Program
Old World, New Season: A Hungarian Folk Tale
Jerry Junkin, Artistic Director and Conductor
Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center
September 13, 2016 | 7:30 p.m.
Rocky Point Holiday (1969) — Ron Nelson
The Power of Rome and the Christian Heart (1943) — Percy Grainger
Irish Tune from County Derry (1918) — Percy Grainger
Shepherd’s Hey! (1918) — Percy Grainger
Háry János Suite (1926) — Zoltan Kodaly/ arr. Jaco Nefs
I. Prelude: The Fairy Tale Begins
II. Viennese Musical Clock
III. Song
IV. The Battle and Defeat of Napoleon
V. Intermezzo
VI. Entrance of the Emperor and His Court
Laurence Kaptain, cimbalom
Elsa’s Procession to the Cathedral (1850) — Richard Wagner/arr. John Bourgeois
ENCORE: The Corcoran Cadets March (1890) — John Philip Sousa
Program Notes
Ron Nelson (b. 1929)
A native of Joliet, Illinois, Ron Nelson received his bachelor of music degree in 1952, master’s degree in 1953, and doctor of musical arts degree in 1957, all from the Eastman School of Music at the University of Rochester. He studied in France at the Ecole Normale de Musique and at the Paris Conservatory under a Fulbright Grant in 1955. Dr. Nelson joined the Brown University faculty the following year, and taught there until his retirement in 1993.
Although he trained as an orchestral composer, Nelson turned to wind ensemble to fill a need for challenging new repertoire. In a 1997 interview with Bruce Duffie, Nelson said, “In the band field, they’re hungry for new works. I would have conductors call me up and ask, ‘Do you have anything for us this year?’ You have no idea what that does to a composer, to be wanted.”
Rocky Point Holiday is Ron Nelson’s first major work for wind band. It was commissioned in 1969 for the University of Minnesota Concert Band, Frank Bencriscutto, conductor.
“It was for their Russian tour and Frank wanted an American piece to open his program.” Nelson recalled. “This was a pivotal moment in my notion of wind ensemble scoring in which I focused on orchestrating in an extremely transparent way. Others have commented that they felt Rocky Point marked a change in the overall philosophy for scoring for wind band.”
Nelson wrote the work while on vacation in Rocky Point – a favorite seaside resort in Rhode Island, which has now closed. The composition is an exciting virtuosic work that unites elements of jazz and classical construction into a new indigenous American style.
Percy Aldredge Grainger
(July 8, 1882-January 20, 1961)
Born George Percy Grainger in Melbourne, Australia, Percy Grainger followed his music to
become a true citizen of the world. He left Australia at the age of thirteen to study music in
Frankfurt, Germany; then moved to London in 1901 to launch his career as a concert pianist and composer. At about that time he adopted his mother’s maiden name as his middle name for use professionally.
When war broke out between the country where he spent his adolescence and the country he had chosen for his adult base, Grainger was overwhelmed with grief. He moved to the United States, to avoid the conflict, and reflected on the horror he felt in his composition, The Power of Rome and the Christian Heart.
“Just as the early Christians found themselves in conflict with the Power of Ancient Rome so, at all times and places, the Individual Conscience is apt to feel itself threatened or coerced by the Forces of Authority,” Grainger wrote. “And especially in war time. Men who hate killing are forced to become soldiers. And other men, though not unwilling to be soldiers, are horrified to find themselves called upon to fight in the ranks of their enemies. The sight of young recruits doing bayonet practice, in the First World War, gave the first impulse to this composition.”
Grainger began The Power of Rome and the Christian Heart in 1918, but didn’t complete it until 1943, in the midst of World War II. It was originally scored for full symphony orchestra and organ, but when the League of Composers commissioned him to write a new band work without strings in 1947, he decided to rescore it for wind ensemble. Openly admitting what he had done, he explained, “As it takes me about 20 years to finish a tone-work, the best thing I could do was to fix up my Power of Rome so it could be played without strings.” It was his last original work for wind orchestra.
In contrast, Shepherd’s Hey and Irish Tune from County Derry sprang from a happier and more hopeful time in Grainger’s life. Between 1901 and 1914, when Grainger was based in London, he began collecting British folk music. He adapted some of the works he collected directly into concert pieces. In other instances he borrowed the folk song forms and overall feel to create original works.
