccio Espagnol.
In the early 60s, Decca/London launched their ground-breaking PHASE 4 label, which utilized revolutionary multi-channel recording techniques. The series was designed to showcase the latest home stereo systems which were becoming increasingly popular. In 1965, Music Of A People was released on PHASE 4 (PFS 4063), and this was followed in 1974 by Spirit Of A People (PFS4301).
In his role as a concert conductor, Stanley Black appeared with many of the principal British orchestras, and regularly toured in Japan, Scandinavia, Belgium, Holland, New Zealand, Australia, Canada and the US. In 1977, he achieved the distinction of being the first non-American ever to be invited to conduct at the Boston Pops, and in the same year inaugurated what became an annual season of Pops concerts with the Symphony Orchestra of Winnipeg, ultimately being presented with the freedom of that city.
Stanley Black rejected specialization, because he enjoyed the stimulus of a constant change of direction, preferring to work in a number of diverse musical genres. Until the 1990s, he continued to conduct regular broadcast sessions for the BBC, and some live concerts, where his musicians, together with his audiences, always held him in the highest esteem.
He received several “Golden Discs,” many other awards, e.g., a Novello for Summer Holiday, and most notably, an OBE (Order Of The British Empire), for services to music, in 1985. He died in London on November 27th 2002, aged 89.
© 2011 Antony M. Clayden (Used with permission)
The following notes were written by Mr. Black for the original Decca recordings:
Historians and sociologists have for long debated whether the Jews are a nation, a race, or a religious group, and I suppose the correct answer is that they are a unique mixture of all three. But whatever they are ethnically, the Jews are a people whose 3000 years of historical background has been largely nomadic. Their culture and music stem from many sources and mirror the diverse environments of their migrations. Thus, although their music is basically semitic-oriental, there are also overtones of Russia and Poland; echoes of Rumania, Spain and Morocco; reflections of the Yemen and the Negev.
In choosing these melodies, I feel I have selected those which are not only the most familiar in the rich heritage of Jewish music, but also those which reflect the widest cross section of Jewish life. For the scoring of these melodies I utilized a very large orchestra and choir, not because I wanted an overpowering weight of sound per se, but because the kind of arrangements I had in mind required the most varied possible palette of orchestral and vocal color.
I have tried to reflect many things in these scores: not only the memory of a centuries-old struggle for existence, but also the comparatively recently acquired dignity of recognition as a nation; not only the evocative nostalgia of a fable related by a grandparent or a story read in the Bible, but also the joys and sorrows of the present day, felt as part of humanity rather than as an isolated group. I have tried to reflect the roots— roots old and new, whether in a Russian village or in a Polish ghetto; in the East End of London or the Lower East Side of New York; in the simplicity of a desert settlement or the sophistication of the great urban centers of the world. I have tried to reflect the characteristic traits— the inherent melancholy, the irrepressible gaiety, the resigned fatalism; the humor and warmth of the family circle; the instinctive respect for the Patriarch whether he be religious teacher or head of the family; and the unselfconscious love of the Matriarch who will ever be, simply, “Mamma.” I have tried to echo the love of traditional ceremony both sacred and secular, the love of music, the love of dancing, the love of living.
It could be argued that these traits could also apply, in varying degrees, to all people, and I suppose they can. The Jews, after all, are only one segment of the much larger family of world humanity, and if this album is indeed “Music of a People,” it is also music for all people.
Havah Nagilah. This was designed as a sort of miniature musical summation of “the people.” It starts with an original setting of the Shema— the basic tenet of the faith— and continues into a passage based on the folk song Am Yisroel Chai (“Israel lives on”), descriptive of the passionate striving for survival. The Shofar (ram’s horn) is heard and leads straight into the best known hora of contemporary Israel, and a tune which is familiar throughout the world: Havah Nagila.h The simple lyric is a call to “come and rejoice.”
Yes, My Darling Daughter. A comparatively recent composition influenced by the folk songs of American immigrants, the New York Yiddish Theatre, and Tin Pan Alley. Oboe and bassoon take on the respective roles of a teenage daughter asking plaintively, “Mother, may I go out dancing?” and the mother resignedly answering, “Yes, my darling daughter.”
And the Angels Sing. Whilst there is no set program or story intended in this arrangement, I must confess that I let my imagination run riot. If the opening section suggests a desert scene with a Yemenite flute in the background; if the entry of the strings is evocative of a beautiful Biblical heroine; if the gradual build-up suggests crowds of gaily-clothed people rushing in from all directions to join the dance— please feel to let your imagination run riot too. One thing is certain: the quotation from the famous Ziggy Elman record is intentional!
Hebrew Melody. This beautiful melody, based on a folk song, was written by Joseph Achron as a violin solo and recorded by Heifetz. To my knowledge, this is the first time it has been set for full orchestra and choir.
A Letter to my Mother. This song originated among the New York immigrants during the first decade of the twentieth century. The lyric tells of a mother saying goodbye to her only son who is going far across the sea to seek security and, perhaps, prosperity. Although brokenhearted at the parting, she voices the hope that he remains in good health and that he writes regularly in order to ease the pain of separation.
Raisins and Almonds. The best loved of all Jewish lullabies. A mother rocks her child to sleep and sings of a little white kid which stands behind the cradle. Raisins and almonds are the traditional symbols of joy and abundance.
Eili, Eili. A traditional folk song which takes as its text the first line of the 22nd Psalm, “My God, why hast Thou forsaken me?” and expresses the isolation of the oppressed who feels cut off from everything except his faith in the Holy Law and the one God.
Tzena, Tzena. This is one of the rare instances of a Jewish melody written in the major mode. Tzena, Tzena became a very big hit in America in the 1950’s and Latin American orchestras throughout the world have adapted it as a standard samba. This song was originally a call to the workers of the kibbutzim to defend their land against the aggressor.
Freylach. Certain roots go very deep: however sophisticated the wedding or bar mitzvah, however luxurious the ambience, however lavish the food and drink, however up-to-date the orchestra, at some time during the evening the strains of a sherele, a doina, a whirling chassidic dance will burst forth— in other words, a Freylach! This particular one is traditional and is based on the version by the famed Israeli clarinettist Giora Feidman.
Finale. Our finale is made up of four sections, each of which holds a special significance for the Jewish people. It begins with a reprise of the passage which opened this concert, the Shema— the all-important basic affirmation of monotheistic belief. An orchestral statement of the traditional Am Yisroel Chai (Israel lives on) leads to Naomi Shemer’s lovely Yerushalayim Sel Zahav ( Jerusalem, of Gold) sung by the chorus, first in English and then in Hebrew; and finally, chorus and orchestra combine in the stirring Hatikvah, the Jewish national anthem.
–Stanley Black