Shepherd’s Hey (1918) is very similar to a northern air called The Keel Row. In Morris Dance, a “hey” is a dance figure where two lines of dancers weave through and around each other. In turning the traditional air into an art song, Grainger mirrored the dance figure by interweaving two melodic lines into multiple variations.
Irish Tune From County Derry is so traditional it has become an icon of Irish folk music.
Variously known as Londonderry Air, Derry Air, and Danny Boy, it dates at least as far back as 1855, when it was collected by Miss J. Ross, and published in George Petrie’s collection, The Ancient Music of Ireland. Subsequent study has linked it to a song collected by Edward Bunting at the Belfast Harp Festival in 1792. The popular vocal version, Danny Boy, grafted Frederic Weatherly’s lyrics to the tune in 1913 and became a hugely popular hit. Singer Ernestine Schumann-Heinck recorded it in 1915. Grainger came out with his lovely concert version in 1918.
Zoltan Kodály
(December 16, 1882-March 6, 1967)
Composer, ethnomusicologist, teacher, and philosopher, Zoltan Kodály was known as an
education reformer for many years before his music began to gain an audience outside his native Hungary. Kodály’s career spanned an era when audience taste in classical music moved from the romantic nationalism of Brahms and Dvorak to the atonal contemporary style of Kodály’s lifelong friend Béla Bartók. Unlike Bartók, however, Kodály continued to draw on the romantic and impressionistic style of pre-war generations.
Háry János is an opera Kodály composed in 1926. He based it on the comic play, The Veteran, by János Garay. The work, which is spoken text, interspersed with music, is in four acts, and follows the adventures of Háry János, an old soldier who spends his days in the tavern, bragging about his heroic adventures during the Napoleonic Wars (1803-1815) to anyone who will buy him a drink. The music begins with a sneeze because, according to Hungarian folklore, that which comes after a sneeze must always be true. So how could we doubt János’ stories of how he romanced Napoleon’s empress, singlehandedly defeated Napoleon himself, then renounced his claim on the empire and all its riches to return to the arms of his hometown sweetheart? You heard the sneeze. It must all be true.
As with other composers of his generation, including Percy Grainger, Edvard Grieg, and Gustav Holst, Kodály spent time as a young man collecting the folk songs of his native Hungary. He drew his inspiration for Háry János from this folk music; the opera, essentially, serves as a vehicle for bringing the music to a broader audience. This may explain why the entire libretto is seldom performed today, but the music continues to delight concert audiences through the Háry János Suite.
The music features a Hungarian folk instrument called a cimbalom. The instrument looks like a small table, but instead of a table surface, the top is a box with strings stretched from side to side over several different bridges. The player strikes the strings with two small hammers. Similar instruments are common in the folk music of a number of cultures, including India, Vietnam, the Middle East, Iran, Iraq, Mongolia, and Korea. In the United States, the instrument is called a Hammered Dulcimer, and is popular with performers of traditional mountain music.
Richard Wagner
(May 22, 1813-February 13, 1883)
Richard Wagner is one of the most controversial figures in classical music, known for his
sweepingly romantic operas and a personal life as dramatic as his music. He was exiled for his political views and his participation in various uprisings. He was outspokenly anti-Semitic. His love affairs were many and turbulent, and he spent a lot of time fleeing his creditors.
Nevertheless, Wagner revolutionized opera, and to a large extent dramatic presentations of all kinds, by integrating the story, the music, and the sheer spectacle of the production in ways that had never been done before. Instead of using libretto as a simple setup for the music, Wagner used his music to serve the story of the opera, and his stories were much more complex than anything that had come before. Music historians sometimes cite his Tristan und Isolde as the beginning of modern music. He fundamentally changed the way musicians approached composition, opera, and conducting and his influence continues to be felt today.
Lohengrin premiered in 1850, with Franz Lizst conducting. The romantic tale is based on the medieval myth of the Swan Knight, and tells the tragic story of young Elsa, Duchess of Brabandt, who is rescued from a tangled web of palace intrigue by a mysterious knight who appears in a boat, pulled by a swan. The knight agrees to champion Elsa if she will marry him, and Elsa’s Procession To The Cathedral marks that triumphant moment in Act II, which is, naturally, also when Elsa’s whole life begins to fall apart. It doesn’t end happily, but we do get to enjoy this one splendid moment when romance and spectacle overwhelm the stage, and listeners as well.
–Program Notes by Gigi Sherrell Norwood